I am not a fan of Roon subscription plan and business model : way to expensive for a software that doesn’t provide any licensed contents. I bought Audirvana Origin to get rid of Roon. So the conclusions :
Audirvana + Price, price, price
Roon + All the rest, all the rest, all the rest
I am not saying that Roon is better than Audirvana, I am saying that Audirvana is unusable : laggy and the interface is a torture especially when I try to navigate over my computer, it’s better with the IOs App (My Mac has 32go of Ram, with Audirvana, I feel like I have a 256mo).
I don’t know what happen with Audirvana, it used to be a snappier software before.
One usually gets what one pays for in this world. AudirVana is one of example of this. It would never get my money regardless of how cheap it is in comparison to Roon. There are far better more stable apps than AudirVana for free that do a lot more.
If I were just listening to my local music with some additional streaming on a single computer. Audirvāna would fit the bill here. Especially when using a USB connected DAC.
But I don’t fall into this category. I even have 2 Audirvāna subscriptions so I can use the app on 2 computers at the same time. This was before going Roon lifetime and both subs will expire in July.
But Audirvāna’s inability to use AirPlay. It’s less than stellar Chromecast support. No similar option to Roon ARC and some weird interface design choices have pushed me square into the Roon corner.
And having 2 Audirvāna subs equals about the same price per year compared to Roon.
So I have made the decision to quit with Audirvāna and went Roon lifetime late last year before the latest price increases went into effect.
I have asset, mconnect, lms or Plex for those occasions but as I now use my Fiio DAP mainly for Roon it has all my own music locally as well so all sorted.
I’ve compared the two and found Audirvana having slightly better separation, air and more fleshed out. How much difference you can tell will depend on the transparency of your gear and differences can also be explained by how a certain vendor implemented Roon. I have a Sotm sms200 Ultra Neo and a while back according to release notes they made a change to improve SQ. After that Roon got better on that device, I also had no downgrade in SQ anymore when I used DSP, not sure if that’s due to Sotm or to a Roon improvement but I used to notice a difference in the past.
Anyways, both sound good enough, for me the difference and deciding factor is in the feature set and how you will use it. For me Roons multi-room, it’s ability to control almost any device and it’s concurrent casting are must-haves. I think if you’re just playing to 1 device and control it from your computer, Audirvana is just fine as well.
I bought a lifetime, don’t understand why people who understand what Roon brings still have a problem with paying for it, it’s basically a reasonably priced component. I think it’s people just wanting something to hold in their greedy hands when they buy something. Good software takes a lot of hours to create and sometimes even more to maintain; expecting this for free without any advertising model behind it is just lame. If you want to use Microsoft, Adobe, DJ software or even VST plugins for music production, you’ll be paying a pretty penny so what is the issue with paying for Roon? I’ve been using streaming software for local streaming since the 90’s and it’s been a journey of horrible user interfaces and a battle of keeping your metadata in control. I had almost given up and switched completely to online streaming until I discovered Roon which works almost plug and play, solves the metadata pain, can feed my squeezebox, chromecast and upnp devices with just a click on a button, all from a good looking UI, what a relief was that.
In absolute terms, I don’t think software like Roon is worth the asking price ($900) but it has to be said that, for the moment, it has no longer a direct competitors and that’s a shame: Audirvana meets the essentials in terms of sound quality, but suffers from deplorable ergonomics.The team in charge of Audirvana can quickly offer an alternative to Roon if they decide to optimize the ergonomics (it shouldn’t be the hardest part to do).
Now, it’s true that everything is relative: if Roon is mainly aimed at “audiphiles” who can spend thousands of dollars on a power cable, it’s really not expensive (no irony). If the software is aimed at a more general audience, it is more questionnable.
Ps. For the sound, I must admit that I am unable to get a definitive idea. Maybe it depends on my equipment and my listening room, but I much prefer Roon for symphonic, orchestral and lyrical and Audirvana for jazz and vocal jazz. I don’t know if this make sense.
What’s worth it to you is your decision. As someone working in software, I don’t think it’s unreasonable cost for a lifetime license.
In any case, as you wrote yourself there are no competitors and certainly not cheaper ones, so probably Roon’s fees are what you need to deliver such a product to a relatively small number of customers. If it could be done better or cheaper, someone probably would have. At least anyone can try. Once someone else does it better or cheaper, you have an argument.
You may not be using other parts of Roon, but you are leaving out lots of things, like metadata that is not free for Roon to acquire either. There’s many things Audirvana would have to add to become level with Roon. Probably if they did, they would necessarily become more expensive. It may be a fine alternative if it had a better UI if you don’t need the other things Roon does. But if you need them, like I do, they are not
and that’s still only a part of what Roon does. For me personally, anything that does not have reasonable automatic metadata and allows me to edit credits is a nonstarter
