Hmmm… if I had known before buying my lifetime subscription…
Part of me feels this is the right move, they kept increasing their annual pricing and ended the lifetime option. I was lucky to get the lifetime before it was sunset, and have zero regrets. I have yet to find an interface as easy to use with great database management for local files. I know folks have their gripes about sound quality, I can’t tell the difference so ignorant is bliss or as some of you like to think just plain old ignorant.
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As in you regret buying your lifetime membership because of this news? Why?
Only if the current Roon experience is less geared towards audiophiles. I like the current interface, and I was late to the game so only bought the lifetime earlier this year.
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They can use it as an interface for all of their streaming capable audio equipment. They’ve got quite the brand ecosystem under the Harman umbrella. Shop JBL, Harman Kardon, AKG, & Infinity | Harman Audio
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That is a big if, the article seems to indicate they are letting Roon maintain their current independence. Does Harman have another software solution that competes with Roon? I don’t know, Samsung owns Harman and they seem to let them operate independently too. Might not be the knee-jerk doom many assume will happen, sure there are examples of shutting down once acquired, but also examples of bringing the service to more people.
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Probably native roon integration into their devices
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HK bought it for a reason, likely not to mess with it.
The bigger issue is going to be whether 3rd party companies will continue to support Roon long term, now that it’s owned by a competitor. I suspect this will be fine because of the end user adoption, short on H&K doing something stupid.
I do think this opens the door for a competitor though, it’s in the best interest of companies providing Roon streaming solutions to offer other options in case H&K does something stupid.
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I’m not really sure how long Roon has been doing business but even after all this time, they still set a foot wrong often and they’re not trivial issues. I’d imagine a startup having to make a very steep climb of it going in. I could see some type of open source or better yet some manufacturer backed standard making inroads. Kind of like the way HDR10 is trying to unseat Dolbi Vision?
Just thinking out loud here but I agree, it was bought for a purpose and it’s without doubt the best interface into one’s music library. Even selling music hi-def music directly to customers can be a profit center.
Hopefully things will only improve but if not, at least I have Innuos Sense 
But I’ll still have a Roon rock for nothing lol.
I’m sure Apple will never but it would be interesting to see them create something similar. I don’t use Apple Music but many seem to like it.
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LMS with a modern skin
I actually wanted to build that, maybe this is the push I needed (doubt it but we’ll see)
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It’s definitely not as feature-rich, but once I did LMS with skin, I never went back. It’s quite noticeable sound quality wise too.
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I gave it a short chance with the recommended skin on antipodes and it was terrible, personally not worth whatever the sound quality improvement could’ve been for me to keep using it.
I spent most of my career so far thinking about software and user experience so I might rank this higher than most…
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Honestly my big complaint is that it looks like the antipodes hybrid skin took over and you cant get true Material Skin (i think that is the good skins name) but mine will bounce between two IPs when i restart the router. And depending on which IP it has different looks, one which resembles my last material config, the other is whatever the default antipodes hybrid thing is.
Tbh, i dont even mind it either way. It is quick, lightweight, pulls a bunch of info (if you have the plugins), and is intuitive to use. I like the artist, album, and lyric info but i hardly look at it.
I want to see what the big AMSv5.0 brings. But if you could force some plugins and are able to integrate them a bit better and polish the overall look then you probably have a winner. I also dont want it to auto look up track info and just use my tags how i wrote them.
Sharing this here because quality universal remotes are a rare thing after Logitech left and this… well, the Roon integration piqued my interest. This does appear to be the one remote to rule them all.
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DCA E3…I haven’t heard anything about these.
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That would be interesting to hear, their amts tech is pretty cool
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Glass used in the cup design. If nothing else itll probably be very pretty in person.
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