In the list of places to go you haven’t included the various upnp servers such as Asset or MinimServer and the plethora of upnp control points that can be used with them. Whilst these control points user interfaces are not that great they do provide an alternative to Roon.
Do any of those have Qobuz or Tidal interfaces?
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Yes I think so, Im not that familiar with them but for example https://www.qobuz.com/be-nl/info/hi-fi/bancs-d-essai/the-mconnect-control-hd179558
I’ve logged to check if there was a discount to upgrade to lifetime on Thanksgiving Day. What a surprise! $200 UP!!
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Also missed Audirvana which interfaces both Tidal And Qobuz, bit of a messy interface for my taste but others swear by it
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Most people I know just use Spotify these days for a lot of reasons, some of which are very good reasons to.
Many people use sites like lastfm, online concertagendas from various venues and festivals, a site called “luisterpaal” and many many other sites like that over here I have never even heard of and various social media to discover new music. All these sites, many more than I will ever know, either stream directly via Spotify or have Spotify playlists on them. I can listen to all my friends music by just playing their listening history directly in Spotify via lastfm for instance. That’s the main attraction, Spotify is just everywhere these days. None of this can be done in Roon, nor in Tidal or Qobuz and that is the mean reason why almost no one I know is interested in Roon, besides the price. Besides that, Spotify has almost all of the music that people have ever posessed online so they have it automatically everywhere and Spotify has Spotify connect remote control which gets lots of use around me. So the question should not be where would the leavers go?, the question should be “how can we make Roon attractive to the new generation?” because before you know Roon is only catering dinosaurs. Personally I don’t like the Spotify interface (nor any other streaming app) but if I did I probably never would not have signed up on Roon either. The biggest attraction in Roon to me is the Tidal integration, without it it wouldn’t have much to give me. The biggest competition in the future will not be from Jriver, audirvana, mediamonkey and the whole lot. Those are all yesterdays news. The main competition will come from the native streaming apps once they finally see that a good funtioning app is the biggest challenge to set their selves apart from the competition. You’ll never know what Google might come up with for instance (apart from their failures in the past) It all goes pretty slow so my guess is that it will take another 5 years at least but by that time Roon looses even more of its attraction to a newer generation unless…Not to be negative in any way but that’s just what I see around me everyday.
Keep up the good work guys
Always that hassle about the price. The real man wants better and more user friendly for the same price.
That was pre-black Friday, but we do have a Nucleus special today!
@Jez… The reason you give for the Lifetime subscription increased price is totally fabricated, that was not the reason.
Pretty pointless question really, just pure speculation. However as a bit of fun I will speculate:
1st April 2020 Roon drops Lifetime, annual goes to $100 and a monthly sub is introduced at $10.
I am a third year annual and I will not renew in June.
I will investigate what’s on the market over the next six months, but I may land on Asset UPnP, which I own, combined with UAPP since my LG Quad DAC devices are capable of very good output.
Yes, we also have Plex in place, which the family is familiar with, but the family really doesn’t care about music streaming to the stereo gear. They’re happy with Tidal accounts on their phones. For my part, I don’t like running the plasma screen when listening to music, so I will probably do as I outlined in the short term and investigate other solutions for my RPi + hat + Scarlett hardware.
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And the point of this post is what exactly?
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I’m a lifer, so perhaps not directly relevant to this discussion, as the price of the annual subscription doesn’t affect me. But the question, “Where would you go?” is the same, even if my reasons for eventually abandoning Roon might be different.
I would go back to an OpenHome/UPnP setup:
- Music library managed by MinimServer
- Raspberry Pi-based renderers running upmpdcli + mpd ( + shairport-sync)
- Linn Kazoo as a Control Point
Currently, the streaming services (implemented by upmpdcli plugins) supported by such a setup are
- Spotify
- Tidal
- GMusic
It used to also support Qobuz. But Qobuz killed open-source access to their API just before dropping their price from $20 to $15/mo. That, plus Roon’s tight integration with (the) streaming services (that it supports), motivated my switch to Roon in the first place.
But things change (sometimes rapidly) in this industry. If I were an annual subscriber, I would be pretty price-sensitive vis-a-vis what Roon offers over a setup like the above. And, even as a lifer, I do need to figure in the hardware costs to support Roon. Roon’s “minimum” hardware specs keep going up over time, so I expect that I will eventually have to replace my current hardware if I want to keep using Roon with acceptable performance.
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Do they??? I was not aware of that, I thought the spec was pretty static, and a suitably configured device would remain a suitable Roon core - otherwise Nucleus users will get pretty unhappy when it no longer has the required grunt.
Only in name. A Generation-8 Core-i3 has the performance of a Generation-7 Core-i7. Some Generation-8 Celerons have the performance of Generation-6 Core-i5s.
So, when the minimum requirement for a “small” library shifts from a Gen-7 Core-i3 to a Gen-8 Core-i3, that’s a huge jump. Whether the additional horsepower is actually needed is another question …
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Performance improvements on Roon OS
Starting with Roon 1.7, when running on Roon OS, Roon will use the Microsoft .NET Core Runtime, which offers higher performance and improved memory efficiency.
Library management aspects of Roon typically run 30-40% faster, use less power, and generate less heat. This also enables larger music libraries on the same hardware.
Roon OS has always been the best way to run Roon for most users, but as of this change, we are confident that it is the best option for everyone, regardless of library size. Roon on Roon OS is now more efficient and performs better than Roon on any other platform or product.
I realize this may be drifting off-topic, but does that mean that RoonServer on Linux is different (uses Mono) from RoonServer on Rock (uses .NET Core Runtime) ?
That would be kinda crazy, as Rock is just an optimized Linux distro.
Yes, for now
I just recently bought lifetime, so I’m not going anywhere. However, if I was on annual and the price went up or performance went down to the point the value was no longer there, I would simply stream Tidal and Qobuz directly. I would have to purchase a streaming device of some sort, however. I’m mostly into listening, not reading.
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Technology products (hardware and software) usually become cheaper over time. Because Roon is adding each year new features they can maintain a comparingly high price. Otherwise it’s supposed to go down with increasing numbers of subscribers (economy of scale).