Stereophilus Posted March 6, 2017 Posted March 6, 2017 I'm seriously debating getting the lifetime membership, but I have some thoughts against it. Yes, I love what Roon does and how it sounds, but: The lifetime membership only realises its value after 5 years. Sure, it's "free" after that (excellent value), but 5 years is a long, long time in software. Will a better competitor come along? Where will streaming audio be in 5 years? Will Roon move with this progress, or will it fade away? Maybe I'm being overly sceptical, but it would seem a lifetime subscription carries significant risk as an "investor" in Roon. 2
SteveC Posted March 6, 2017 Posted March 6, 2017 Yep it's a gamble but it's also a mindset about software. Isn't it just another part of your system? So how much does your equipment listed depreciate each year? I know mine which cost way less would be depreciating by more than the cost of Roon per year. You can always just go for an annual sub and decide in a year. I did that and then just committed to lifetime 6 months in. One problem I see is that there isn't really any other software I know of that provides a lifetime sub to compare it too. We are conditioned to expect that there will always be some better option next year. The short term risk I see is if Tidal disappears. It would not be as good without that integrated streaming. As an aside many years ago when I was working in a corporate I had the opportunity to purchase a lifetime airline lounge membership with the flying kangaroo. It was about $500 out of my pocket from memory. I thought it was too much money. Now they don't even sell them anymore. In a couple of years time a meal and a coffee at the airport will be $500.
powerav Posted March 6, 2017 Posted March 6, 2017 39 minutes ago, Stereophilus said: Will a better competitor come along? Where will streaming audio be in 5 years? Will Roon move with this progress, or will it fade away? Or will more products such as the Elac Discovery have Roon already built in anyway.
robc Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 Hi People, I'm looking to purchase an Roon Membership soon, if anyone if thinking of doing the same please let me know. Cheers! Rob
soundfan Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 My month trial of Roon ends in a couple of days. Cancelled. While I did like the layout and found it user friendly, I've since found Audirvana Plus 3 sounds better. And for me, SQ is the most important factor. I had to buy myself a s/h macbook to use it, but happy I went that route.
robc Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 (edited) Hi soundfan, 1 hour ago, soundfan said: My month trial of Roon ends in a couple of days. Cancelled. While I did like the layout and found it user friendly, I've since found Audirvana Plus 3 sounds better. And for me, SQ is the most important factor. I had to buy myself a s/h macbook to use it, but happy I went that route. That's a little surprising, any idea why? Have you run this past a Roon user's group? I'm very lucky! The DAC I took a bit of a punt on, but which was recommended to me by member legselevens on this forum, seems to be completely impervious to quality of the source. Sounds excellent and exactly the same no matter whether it's fed from Meridians as spinners, old really cheap CD players, old slow PC, low power heavily loaded atom cpu based boxes, etc, etc. This has nicely separated the sound quality from the software. Cheers! Rob Edited March 20, 2017 by robc 1
awayward Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 13 minutes ago, robc said: Hi soundfan, That's a little surprising, any idea why? Have you run this past a Roon user's group? I'm very lucky! The DAC I took a bit of a punt on, but which was recommended to me by member legselevens on this forum, seems to be completely impervious to quality of the source. Sounds excellent and exactly the same no matter whether it's fed from Meridians as spinners, old really cheap CD players, old slow PC, low power heavily loaded atom cpu based boxes, etc, etc. This has nicely separated the sound quality from the software. Cheers! Rob My experience is that a good DAC should replicate the source quality, whether it be MP3, redbook, HD, DSD, or streaming, and not make them sound all the same. Are you saying that all formats/quality is produced at the highest quality by your DAC?
robc Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 (edited) Hi awayward, Thanks for your reply. 17 minutes ago, awayward said: My experience is that a good DAC should replicate the source quality, whether it be MP3, redbook, HD, DSD, or streaming, and not make them sound all the same. I agree 100% 17 minutes ago, awayward said: Are you saying that all formats/quality is produced at the highest quality by your DAC No, and sorry for not being clear. I'm saying that exactly the same source material sounds exactly the same no matter how that source material is transported, fed into, the DAC. For example, if I take a regular red book CD and rip it to a lossless format, FLAC/WAV, and then play that same source into the DAC using different data stream transport mechanisms like: The CD on a Meridian spinner The CD on a cheap CD player Through a cheap slow old PC's USB interface Through a new MAC desktop's USB interface then is sounds exactly the same, we can't pick the difference. Cheers! Rob Edited March 20, 2017 by robc
awayward Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 2 minutes ago, robc said: Hi awayward, I agree 100% No, and sorry for not being clear. I'm saying that exactly the same source material sounds exactly the same no matter how that source material is transported, fed into, the DAC. For example, if I take a CD regular red book CD and rip it to a lossless format, FLAC/WAV, and then play that same source into the DAC using different data stream transport mechanisms like: The CD on a Meridian spinner The CD on a cheap CD player Through a cheap slow old PC's USB interface Through a new MAC desktop's USB interface then is sounds exactly the same, we can't pick the difference. Cheers! Rob Ok thanks for clarifying, I thought you had found a miracle DAC
robc Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 Hi awayward, 2 minutes ago, awayward said: Ok thanks for clarifying, I thought you had found a miracle DAC You're very welcome! Not a miracle DAC, that sure would have been great, but I'm very happy with the sound and oh so glad I never have to worry about feeding it. Cheers! Rob
soundfan Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 1 hour ago, robc said: Hi soundfan, That's a little surprising, any idea why? Have you run this past a Roon user's group? I'm very lucky! The DAC I took a bit of a punt on, but which was recommended to me by member legselevens on this forum, seems to be completely impervious to quality of the source. Sounds excellent and exactly the same no matter whether it's fed from Meridians as spinners, old really cheap CD players, old slow PC, low power heavily loaded atom cpu based boxes, etc, etc. This has nicely separated the sound quality from the software. Cheers! Rob Hi Rob I'm new to stand alone dacs, have till recently relied on the internal dacs of my 2 cd spinners to get me by. I also picked up a Dac not long ago (Denafrips Ares ) and love what it does. Was using Jriver and Roon to play my toons (my ceedees ripped, and purchased downloads) through my laptop and Dac. I had been reading though of the latest Audirvarna Plus 3 release, and of many saying the sq was excellent and favoured by many over Roon with HQ Player etc etc. I needed another laptop anyhow, so ended up buying a s/h Macbook, purchased Audirvarna Plus 3, and mucked around with settings to upsample by power of 2 my flac files. Only own a few DSD files. Anyway........I do think they sounded better, but maybe it's a placebo effect. I recently sold of my usb regen, curious regen link cable and an LPS, because they added nothing to my Dac. I guess I'm on that steep learning curve.....but am thus far enjoying the ride.
Tobes Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 10 hours ago, robc said: Hi soundfan, That's a little surprising, any idea why? Have you run this past a Roon user's group? I'm very lucky! The DAC I took a bit of a punt on, but which was recommended to me by member legselevens on this forum, seems to be completely impervious to quality of the source. Sounds excellent and exactly the same no matter whether it's fed from Meridians as spinners, old really cheap CD players, old slow PC, low power heavily loaded atom cpu based boxes, etc, etc. This has nicely separated the sound quality from the software. Cheers! Rob One take is that the DAC is impervious to source SQ - the other is that the DAC (or something else in the chain) is levelling all the sources and failing to discriminate the differences. I wasn't really impressed with computer sources until I retrofitted an LPS to my Mini and put the iFi usb reclock/rebalance/regen device in the chain. Personally I think all the software players I've tried sound slightly different - though personal preference might dictate which was actually 'better'. At the moment I find Audirvana 3 offers the best transparency and clarity and ahead of the Roon player in these regards. I like some things about Roon's presentation/features, but not others, so it's a kind of a mixed bag for me when it really should be 'the best' given the price.
robc Posted March 21, 2017 Posted March 21, 2017 Hi soundfan, Thanks for your reply. 19 hours ago, soundfan said: Hi Rob I also picked up a Dac not long ago (Denafrips Ares ) and love what it does. Was using Jriver and Roon to play my toons (my ceedees ripped, and purchased downloads) through my laptop and Dac. I had been reading though of the latest Audirvarna Plus 3 release, and of many saying the sq was excellent and favoured by many over Roon with HQ Player etc etc. I needed another laptop anyhow, so ended up buying a s/h Macbook, purchased Audirvarna Plus 3, and mucked around with settings to upsample by power of 2 my flac files. Only own a few DSD files. Anyway........I do think they sounded better, but maybe it's a placebo effect. I guess I'm on that steep learning curve.....but am thus far enjoying the ride. I'm glad your enjoying the ride, I am too! I'm not familiar with the Denafrips Ares DAC or Jriver versus Roon but there would be a lot of variation on how DACs handle/smooth/manage a stream of digital music which isn't rock steady. If the DAC doesn't take good steps to make that data rock solid before feeding it to the actual DAC chip doing the conversion - from digital data to the analog sound we hear - then the software, and whatever manages the hardware port plus the port itself, is going to be able to affect the quality of the sound. In other words, it might not be the placebo effect. :-) Cheers! Rob 1
robc Posted March 21, 2017 Posted March 21, 2017 Hi Tobes, Thanks for your interest. 10 hours ago, Tobes said: One take is that the DAC is impervious to source SQ - the other is that the DAC (or something else in the chain) is levelling all the sources and failing to discriminate the differences. Yes, that's perfectly reasonable, I like your thinking! From the info in my post It could well be the DAC or my system "levelling down" the sound so much that the quality of the transportation is not discernible. I can't prove it wasn't but then that means there is very, little difference between Meridian spinners used as transports and any crappy source we can feed into the DAC. This does however seems to be at odds with others reports that the transportation from data storage to DAC makes a difference. Either that ... or the rest of our system is pretty crappy! In further comparisons we could hear the difference between the two different models of Meridian players when we are listening to their internal DACs, it's subtle but discernible. And we can clearly hear the difference between the meridian DACs and the standalone DAC when all three are playing exactly the same material synchronized and adjusted to the same volume and when swapped between the three using the preamp source selector. The Meridians luckily produced the same volume and we adjusted the DAC volume to match through software. From this test I don't think it's the a crappy system after the DAC that's bringing all material down to the same level such that difference are indiscernible or we wouldn't be able to hear the differences between the two Meridians CD payer DACs, which are both quality sources. So that leaves the possibility that the DAC could be crappy but then we can easily and clearly distinguish between bad, good and excellent recordings, night and day, so it doesn't seem to be the DAC doing any leveling down. Last of all and this is purely subjective, we clearly feel the standalone DAC is better than the internal DACs in the Meridians. Cheers! Rob 1
robc Posted March 21, 2017 Posted March 21, 2017 (edited) Hi All, I've gone way off topic here, happy to keep getting sidetracked but maybe in another thread. So I should try to bring it back. If anyone is interested in a lifetime Roon subscription please let me know Cheers! Rob Edited March 21, 2017 by robc Correction of grammer!
Fcleph Posted March 21, 2017 Posted March 21, 2017 Hi All, I've gone way off topic here, happy to keep getting sidetracked but maybe in another thread. So I should try to bring it back. If anyone is interested in a lifetime Roon subscription please let me know [emoji4] Cheers! Rob I wouldn't mind a lifetime Roon subscription. My yearly one is ending soon. Are they even transferable?Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Miracle1980 Posted May 13, 2017 Posted May 13, 2017 Hi guys, Is there any possibility to get a 10% discount code? I'm very tempted to buy a lifetime subscription and i would love to save some money...
DoggieHowser Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 Roon has a dealer plan that offers 10% off any of the Roon subscription plans for the dealers' customers. I think the original purpose was for dealers to bundle it in or to make some money getting it for their customers. But the dealer can easily have you supply your own credit card for the transaction. And you'd be charged in USD. If the dealer were to use his own card, I think he'd have to mark up a bit to cover exchange rate variations. This way the savings are passed on to you.
Miracle1980 Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 So basically the only way to get a discount is to ask some dealers? Do you think that also the dealers in Europe or just USA? Any advice? Thanks
DoggieHowser Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 There are dealers here too [emoji51]Warning dealer alert.
ABG Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 4 hours ago, Miracle1980 said: Hi guys, Is there any possibility to get a 10% discount code? I'm very tempted to buy a lifetime subscription and i would love to save some money... Get two others to sign up with you. If you read the first page of the thread, you'll find everything you need right there.
Bunno77 Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 Yep 3 people at a time is all that is needed. There is myself and I believe still one other from a previous group that still haven't got the deal yet. I will try to contact the other guy and see if the 3 of us are ready to buy if you like? @DoggieHowser
DoggieHowser Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 I already got mine 10% off the US pricing from my store's Tidal account. Already sold 2 more to customers.
Bunno77 Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 Just now, DoggieHowser said: I already got mine 10% off the US pricing from my store's Tidal account. Already sold 2 more to customers. Sorry I meant Miracle
Miracle1980 Posted May 14, 2017 Posted May 14, 2017 Yes please... I'm in! Let me know if you find the third one.
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