Roon is not a charity, it’s a business and we are customers. I’ve spent $1618 with Roon. The idea that lifers are freeloaders is beyond laughable.
13 Likes
And who even wrote that? If in anyway aimed at me then you totally misread my post. 
I for one am happy to pay the annual fee and contribute annually with my money — or not if the service isn’t good enough. A sort of voting, in a way.
At the same time I would not buy the Nucleus since I don’t see any benefits buying it and think it’s way overpriced (due to crazy “dealer” supply chain). Instead I spent €800-€900 buying a Cirrus7 NUC with greater performance.
I do like to pay for software as a service. Also lifetime I could t care less if people buy it or not. Always good for you if you feel you made a good deal. 
I use / have used all of them. Audirvana is pretty good, and I use this as my default library manager for playlists (which I save as M3U and then copy into my Roon folder). But the UI makes no attempt to “merge” your streaming and local libraries, which is a serious shortcoming, IMO.
Bryston MPD … well, I finally just unplugged my BDP-1. The software on that box is too far behind. MPD / Manic Moose playback requires a LOT of curating to work, and I’m done with all of that nonsense.
And JRiver or Plex? I haven’t used those for some time, but my memory of that is a complete UX horror-show.
So when people talk about “competition” for Roon, I would say that might be BluOS. While BluOS has the same shortcomings as Audirvana (no streaming integration with library, not a super-great UX), it has the advantage of integrating a LOT of additional streaming services.
This is what has kept me from buying lifetime… even before seeing this post, I know this is coming.
Danny is referring to no longer offering lifetime as an option in the future, not shutting down existing lifetime subscriptions.
6 Likes
I sold one of my BDP-1s and purchased two used BDP-2s that have the board upgrade. BIG performance jump. MPD sounds the very best in my setup. I kept the one BDP-1 for use as a Roon renderer.
I’d been a Plex user, overwhelmingly for film and tv shows, for about a decade when I tried Roon out 3 years ago. I came at it with a bit of a “ha, audiophile suckers pay $500 for what Plex does for free” attitude, and was a Roon lifer by the end of trial.
When it comes to music, “UX horror-show” is way too kind of a way to talk about Plex, and that includes the more recently released PlexAmp, which, in its defence, is perfectly capable of remote streaming as long as you’ve pre-curated playlists.
2 Likes
For a long time, I really believed that, as well.
I bought a lifetime Plex Pass for $25 but ditched it for Roon lifetime after 1 day. Let’s hope Roon gets remote streaming right before they release it for prime time. Plexamp down samples anything over 44.1. Jriver does remote streaming well but it’s library curation is minimal at best.
I’m only couple days into my trial and I’m tempted to purchase lifetime license. I have experience developing in C# for ffmpeg etc. My hats off to developers. They did something exceptional that will not be replicated anytime soon. The closest thing that comes to Roon in terms of functionality is Plex. However, Roon does something interesting. Before audio stream is constructed, it already applies sound processing. Hence, the audio engine is the key element. Plex does this completely different. Audio processing is done on a client side. In addition, I do no see any possibility for Plex to develop their own stream transport. I know there are other audiophile software on the market, but they are not really server - client type applications. This server side audio processing worries me little bit. The next natural step will be to allow streaming outside of LAN. Downloading for offline listening will be problematic. How do you deal with sound processing on the phone or tablet, especially when you want to apply DSP effects? Lifetime option seems to the best value in the long run.
3 Likes
My own guess as to why Roon hasn’t yet implemented a mobile solution that enables access outside a LAN is that the technology hasn’t yet reached a point where such a solution would be sufficiently robust to provide an acceptable user experience.
“Owning” the LAN has been arguably a nightmare for Roon. Every network problem becomes a Roon problem.
Eventually I can envisage the Roon Core and music storage being shifted to the Cloud. That will get Roon out of the LAN maintenance business but still feels a fair way off.
A lifetime sub includes all future updates.
2 Likes
Lifetime as noted could be withdrawn as an option at any time, I got mine over 4 years ago and haven’t looked back.
True to some degree but if a feature is added to Roon in the future then that feature may not be free (due to the cost to Roon) but an “extra” for both lifetime and yearly subscribers.
We don’t know what the future holds for Roon and where it will end up so I don’t think we can assume a lifetime subscriber will never have to pay anything again.
I am not knocking the lifetime subscription (I have one) but I do think the sooner it is withdrawn the better.
Bang. You hit the nail on the head. The only viable solution, from someone who designs systems like these for a living, would be for a cloud hosted solution (e.g. Vox.rocks, but one that actually works).
A Roon cloud that syncs your local music, bridges subscription services and your Roon metadata to a mobile experience that avoids accessing the user’s local LAN from the Internet at-large. Any other solution would be endless quicksand.
Would be expensive, but I think our demographic would be willing to pay for the privilege - I know I would.
That solution would also make Roon On The Go possible.
1 Like
I’m a little more than halfway through the first annual membership period. With the price increases over the years and the warnings of removing the lifetime option, tomorrow’s 1.8 update finally gave my the straw the camel’s back needed. $699 compared to my investment in hardware and music is a drop in the bucket, even with “throwing away” half the first year at $120. My only hope is that the folks at Roon secure something to replace Tidal if/when it goes bust. I’m a Qobuz subscriber, but variety is a good thing.
3 Likes
If you don’t want Tidal to go bust… Subscribe…
2 Likes
I’m never lending you my camel 
1 Like
I would, but I hear that MQA stuff is just a hoax. Do you have any strong feelings about it? 
…I kid, I kid…
3 Likes
Subscribe or do not subscribe. There is no try.
1 Like