I have various SW products, most meanwhile with subscription (which I had get used to), some paid and paid every few versions (partly few a year like Jriver) or every year again. Finally if I pay a monthly fee or the full price or part of it every year or as soon as a new major version comes around, doesn’t make a difference anymore for me.
I can’t remember a product I have which is only paid once and never again.
I am so dumb I pay for music. It’s 2020, who does that?
People confuse firmware and application software. Saying the firmware is free is a bit like a car salesman saying $10000 for the body etc. and the engine is free.
Application software a product like anything else. People who talk about buying it outright should realise they are buying a perpetual or lifetime license. They don’t own anything, for example they cannot copy or sell the software.
Apple started out with purchase price structure on their office package, integrated it around 2010 into their Hardware packages “for free”. It’s like that till now and updated very regularly “for free”.
I have the complete affinity package with most Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator and PageMaker functions, the one time purchase price is far lower than their annual subscription fee of Adobe and ever since I bought it, it’s updated “for free” even when Apple updates their operating system also “for free”.
I don’t mind paying once in five years at my own free will to upgrade whenever I feel to do so.
And that is exactly why I prefer these deals over subscription fees. It works well and I feel I have the costs on software much better under control rather than allow software producers to automatically deduct money from my account on a monthly basis that gets easily forgotten.
Also I have very poor experience with cancelling license agreements. Banks don’t just stop agreements where you allowed third parties to deduct money, they want consensus from both parties and that is a lot of hassle.
Apple update operating systems for the purpose of selling new products. As long as the hardware on older machines is compliant, they can benefit from the upgrades. There comes a point where older hardware is no longer compliant and they do not provide separate upgrades for those machines. Currently the applies to machines for 2012 or older. At that point they become junk.
For business use it is simply unrealistic to have people running different versions of software. This is true globally because so much work is collaborative. The monthly/annual licensing model is driven by business needing everyone to be on the same version.
One of the problems I have is with pdf software. I am often exchanging documents with tabs, post-it’s and annotations and there is no common software platform. Compare that with Word, which everyone uses because of the version tracking and review features.
I am happy my prior Roon subscription ended and I chose not to purchase the lifetime one. While as a music management eco system it is indeed fantastic, and the layout makes the experience all the better, upon buying my Lumin U1 Mini it soon transpired that things sound a tad better straight out the Lumin app (than through Roon). And to me SQ always comes first.
This talk of paying for SW (Roon) is a joke. When PSA comes out with their music server you are paying for use of their SW! If you are fooled by talk of paying for HW and the SW is free, than so be it. Nothing is free. The music management SW is just as critical as anything else. Every company needs to make money by charging their customers a fee.
If you think Ted is building SW for free you are crazy as this sounds. When PSA sells a DSD/DSDJr a part of the price formula covers SW development.
if anyone wants free music management software it is available in several forms.
i like logitech media server, which includes integration with external libraries (eg qobuz) now in v8.
if you don’t like the interface there are others.
not saying it is better, but there are options, and the free software and /or open source software movements have improved choice, and arguably quality too, for users of all software free and paid-for 
I’m not even sure air is free these days.
Even when software is free, like Google, they are collecting, harvesting and selling your personal data in ways that are too terrifying to think about.
But I agree, anyone who thinks anything is free needs to wake up and get a reality check.
I do, recalling “all those guitar players on the Tennessee ant hill” They are worth it.
Chas
Consumer reactions to whether or not an application or other software should be free is typically emotion based. They will pay for it separately if it “seems fair,” but object when it does not, to them, feel right.
Consumers have difficulty accepting paying for firmware which is necessary for the machine to simply work. For example, when buying a radar detector one expects it to work out of the box. But one may be willing to pay for ongoing updates of the speed trap database as these do change over time.
It has been a challenge for companies and providers to get consumers to accept ongoing subscriptions and fees for software.
Of course you do pay for everything. The only question is, what is your preferred method of payment.
The good thing is some companies give you the option. You can pay as you go or pay upfront. To me it can’t be any simpler than that.
well, yes, in the case if google et al, but various linux flavours are free, and do appear to be genuinely free, as is permitted in the gnu public licence.
most of the dedicated streamers run linux i believe, they don’t pay for that privilege, the only stipulation is that if they make changes to the linux software they have to release the source code.
cisco used it in various routers, didn’t release their changed source code, and were sued until they did. same goes for several other companies who have tried it on.
i use a flavour of linux on my workstation and it is completely free, and doesn’t track what i’m doing (this i know for sure). it comes with all the software i need.
of course, as soon as i do google search i am tracked, but there are other search engines that are better behaved in terms of tracking etc.
also of course if you need to use MS office or Visio or some such you don’t have a choice, but for many (most?) requirements there are genuinely free alternatives.
microsoft spent ten years trying to convince us all linux was rubbish, or illegal, or dangerous, and often all of those and more.
then they gave up and now use it themselves more and more…
Sorry Paul, but strongly disagree.
You come across here like an amplifier aficionado applying amp tech to a server.
Servers are inherently digital.
There’s a reason the best servers in the world focus on USB. The same reason is why almost none support RCA or AES.
A server is a computer. End of story. Your job here is to make a computer sound like a HiFi component.
The outputs in order of priority are:
USB
LAN
I2S
And i2S is niche (for DS and DMP owners pretty much)
Regards,
Alan
Disagree too.
Innuos offer a specifically engineered “clean” LAN output.
Some will call BS. But it’s not just Ethernet is isolated by spec.
The reason the best servers in the world focus on USB is because they don’t have the DS DAC in their company portfolio. Lesser DACs rely on USB as their best input because that’s (almost always) the only way they can use their own internal clock as the master to control the flow of digital audio data coming in. Clocking is the limiting factor for most DAC architectures.
USB has big drawbacks though. It brings and creates a lot of electrical disturbance inside the DAC, which is very hard to deal with if you want to maximise sound quality.
The DS sidesteps the clock limit with a unique architecture, allowing it to use simpler and less noisy inputs without their normal clock-related downsides. USB brings no meaningful advantage in the DS, but keeps all of its drawbacks. I2S over HDMI then emerges as the candidate for best-performing interconnect. I imagine that’s why it gets pride of place on the Octave platform.
It’s not a LAN output. Innuos have a separate LAN connection. It’s offering an RJ45/CAT wired connection. I use it.
Dual AES/EBU is probably the best as I think it can carry higher rates of DSD compared to I2S. It also has the advantage of being a standard connection, unlike I2S.
USB is a standard computer connection, so is wireless. USB is preferred for reliability and price. You get the data, but also electrical noise that apparently affects audio circuits, even if the data is unaffected. That’s the difference between computers and audio devices.
I2S gets pride of place because PSA chose that as their proprietary connection. One or two other manufacturers use it, but it is non-standard.
The best streamers in the world don’t have a usb output at all because it’s quality is considered too poor. They use Dual AES/EBU or coaxial. They have external clocks and upsamplers.
The server in such systems is usually a standard unit like a QNAP providing data over a CAT cable.
You seem to have missed my point entirely, which is funny because I was saying mostly the same thing as you with regards USB.
Uncharacteristically I avoided being pedantic about the term “server”. I was responding to bigalmc and used his own words. I agree that “streamer” is a better term for what he was describing.
But since we actually are being pedantic, you’re incorrect about the term “LAN” – and I say this as a career IT guy with a specialisation in networking. Both the RJ45 ports on the Innuos product are Ethernet LAN ports, regardless that one of them is intended to have only a single other host attached to it. Also, “CAT” is not a thing unless you’re talking about bulldozers. The cable is generically called “Unshielded Twisted Pair” or UTP, and the category designations cover purity, number of conductors, physical geometry, dielectric properties, shielding etc.
Running dual AES/EBU connections for DSD or for higher than 192kHz PCM audio is in the same non-standard ballpark as using the HDMI cable and connector for I2S. But the HDMI gear can go way faster than 110 ohm 3-wire XLR. Think about the data rates it carries for 8K video etc.
Lastly, external clocks are great when you need a bunch of gear to keep relative pace together, like in a studio, but can have liabilities in terms of jitter for ADC and DAC use. So a streamer that takes a clock from the DAC is a good idea and neutralises one of USB’s primary advantages. But a DAC that takes an external clock isn’t always a good idea… implementation matters.