No, not exactly I didn’t mean to diminish your experience / understanding of Roon but I always like to be specific to the architecture for those who are new to it since it’s unique and, at times, complicated.
This is fundamental to understanding Roon though. Just like one may need to understand the concept of a renderer if they utilize dlna/upnp.
The Nucleus is a nice bit of kit but expensive for what it is and makes far a terrible sounding endpoint (if I’m being honest). There is a lot of talk on the forum about Roon because of how many here use it as well as it being supported by AirLens. For those just starting in Roon, and then pairing with AirLens, there will be multiple ways to set this up. As we discuss the pros / cons to set-up I feel strongly we should be using using Roon terminology. That’s the only way to compare suggestions here with suggestions on other forums plus Roon’s own knowledge base.
So, am I Roon police? No, I wouldn’t go that far, but I am a bit of an evangelist for using common language when describing a “reference”, architecture, or framework.
I’m sure it annoys Tidal as well but it’s also one of those little hidden features for those with multiple people in the house listening to different things.
Don’t fall into Seven’s usual self aggrandizing explanations. The bridge was done in by a lack of sales at it’s price point. There were other things about it’s design that didn’t help like a non-standard implementation of dual AES that’s good for DCS but not others. $5K US for a bridge and you can’t make money on it? Bah!
I’ve been waiting a long time for the Bridge to arrive and I’ve had to move on. I have a Waversa Bridge coming sometime this week. It will have a configurable ethernet switch and multiple outputs. I’m also trying out the Waversa VDac too. I’ve been sitting with the DSD for almost 5 years and time has marched on.
Telling customers, “It is Roon or go figure something out with UPnP/DLNA” is a poor answer. How about a little, “It is Roon or we have tried X Y Z… and they are nice”. Is that Logitech? Is that JRiver? Etc. I cannot recommend PS Audio to friends without an app solution that is not Roon. Not given that Bluesound is so easy. There are so many decent apps out there. Just partner with someone! Otherwise I can only tell friends to stick with NAD/Bluesound or Sonos. Maybe that is the right thing for me to do / what PS Audio wants me to do. But I was hoping to send friends their way for more business.
Roon is still an excellent solution and hopefully Native Qobuz and Tidal will be there for most users. I respect Paul’s decision on the application. A poorly functioning app will kill business very fast. Going with what the market knows is a good option. They can add other options down the road. This is just a bridge it was never intended to be a comprehensive piece of hardware.
You bring up a good point. If not Roon, and not already versed in UPnP/DLNA, then where is the value in the AirLens? At that point you want just a DAC.
Unless, the AirLens supports pure Digital to Digital conversion but I wouldn’t think this would be the point of it; to ignore the network just to gain the isolation / re-clocking when PS DACs (MkII at least) already do this well. You’re absolutely right, if the streaming tech doesn’t match the app you want to use it is a lot easier to swap-out the streamer than the app. That’s one reason this is such a complicated market segment to play in.
They really limit themselves though. They should have partnered with someone on an app solution and never bothered with excessive cover art metadata matters. Is the Bluesound App that difficult to deliver, given that you know what it does?
PS: Looks like our posts are overlapping. So if it looks like I am being mean responding to someone, it aint so. I was just reflecting on earlier items and am just sad.
PS adopting BluOS is tricky and I wouldn’t recommend it. BluOS is owned by Lenbrook which owns Bluesound, NAD, and PSB.
In effect, it is a “closed” ecosystem although I see Peachtree and some others have announced support which appears they are branching out. Not every BluOS device has the same capabilities though which makes bug fixes and feature rollout occur on a per device basis. How Lenbrook is going to manage that with partners seems, um, messy. However, opening the platform up to others is a step in the right direction.
But, There are a lot of PS Audio products which do directly compete with NAD. I’m not sure Lenbrook would be super-interested in PS Audio competing with BluOS devices when they consider NAD as their audiophile brand. It may limit what PS could do going forward. For example, if PS did another integrated what streaming platform would they adopt? I highly doubt Lenbrook would be excited to let PS use BluOS on such a device when all their other brands already compete in that space. It just doesn’t seem like a a long term or flexible partnership.
The dCS bridge was £3250 in the UK and sold like hot cakes. They were that price for a long time and went up to £4,250. Second hand ones are now like gold dust. Last one I saw went for £3,500.
Thank you so much for bringing out the journey you’ve been on with the AirLens. It’s great to understand how you’ve gone about it. The AirLens is sounding very exciting and I’m looking forward to its launch.
Fantastic also to hear that it will unfold MQA – I’m in!
There weren’t many in North America and here in Canada they were over $7000 CDN. Zero marketplace for it. I have one friend who loves audio and has the equivalent of a new Porsche in his listing room. The DCS bridge lasted a week and I respect his hearing.
I’m pretty sure that, given its superiority as a free-with-the -hardware interface (just my opinion), that if partnering with BluOS were an easy thing to do then many others would have done it long ago. Ie, I’d be surprised if they haven’t fielded many solicitations and turned them down
And they’d probably be pretty selective as to whom they’d partner with. To this point, it hasn’t happened with a higher quality digital hardware maker like Lumin, Auralic, dCS, emmlabs, msb, et al
Peachtree’s “support” was to sell the Bluesound Node alongside Peachtree gear after their in-house attempts at development of a WiFi streamer collapsed. I would call it less a partnership than a marriage of convenience.
Bluesound is fine, but doesn’t integrate directly with Apple Music. Sonos is the only company to do so. That ultimately drove me off Bluesound and kept me on Sonos. Bluesound requires you to stream Apple Music via AirPlay. Plus Sonos streams EVERYTHING. Their age in the space makes a difference.
Now if only Sonos’s album art for local libraries weren’t so glacial, I’d be totally happy.
Am I a Sonos fanboy? Perhaps, but only because it always works.
P.s. the good news is my technophobe wife loves using Roon. Like me, architecture is houses and the like, and evangelists recite the gospels (or at least in Bach they do).
Don’t take it personally because I once worked with engineers, but they often seem to want people to understand the technical stuff like they do so their audience know how things work, whereas the non-engineers just want to know what button to press.
I really can’t tell a capacitor from a pork chop, but I got my wife working Roon without talking bridges and endpoints.
Very true. I walk this line my entire career. Sometimes, however, an immature product requires the former because it’s not polished enough to be as simple as the latter. Roon is close, but at the same time they have a long way to go before most people can just “know what button to press” and get the most out of it. Every time a new Roon Ready product comes out we get a little closer.
Edit: when I say “we” I mean those of us in the Roon Community who volunteer our time to help other users and augment Roon’s own support because we believe in the product.
My ceiling sound/light system has Apple Music built in.
Also Amazon HD, Spotify, Airplay, uPnP, Tidal, Bluetooth and radio, with Roon Ready and Qobuz on the way, with Alexa control. An entire HD wireless audio system the size of a jam jar.
I’m starting to realise how good it is, given how many companies have failed with their own systems,but it did take 5 years to develop.
Sad to hear of the demise of the Octave software. I’m more than a little confused about what the alternatives will be. I used Roon for a couple years (only got annual licenses because I was waiting for Octave) and did not love it. I really do not want to go back to it (especially considering it has become more expensive). I also used JRiver for quite a while but it doesn’t do Qobuz so that pretty much rules JRMC out. More recently I had been using an Auralic Aries Femto into a Matrix. That worked pretty well, until the Aries died. Auralic gave me a nice trade in on an Aries G1, which sounds even better and I’m used to their Lightning software. Would I be able to use the Aries G1 and its software into the Air Lens, preferably via USB (so using the Air Lens like a Matrix X-SPDIF 2)?
I didn’t mean to diminish your experience / understanding of Roon but I always like to be specific to the architecture for those who are new to it since it’s unique and, at times, complicated.