Yes, the “nothing is free argument,” side-stepping what you actually receive when buying Octave and how this is different.
In this sense you are of course correct; we pay for everything we buy, eat, play with - one way or another.
@michaelhifi has a valid point, which I’ve also made, that Paul keeps on going on about operating systems being some sort of freebie. Perhaps PS Audio should try selling the Octave without the operating system. They’d have as much success as a car manufacturer selling a car without the engine.
The Qobuz search engine is better than Roon. It’s had 15 years of development. I still sometimes use Qobuz desktop to find things because Roon 1.7 is poor at searching classical. I used Auralic Lightning from about 2012 to 2019, even before Lightning Server was released. The reason why it was so good was because it had almost completely seamless integration with Qobuz.
Octave is presumably like many other software packages that operate on a single manufacturer platform, and will send data via a cable to an external DAC. it will have a search engine, access to metadata, etc., Who knows, like Auralic it may also operate wirelessly.
What I’m certain Octave will not do is distribute music and play radio to up to 8 devices from any of hundreds of other manufacturers. That’s Roon’s unique feature, certainly why I pay for it. It has an average to poor search engine and my hope is that 1.8 will fix that. It has superb editorial content. Will Octave offer extensive DSP? Will there be PS Audio Radio? An intelligent recommendation system based on a 100,000+ user database?
No one has to use Roon, but it offers so much that many people are willing to pay, and everyone has their own favourites. For me the core feature is the multi-brand multi-room management, which is why the system runs from a Roon Core.
You highlight the search engine as Roon’s value, but for me that’s its real weakness. As you need Qobuz or Tidal for Roon, both of which have better search engines, I’d be amazed if anyone paid for Roon to use its search engine.
I made no reference to Roon’s search engine in my post.
It appears you also are uncomfortable with the car engine analogy. It does fail miserably. Additionally, we all understand the “nothing is free" argument.
But as you raise it, think of it this way: if one is uninterested in Octave’s engine, one can instead install Roon’s engine at additional cost (or at no extra charge if you have already purchased Roon’s lifetime engine supply).
As I mentioned earlier, most manufacturers leave you with a little wimpy four-cylinder option. Octave will come with a powerful engine, and also allows you to install a nice Roon engine if you would like.
I do not see a down side.
Not once did I say anything about how Octave is different and what you get by buying it. My statement was simply based on the idea of Paul saying you are paying for hardware and the software is free. If Octave provides everything one needs/wants that is great.
Yes, you are ignoring how Octave is different in what you receive at no extra cost - Paul’s point and what I have tried to explain using your analogy. I apparently have failed.
You prefer to take a blanket “nothing is free” posture, which is perfectly fine.
?
Many manufacturers, like Auralic, Lumin, dCS, Denon and others provide a superb engine and that’s Octave’s competition.
Devialet does not provide an player/search engine at all and it did not do them any harm. It provides a dedicated wireless protocol operating up to 24/192 to send wirelessly from a computer, together with uPnP, Airplay, Spotify and various wired connections. It is also Roon Ready.
Yes, what others provide varies. There are many viable options.
As to your “?,” Octave comes with powerful player software or “engine.” If you prefer, you can instead use a Roon “engine.” You can even switch back and forth.
(“Engine” refers to the ongoing car/engine analogy you and @michaelhifi favor. I understand your confusion. Have I mentioned it is an awkward, poor analogy? 
)
Oh, no! They are selling a car without an engine! Horrors! They are certain to fail. 
I hope you understand I am only addressing the confusion some appear to have with Paul’s comment that you pay for the hardware and enjoy the new software at no extra charge, yes?
We all know you adore Roon - a totally separate topic as to which I take no position whatsoever.
after two days and half listening intensively on my new M700, GCD (on breaking in) music via roon with CXN V2 roon ready endpoint, i just retired the Roon and back to direct stream from CXN V2 via DNLA, i’m not sure the sound color via roon is the one i want to stick with.
Well , how can i say ? i seem not hearing the little cold crisp crystal trebble frequency, clarity was so dim the guitar strings not poping out of the background as i used to have with old setup. Sound color seem to be a little bold and dark to me but bass is bit tighter, i’am a fan of cold metalic sonic sounds with guitar strings pop out of back ground…
Honestly i need something simple like my current MagicStream mobile app by Cambridge Audio which is adequate browsing music library and fast response, not bunch of thing with huge metadata of albums created by Roon which crashed to me couple times on iOS 14.4
In term of music library mgmt, Roon is ideal for those who would like PC involved for pro music lib… for me i like the most simple and workable UI as i can expect, everything you need is on your finger like mobile app is enough for me, and many others. Room remote on iOS and Android still have lot of room to enhance the user experiences and less bugs.
Roon is awsome music lib with digital sample rate upconverting. and it is great for someone.
if I need the DSD upconverting on the fly, i definitely go for TEAC NT-505 that does well its jobs, software upconversion can not be comparable to ASIC/FPGA hardware base design with high critical precise clocking system for upsampling, at least for now. And in most cases, upconvert to DSD is not always the best music quality when you have bunch of garbage poor encode flac or uncompress wav file that was already poor quality at recording and mastering process. it just makes the sound worst. No doubt.
I was very wary of Roon to start and my system was Roon Ready for at least 5 years before I tried it. The reason being I did not want to invest in a Roon Core.
I started using it because I was impressed by the Innuos Mk3 machines, which provide an ethernet data link that has isolation transformers and is galvanically isolated. Along with its other features, it provides an ultra-clean data stream. It means you can have a wired connection without using usb, although the usb is optimised with its own linear power supply.
Initially I had 2 zones, now about 6.
I was already using a superb software platform (Auralic Lightning) and came to Roon with very low expectations. My experience was that its functionality and features grew on me quite slowly.
Paul made his opinion about Roon and Octave very clear here.
Octave Questions - #73 by Paul**
It is possible to have a completely closed system independent of any third party software, but its not a server, it’s a streamer. If Octave links to any external network store, it is dependent on that operating system and data indexing applications like Minimserver.
Anyway, Roon is extremely robust, mine has never crashed in 2 years, and with updates, as long as you keep a copy of your core, you can restore to an earlier version.
Dude, this is someone else’s wish list for what they hope Roon will say about Roon 1.8. It’s a bogus list and I doubt any item on it will be included with Roon 1.8.
Fair enough. My only wish is a more sophisticated search engine. Anything else is a bonus.
I’m talking to the room remote on iOS where i control the system with iPhone, iPad, not the room app on server ( i have a lenovo thinkcenter M720q with core i7 8th gen with 20GB RAM and 512 NMVe drive where i install Roon server, all are wired connect via ethernet ) I dont interact with the PC to play the music via Roon UI
But this topic is about 1.8 right?
Give floor back to you
You apparently missed this post in this very thread:
And you need not keep repeating you love Roon and Octave (unseen) is not for you. We get it already.
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I am very sorry @leean, my post is not directed to you but rather to @stevensegal. Your posts are interesting and completely appropriate.
I’m a lifetime Roon subscriber but I would bet real money that PSA’s end-to-end software and hardware will top Roon’s sound quality and it might be a night and day type of thing.
I will, very likely, stick with Roon but eager to see what Octave can do.
Good choice. If it were not for the two Naim rippers/servers that I have, I would have definitely gone for Innuos. This said, the Nucleus+ is a nice little surprise when playing USB > Matrix > DAC.
Before Innuos I had a device that was effectively a Uniti Core, that operated with n-Serve. Had it for 7 or 8 years. Naim have always done streaming well.
There is a brilliant video by Darko which is ostensibly a review of the Innuos Zen Mk3, but he also compares it to an Auralic streamer and a Wyred4Sound server that has I2S compatible with PS Audio, and several other devices. He compares using Innuos as a server with a separate Roon Core, acting as a Roon Core, using the Squeezlite option (which I use) and as a uPnP player of stored music.
What this video shows is how different servers, streamers and things like Roon and uPnP apps provide huge flexibility for a multitude of set-ups.
As my server is sitting in my office connected to my player by usb, I can use uPnP, in my case iPeng on iOS, so the Innuos is not using Roon in my office, but my wife is using it with Roon in her clinic at the same time.
Darko’s favourite route for sound quality was ripping some CDs and streaming via a uPnP app called Orange Squeeze.
Closed systems just narrow down the options, whether Roon or anything else, and everyone has their favourites.