So, I’ve been an advocate of roon for a good few years now, but for many reasons I’ve never really taken the plunge into full blown roon. I’ve typically used a Mac with iTunes and iTunes remote and on the basis of back to back blind listening wasn’t able to hear any benefit to roon (and many including myself would suggest there’s no reason to either).
However Apple is starting to go down odd routes and iTunes is no more. They’re making it harder and harder to manage a library of your own music. I also think that controlling it all remotely is likely to get trickier With time. Add to this the fact I don’t even like the newest Mac OS, the choice was made.
I decided to get away from reliance on a single eco system (iTunes and airplay only).
Work had a spare mini PC lying around (i3,8gb and 256gb ssd) so decided to liberate that, throw roon onto it and just sell the Mac. The idea being that the Mac would pay for my first year of roon and give me a little spare to enjoy the season!
As of today, my trial ended and I went paid. I’m glad to finally be part of the community. I’m also excited about the opportunities that roon offers (considering a RoPieee with 7” display as endpoint soon).
It also coincides rather well with Tidal doing 5 months for £5, so I’ve started a Hi-Fi plan with tidal and also enjoying how I can include albums as part of my roon library.
All in all I’m looking forward to playing more, adding new endpoints and maybe even dabbling with room EQ etc.
Sadly I missed the window of lifetime being an achievable price, but I’m happy to stay yearly. It gives roon revenue and means if I decide to move to something else, I can.
At current pricing it would take 7-8 years for lifetime to make sense, and who knows what digital music will be doing by then.
Go for Qobuz! I recently switched from Tidal to Qobuz after getting very frustrated with their streaming technology while on cellular.
They are a bit cheaper for the top tier, especially if you go for the annual subscription. And, I think their high-res material sounds a little better than the Tidal equivalent.
Ali I’m actually already a Qobuz user but just for purchases. Have only gone for tidal at moment because £5 for 5 months seems silly to pass up. Long term Qobuz would probably be my preference and at that probably only lowest tier, I generally prefer to own music, and only want a way to try out things before committing to the full fat version.
Not sure I like the idea of never really owning my music. It’s fine for tv shows and movies, they have a limited number of revisits in them, but music is forever, and deserves a little more commitment IMHO.
Having integration with roon is great for convenience though and for being able to randomly play stuff in non critical listening situations.