It’s not a rip off, it’s the price.
You haven’t bought it, so (by definition) you haven’t been ripped off.
The idea that goods shipped from the US+(greatly increased) transport costs + VAT + any applicable import tarrifs + distribution margins should somehow be the same price simply based on exchange rate is pretty wide of the mark I think.
A very good point, I don’t need one. The issue is a more fundamental one in that prices in the UK have always been high for imported goods even when we were in the EU. This rankles us in the UK. (google rip off Britain).
I suspect in this case it could be that the extra is going to a UK distributor which is fine. But, in these cases there is usually enough profit to pay the distributor whilst keeping the price of the product at a competitive level. Which if this is the case, means that the US price could be a loss leader, that is a no profit price to sell the units. So that’s another way of looking at it.
I am not too fussed either way as I don’t want one. What is critical is that Roon doesn’t morph into a product that runs only on its own hardware. This is what happens often with loss leaders - suck you in, then bite. I have been through this with others and it’s not good.
The big benefit of Roon is that it is hardware independent (or should I say friendly), this must be maintained but hopefully that’s for another thread.
If that happens, buy a Nucleus or switch to another music player app. I don’t understand why people jump to these type doomsday scenarios.
Where is the proof it ships from the US. It’s all made in China, just as likely to ship from their.
Base M4 Mac Mini as roon server and family computer . You will cry tears of joy while playing DSD512 files to multiple endpoints, while ripping a atmos Blu-ray, browsing the internet and the mini is just idling away at 10-20% cpu usage.
The 16gb ram in the Base M4 are plenty with swapping to the fast SSD.
Single Core Performance is way better than the M1 / M2 and that’s important for roon .
Is the Mac Mini fan noisy or audible when using Roon? I’m thinking of getting one.
Exactly, I’d be interested to see the CoO on the paperwork and if it’s PRC I’d be surprised if it shipped from there to the US, to the distributor network.
Especially after today.
Not sure about the newer ones. But the fan of my 2014 Mac Mini never kicked in when I was running it as a Roon Server.
The fan is spinning inaudibly at a low but steady 1000RPM. After 2 months of 24/7 use, mine has yet to rev up.
I can’t think I have really ever heard the fan on mine, even with HQPlayer using 70% of the CPU when upscaling to DSD256 for several hours of music listening
Mine is inside a Kallax unit (door in the front but open in the back, next to my router , external NVME SSD and a bunch of crap stacked on top) and I did never hear mine and it’s on 24/7 . And I’m sleeping right next to it (2 meters). Fan noise is absolutely no issue.
Even if it would spin up if you do very demanding stuff with the CPU and GPU I doubt you would hear it while playing music .
Thanks for the helpful replies. Good news about the quiet fan.
My Mac Mini and Nucleus are in another room on another floor.
Just use an old computer (apple or windows) and large drives. Roon takes very little computing power once set up. (always have a safe backup to your drive, a second mirror drive or cloud backup).
It can also take a lot, depending on how you set up your DSP.
If you’re upsampling to DSD512 for instance, CPU overhead will be high, though why you would want to do it is anyone’s guess. Generally though, most DSP has a fairly low computational overhead.
I have a 3-way, stereo linear phase FIR active crossover with 131072 taps running on an N-100 at only a few percent CPU usage.
This is an oversimplification. Previously, the goods would be imported at unit cost plus shipping and import duty, before before selling at the retail price with VAT applied. When the UK was part of the common market goods could freely move between EU countries.
That has now changed, so goods either come from the US or elsewhere, or the EU. Either way there are additional costs incurred.
For example, if you bought direct from a US retailer, you’d pay the $499 + plus shipping and insurance + customs duty + VAT. Each is applied to the previous total, too.
So, let’s say shipping and insurance is £30.00. Then the cost of the imported goods is around £433. Apply customs duty (Heading 8519 - Sound recording or sound reproducing apparatus) and it’s £519.00.
Finally, add VAT. Then we arrive at £623.52, which is more than the UK retail price.
Why is the EU cheaper? Probably because there’s less friction, and it’s a huge market. Nowadays, buying from the EU will incur import and VAT. There’s also more red tape to navigate in the UK.
As we say, you can’t have your cake an eat it.
I think we are saying the same thing. It’s shipping, packaging, insurance, duty and VAT. To ship to the EU and then the UK will add cost if you are in the EU or not.
It will all become interesting if the US inposes special tariffs on EU goods and then the EU retaliates. It might be much cheaper than in the UK.
We live in interesting times.
Anyway, I’ve bought my Roon One and I’m happy with the product and the price I paid.
Exactly.
The States don’t even charge VAT to own citizens.
The probable reason is that their taxation system is based on sales tax, not value-added taxation.
The sales tax differs per federal state. (For the end user, it matters little what it‘s called )