It won’t be compatible with Roon end points. It will be multi-room and it will not be based on DLNA. I hope to never do DLNA again as long as I…ugh.
Paul McGowan saidIt won’t be compatible with Roon end points. It will be multi-room and it will not be based on DLNA. I hope to never do DLNA again as long as I…ugh.
will keep watching…
Hopefully the move to the Bridge III will not leave us DS Jr owners behind with no way to update our players. I’m new to PS Audio and a feature that I thought was a big plus was the capability to update equipment versus having to buy into a new player. Perhaps I’m naive.
From what I understand, DSJ was built to a price-point meaning the Bridge was hardwired in the gizzards rather than being on a discrete (removable/upgradeable) board like its older brother. I’m guessing it will be a DSJ Mk2 hardware config to support Bridge3.
Don’t be too sure. My DS Sr started life as as PWD Mk I.
louawalters saidSo on the topic of sound quality of Roon, I would have completely agreed with you until very recently. Not sure exactly what version made the improvement in sound quality but Roon has been vastly improved. Especially ROCK. It is now my preference for streaming, sounding better than dlna, hq player or Jplay. I’m not a huge classical collector, so I suppose I dont really see an issue with how Roon catalogs music. Different steokes for different folks I suppose, because I find it far superior to any dlna based playback. One thing that plays in roons favor is the eccosystem of end points (either diy or off the shelf). So for me roon serves my entire house of at least 5 end points including the bridge 2. If there is a way to make the upcoming server compatable with roon end points… then i think youd have something, but for me Dlna is out-dated and the user experience sucks. Again, just my 2 cents.
To my ears Roon SQ is clearly inferior to either mconnect/Bridge or Lumin/uRendu. But Roon is so much better in library management and features I use it most of the time.
Don’t understand the hate for DLNA, at least as a user. Ever since I worked out the initial issues with Bridge II and JRiver, it’s been absolutely rock solid! I bought the Bridge II shortly after it was released. I’ll admit it was a little hairy at first but persistence and posting on the JRiver web site resolved all the issues (I did post all the lessons learned here).
Also tried Roon but it’s just too much money to buy in and too much money to rent the software. Also, JRiver sounds better and lets me organize my music the way I want it organized. Roon did work well and was very solid with Bridge II.
Now mconnect…no thanks. It’s just not in the same league as JRemote. Mconnect does work fine with JRiver.
I will consider Octave when the time comes. The perfect network streamer is elusive. A closed PS Audio server, renderer and controller could have big advantages for those of us married to our PS Audio DACs.
Just my two cents FWIW.
amsco15 said Don't understand the hate for DLNA, at least as a user.I think a major reason DLNA gets a bad rap is because most of the control points range from bad to mediocre. Like amsco15, it took me a while to find the best way to get what I want. But now I am very happy. Take a decent control point like Kazoo or (even better) BubbleUPnP and combine it with MinimServer and you have a setup that sounds great and lets you control the display of your music in ways that I don't think any other software offers. (Just one example: I store composers and artists as 'lastname, firstname' but have set MinimServer to display them on the Now Playing screen as 'firstname lastname.') And it's reliable, no dropouts etc. I call that a pretty good user experience.
mConnectPlayer and mControl are better than some, but not as good as the two I mentioned (I don’t use JRiver so can’t speak to JRemote).
Paul McGowan saidNever having issues with DLNA the Bridge II is a real winner in sound quality and functionality. I am pretty confident the Bridge III will offer better sound quality and probably even functionality in the sense of accepting DSD. However to me it's as important (or maybe even more) I can use the Bridge in combination with my Melco and play Tidal (MQA) and Qobuz hires. I can not quite see the consequences of the loss of DLNA, but it would be very disappointing to lose even one of these three...It won’t be compatible with Roon end points. It will be multi-room and it will not be based on DLNA. I hope to never do DLNA again as long as I…ugh.
cbnbmore saidHopefully the move to the Bridge III will not leave us DS Jr owners behind with no way to update our players. I’m new to PS Audio and a feature that I thought was a big plus was the capability to update equipment versus having to buy into a new player. Perhaps I’m naive.
The Bridge inside DSJ is on a factory updatable sled so it shouldn’t be out of the question to update to Bridge III when it’s available. Though, it would have to come back for updating, though I suspect distributors should be able to do the exchange as well if they are outside the country.
The problems with DLNA are many. I just find the protocol to be restrictive. We went with it years ago, before most anyone else did, and we’ve been living with it ever since. It’s served us well for the time, but we’re at a point where we want to remove the shackles and take the next step up. Octave is a big step forward.
We will be launching a pre/pre beta test of the UI next week (to a handful of selected users). This will help us find out how well we have done for navigation. So, things are moving along nicely.
+1 on the DLNA hater’s club. It was an interesting early try, but it’s day has been and gone, IMO.
wijber saidNever having issues with DLNA the Bridge II is a real winner in sound quality and functionality. I am pretty confident the Bridge III will offer better sound quality and probably even functionality in the sense of accepting DSD. However to me it’s as important (or maybe even more) I can use the Bridge in combination with my Melco and play Tidal (MQA) and Qobuz hires. I can not quite see the consequences of the loss of DLNA, but it would be very disappointing to lose even one of these three…
Of course, we won’t release anything if it isn’t as good or better sound quality than its predecessor. That would make no sense. And you know we’ll, of course, preserve DSD capabilities. We’re one of DSD primary supporters, despite other company’s attempts at quashing the format.
wijber said I can use the Bridge in combination with my Melco and play Tidal (MQA) and Qobuz hires. I can not quite see the consequences of the loss of DLNA, but it would be very disappointing to lose even one of these three...Same concern for me. I play files and stream Tidal via a Melco device to BII, controlled via MControlHD app, and it's been solid for months, just a few recent and occasional hiccups with Tidal MQA. I would be concerned to lose that functionality as that's why I moved from USB input to BII in the first place.
Regards,
Mike.
rogerdn saidTo my ears Roon SQ is clearly inferior to either mconnect/Bridge or Lumin/uRendu. But Roon is so much better in library management and features I use it most of the time.
@rogerdn, based on my early switch over to Roon - when I was using JRiver media cetner, Jplay and JRemote - I completely agree Roon sounded inferior, that was 2+ years ago. I haven’t really compared recently (other than my post on comparing it to DLNA, and HQPlayer). I also agree, that 1+ year ago when I was streaming to the uRendu, the RAAT playback engine did sound inferior to both HQPlayer or DLNA. I ended up going the HQPlayer route and loved it. I guess what I am saying, I think people may want to try Roon again - latest build on ROCK (their own OS) because at least for me, it now sounds at least as good, or possibly slightly better than either HQ Player or DLNA - not a significant difference mind you. I suppose one person’s definition of better may be someone else’s definition of worse. I am starting to think that Roon gets a bad rap for SQ due to their early releases I think with the recent updates to their software Roon has matured and is finally on par with other solutions available. . All that said, even though initially I felt that roon was worse than JRiver / JPLAY, the user interface / experience trumped having the last ounce of quality. I feel now that I can have my cake and eat it - in that the sound quality (in my system, with my configuration) is better with Roon than DLNA or HQ player. I have not gone back to jRiver so cannot comment. Obviously YMMV, and all of this is system dependent. For me, it would take something pretty significant to switch over from Roon.
Just my Canadian 2 cents, which isn’t really worth 2 cents
Do you NEED to use MConnect or will Bubble UPnP work the same way to try mqa tidal payback?
Ive used Squeezebox, Auralic Aries full and now DSJ. The most reliable was Squeezebox which is hilarious because it’s the oldest system and just worked for me, even getting support while Logitech dumped them years ago. Auralic’s Lightning OS was very good overall and sounded better and more flexible but I couldn get JRiver to only work half the time with it. Using DSJ with JRiver was about the same. It would forget the renderer and I’d need to reset both devices for it to work for awhile.
Roon to me sounds very good and just works, there is comfort in that. I just wish it wasn’t so flippin pricey as our CDN dollar makes everything at least 25-30+% more expensive.
Very happy to hear DSJ is hardware upgradeable!
Tidal and Spotify will be fully integrated into Octave.
Hi Paul, please add me to the list of dedicated Melco > Bridge II users. I have MinimServer on my Melco and it works and sounds like a charm being driven by Bubble UPnP (and Mcontrol when needed to play TIDAL MQA). Hence, I do not understand the hate for DLNA. In any event, I am intrigued by the concept of a better-sounding Bridge III, but for it to fit into my system it would need to process the Ethernet signal coming from the Melco. Thanks.
Thank you @Paul for the prompt answers.
Is there any chance Qobuz will be reachable with Octave/Bridge III? Knowing Qobuz is not (yet!) available in the USA but yeah keeps growing in Europe and will be available overseas over time for sure. Qobuz Sublime+ is my favorite, with it’s wide range classical and jazz music in ‘native’ hires, very reliable and always playing without any issue (they stated to have DSD available about September 2017 ;-). I’m pretty damned sure I’m not the only soul over here in Europe who LOVES Qobuz. You’ll make a lot of (future) users very happy integrating Qobuz in Octave!
Will the Bridge III do a full MQA-unfold up to 384k? I assume it will accept the IP-adress when delivered by the Melco…?
We likely won’t integrate Qobuz because of its restricted nature (can’t be used outside Europe). But, if we get enough penetration into the European market, then perhaps (if they have easy APIs to access it).
MQA is an unanswered question at the moment. We’re not certain we want to even include it. We’ll see.