… in the daytime.
You know, we’re still waiting for the lunar panels.
Well, I hear ya. But those (ridiculously expensive) batteries allow for a bit of flexibility.
At some point I expect the battery prices to fall. Call me optimistic… or perhaps foolish.
I think you’re clairvoyant! 
I’m in the same situation. I can’t spend $4000 or $5000 on a streamer, and I don’t need a DAC or external storage or anything else. So the AirLens at $2000 less trade-in credit would work for me. But I finally got fed up living without the ability to play my digital files. So I just bought an iFi Zen streamer ($400). It sounds surprisingly good using an external LPS.
I’ll compare it with the AirLens when the latter comes out, and I am open to the possibility that the Zen will sound just as good as the AirLens. But if not, I can sell it.
Also, regarding Roon: I understand that the most recent version doesn’t allow you to play even your own locally stored music if the Internet connection goes down. Regardless of sound quality or anything else, that’s a total non-starter for me.
2 Likes
I was unaware Roon is locked down in this way.
Non-starter indeed.
1 Like
Me too. There’s no doubt in my mind that dCS is optimizing for Roon. I can’t wait for the Rossini.
Welcome back from your long trip! Did Luca go to a long trip too? It’s odd without both of you in this forum, and vmax seems to lose interest lately.
With BBQ and setting up Lumin U2 on Father Day, I will have a fun and busy day!
3 Likes
I am looking forward to your U2 review. Have fun and a Happy Father’s Day!
1 Like
I thought at one point Luca was either working on getting ready for a conference and/or going on vacation. Perhaps the conference is/was just occurring.
I am still at half speed. Hopefully after tonight’s sleep I’ll be back to my abnormal self.
3 Likes
The best two days of any vacation or road trip are the first one and the last one.
3 Likes
I believe one reason was to centralize (and improve) searching, which had been a big headache for many.
I know this requirement is a turnoff (or non-starter, as you say) for some, but I’d guess for the majority of users, internet reliability isn’t much of an issue. (I can’t remember the last time my internet connection was down.)
Plus I think a lot of ISPs provide for cellular backup if it DOES go down. (Mine, through Xfinity/Comcast in Minnesota, has that.)
I figure if the internet is down, there are plenty of other ways to play music. (Other apps, or even those old spinny discs still seem to work.)
What is a cellular backup?
IIRC, it’s not a matter if the internet is down or not, but I think it requires that your Roon Rock remain up and running. I guess some people turn it off when they shut down their hifi rigs.
I could be wrong about this, because I dumped Roon shortly after they implemented that update.
Some ISP’s provide a 4G LTE modem as a failsafe that fires up if the normal modem goes down or loses its internet connection.
The core (whether a ROCK or other computer) DOES have to be up and running for Roon to work, no?
1 Like
Sorry. The “Core” is what I meant, not Rock.
And yes, it has to be running in order to run Roon. But before that update, I think you were able to download tracks onto your mobile device and listen to them anywhere, including your local files.
Once that update was implemented, that is no longer possible unless you have your Core up and running. At least that’s what I got out of it. I’m not 100% sure though as I never used those features anyway.
Wait, what? Roon does not lock down if you have no internet.
Granted… if you lost all networking of course it wouldn’t work assuming it cant see where your server is. But all it does if the internet outside of your local network goes down is tell you that it can’t connect to Qobuz or Tidal but you can dismiss that warning and resume playing your local files.
What you are describing would be a feature of your streamer - if the Roon server is down of course Roon would not work, the server is Roon - its not running anywhere else. Your streamer may or may not allow you to use airplay or other protocols to listen to music without Roon.
The core always had to be running for roon to work. The whole thing runs off the core (which powers the database, etc…). If the core is down/off, you’ll get a message on your remotes saying “Trying to connect to core”. That’s as far as you’d get.
As of Roon 2.0, roon requires internet access to work.
1 Like
Well I have no idea what that is referring to but I have far too many internet outages than should even be legal in 2023 and I never lose the ability to play local files. And yes, I am up to date on Roon software. Like I said above, it warns me that it can’t connect to Qobuz, and that is all.
1 Like
over on the Roon site, there were lots of discussions and experiments. Lots of systems worked for a very long time serving local files without an internet connection; however, Roon says there is no guarantee it will work, for even moments, without internet connectivity. It is a contentious topic. It means nothing to me, I use JRiver for local files (don’t even have my local music directory selected in Roon). I do understand the controversy.
2 Likes