I’m sure it’s all over the place.
Back to the future of Roon, I’m not sure I understand their business model, and there are some external things happening that reduce differentiation.
When I bought my lifetime subscription years ago, I was pretty blown away. I could retire my Sony music server for playing high res files and 100s of ripped CDs, and consolidate all these into a beautiful user experience that no other music service had - remermber iTunes? - what was that Deezer thing about?, etc.
The Roon app didn’t handle Spotify like the Sony did, but Tidal had most of what I liked and in high res.
Too, as the manager of the .NET languages at Microsoft, I liked the fact that it was written using our tech.
When I became aware of Qobuz I noticed they had great metadata, downoadable PDFs of liner notes, etc. but soon after, Roon integrated with them. I’ve never been happier with any music setup in my life, so I bought a Roon Nucleus+ and a Denafrips DAC to play off that server.
Now all the Macs I’d been using could be shut off and I can pick up one of three tablets lying around the house, dial up some music and stream it in one of 9 Sonos zones in the house or on the dedicated system with the Denafrips.
Now in the last few years, I’m seeing Apple: 1) come out with a classical app, upgrade Airplay and Bluetooth and 2) Supporting lossless high res, which allowed me to move all of my FLAC files to AAC. As a result, I’ve done that, store them on my Roon and, with the matching feature of Apple Music,l have access to my 1,000s of CDs from my phone with lossless quality anywhere I go in the world, streaming without copying them before a trip. 3) I store the Apple folders on my Nucleus+ which sees them and displays them exactly as it did when they were FLAC files. 4) I mount the Nucleus as an SMB server on the Mac for file management. Works great.
I have never gotten Arc to work and feel it’s too risky to make the firewall changes that are suggested, and when I tried, it didn’t work anywhere. Given the way I set things up, the match service is better. I’m streaming from Apple’s servers with rigourous uptime quality, not a Linux box from my house. No effort, no firewall manipulatopm.
So I can stream directly from Apple. So that Roon benefit is eclipsed entirely.
The Apple Classical app has outstanding metadata, and applies them to my matched library. Its’ not Roon, so I never use it at home. But its very very good.
So that Roon benefit is diminishing.
So, if Apple is getting that smart about this market, supporting high res, doing their own speakers, replacing Sonos, etc. I wonder how much more niche that will make Roon.
For now Roon is far better, with much finer control over your audio. Apple can’t match that. I don’t know if they think it’s worth it or not.
The Roon guys seem incredibly smart and understand their product market fit, so I’m sure new things will continue to happen to keep them ahead.
which I tend to listen to in the car and you can create your own playlists, I tend to listen to albums only though if I’m out walking or in a hotel etc .