I also understand the Air moniker to be a reference to the incorporation of the “air gap” approach to isolating the signal from noise “on the line”, so to speak.
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I suppose that for folks who want to see the birthday for Michael Tilson Thomas in their metadata, they can use the AirLens as an endpoint for Roon. Based on the past PS Audio articles in Copper about MusicBrainz… and I think maybe some Paul posts in the prior versions of this thread… back when the server product was coming for the holiday season 2020… there may be a MusicBrainz connection for PS Audio. The Roon backup database always bugged me with its tens of thousands of separate little files… for a 1TB FLAC database at the time. And I did not have patience to stop it from treating my Aussie disks as US disks. So it had to go.
Roon is amazingly good software, which is hardly surprising, with 20 years and now in excess of 50 developers working on the platform.
I’ve used BluOs, which is excellent, software supporting two mass-market brands (NAD and Bluesound), so no doubt has a lot of resources. I also use Amazon HD. With their money, I’m not impressed. The Innuos 2.0 streaming app is quite an achievement for a small company. I use it for a bit, then switch back to Roon.
The reality is that Roon is streets ahead and spending $millions annually developing and supporting their software. I use Devialet that, like dozens of other manufacturers, decided they couldn’t beat them, so went full Roon RAAT and abandoned their own streamer development. They even abandoned having Qobuz onboard, as Roon handles it. So they ended up with Roon, uPnP, Airplay and Spotify (plus their own 24/192 wireless protocol, AIR). Pretty much the norm these days.
I have no doubt PSA can design good software and hardware, I suspect it’s more down to the financial commitment, up front and long term, and the ability to produce a wide enough range of products to generate the sales to support it.
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Roon is the best deal to support as much hardware as possible with a top of the bill UI.
Even NAD supports it as an alternative for BluOS, realizing that it becomes a hard selling point for their hardware if it doesn’t support Roon.
But I like system synergy got 2 pretty high end pieces of integrated streaming solutions. NAD M33 and a C658. They are also compatible with
AirPlay which basically means I have access to the same music on the go as at home. BluOS utilizes my mostly 95% lossless Apple Music local library.
BluOS hardware support is expanding:
- NAD
- BlueSound
- DALI
- Peachtree
- Roksan
You can do the same with Roon, I bet.
I like BluOS because it comes with the hardware. It does limit my options for hardware and purchase. But it does not limit my joy and experience in listening to music.
Roon’s search/filtering is magnificent, but it took many years and fundamental re-write to get there.
It’s not a big deal to come up with new ideas, and a lot of Roon comes from the Roon Community, but it just takes a lot of time and programming hours to implement. Roon has the budget and from what I understand they have always had a virtual workforce, so very few overhead costs to pay.
Yeah, this is my guess for where Paul came up with the name.
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December 21, 1944 (Age 77)
Los Angeles, California, USA
I just looked him up in Roon 
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I knew there was a reason why my Roon metadata backups were so many GB!
I assume that the ethernet connection of the AirLens will be electrical itself, not an optical SFP plug option to the box itself. If there is Paul’s galvanic isolation within the AirLens, after the connection between the Roon core… wherever that is… and the AirLens itself, is that OK?
The big problem with BluOS is that it does not do DSD native. Otherwise, it works well.
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It is only a big problem if you own a lot of DSD files and are used to playing them through the superb PS Audio Direct Stream DAC, or other dedicated DSD equipment like Esoteric DAC’s.
I own 2.5 native DSD albums on file, purchased from Blue Coast Music. I bought them when I owned the Stellar Gain Cell DAC.
Playing them from the computer via USB proofed extremely cumbersome. Add to that the extremely negative sentiment and comments from forum members utilizing computers and USB. I completely lost appetite for DSD.
So for me BluOS and DSD files converted to PCM, work just fine. A good quality recording encoded in lossy ALAC format sounds better than a poorly generated DSD file.
NOTE: PS Audio and Blue Coast Music do not sell poorly recorded/mastered DSD files, they are alle excellent DSD recorded and mastered files. But not every DSD SACD is natively DSD recorded. Many are converted from PCM an some even from poor PCM recordings.
I stopped worrying about file or medium formats and concentrate on the music. With this mindset I enjoy and appreciate my music and stereo set a whole lot more.
Also the matching of speakers to the room and matching amplifiers to the speakers has a much bigger impact on sound quality.
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Well, I am one of those people with a biggish DSD collection, so the AirLens is for me there. In audiophile brand-snob terms, I also downgraded from an Antipodes to a Bluesound Node 2 three years ago when I thought… based on Paul’s posts… that the Octave server was coming two years ago with I2S output. I am not a fan of these non-scientific statements, but comparing with PCM, the Antipodes did sound better. The Node 2 sounded flat. But I thought it was only going to be a temporary situation. And it gave me a chance to play with Bluesound multiroom. In the end, I went with Max2Play for multiroom… easier to pick the Raspberry Pi combination for each room… whether an amp is needed or not etc. So I am just waiting on the AirLens. Then the Node 2 will go.
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In a setup with an Airlens feeding a Directstream MK II, in which of the two devices will the reclocking take place?
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Both. The AirLens has a complete reclocking system as part of its galvanically isolated output stage. This perfect output is then fed to DirectStream where it goes through the MKII’s galvanically isolated input stage and then rechecked again.
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Hi Paul, will Airlens work well with Direct Stream JR via I2S Firebird Cable?
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Will the Airlens have volume control functionality?
I not sure how it will work but to be a useful Roon endpoint the feature must be included.
I don’t think a Roon streamer would need volume control. Don’t you control volume either within Roon’s software or at a physical preamp?
Might be required for Roon Ready but not for Roon Tested certification.
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I guess the latter in the DSII is rather a measure for streamers without own reclocking then a necessary measure for the Airlens kind of streamer, correct?
I personally can’t think of a reason why the streamer would need volume control.
Volume can happen at the Roon host, a DAC, or a Preamp. I’d really like to learn the reasoning behind this statement. I may be missing something fundamental I hadn’t considered.
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I did not think of using Roon DSP as a volume control and agree that it is an option.
In my previous setup I used a BHK pre for volume, but after a few months of using an integrated streamer/DAC/pre (Linn Selekt DSM) that can be controlled by Roon it will be hard to go back to being stuck to a remote.
My best idea for a solution would be that airlens could control other psaudio components volume (via IR or cable) controlled by the Roon app.