lovejoy
05-07-2015, 14:48
Having extended my Tidal hi-fi subscription for a bit longer to see how it goes, whilst doing my regular search for any info on MQA audio arriving I came across this and decided to give it a try: https://roonlabs.com/trial.html
It's basically a spin-off of Meridian's Sooloos system in software form that will run as a server on a PC/Mac and the idea then is that you can have remotes connected to the 'core' (server) to send your music around the house to as many devices that are compatible with it. That could be sending audio via airplay, or direct connection over USB at the moment, but there are big plans afoot to introduce something called 'roon speakers' which sounds like a rival to airplay that will be able to handle hi-res. They don't support uPnp and from what I've read there seems to be a good reason not to.
So giving it a try, I switched off MinimServer in my NAS for a while, downloaded the trial and turned my Macbook Pro into the 'core' unit, then downloaded the remote app for my tablet (you really need a 10" tablet for this, 7" just has too small a display for the beautiful interface'). When run, it picks up my iTunes library straight away and starts adding metadata to its own library - You can also just point it at your music folders if you don't use any management software and it will do the same. It also has seamless integration with Tidal and this is where the magic starts - The lines between your local library and Tidal completely blur and all of a sudden it just seems like everything is local.
Which means you have a HUGE library at your fingertips, which would normally be a pain to navigate or just think of something you want to play - Not here - Oh no! The navigation here is what makes it incredible - You can, if you really want to, use it just like you normally navigate with artist/album/genre etc. But go to the discover pages and let it inspire you to play something different, tell you the story of a band, the people involved, what else those people did, be they the performers, engineers or record label, and you'll find yourself on a thoroughly immersive voyage of musical discovery. Well, that's what happened to me last night anyway...
But that's not all (I should work on one of those home shopping channels ;-). Roon also has its own audio drivers built in and will bypass Core Audio on the Mac and use Exclusive mode on a PC - Plug a USB DAC into the PC like a Meridian Explorer and you'll get direct control over it and from using it for a couple of hours on headphones last night, it sounded WAY better than anything I've heard from my Mac before by some margin. I've also found that using Airplay into my Raspberry Pi2 (running Moode) has brought a new level of neutrality and depth to the Pi over using Moode with MinimServer from my NAS. They're planning on supporting the Pi (amongst other devices) with roon speakers so that will be very interesting when that arrives, but so far I am bowled over by just how good this is. No more navigating through albums with lists of text on a phone. This makes having a decent tablet an absolute must and a real joy to navigate. This is everything I ever wanted from streaming software and I'm overjoyed to say for the first time, something that looks and works more nicely than iTunes.
The only drawback - It's not free software, but given the musical voyages it will take you on, I think it'll be worth every penny.
It's basically a spin-off of Meridian's Sooloos system in software form that will run as a server on a PC/Mac and the idea then is that you can have remotes connected to the 'core' (server) to send your music around the house to as many devices that are compatible with it. That could be sending audio via airplay, or direct connection over USB at the moment, but there are big plans afoot to introduce something called 'roon speakers' which sounds like a rival to airplay that will be able to handle hi-res. They don't support uPnp and from what I've read there seems to be a good reason not to.
So giving it a try, I switched off MinimServer in my NAS for a while, downloaded the trial and turned my Macbook Pro into the 'core' unit, then downloaded the remote app for my tablet (you really need a 10" tablet for this, 7" just has too small a display for the beautiful interface'). When run, it picks up my iTunes library straight away and starts adding metadata to its own library - You can also just point it at your music folders if you don't use any management software and it will do the same. It also has seamless integration with Tidal and this is where the magic starts - The lines between your local library and Tidal completely blur and all of a sudden it just seems like everything is local.
Which means you have a HUGE library at your fingertips, which would normally be a pain to navigate or just think of something you want to play - Not here - Oh no! The navigation here is what makes it incredible - You can, if you really want to, use it just like you normally navigate with artist/album/genre etc. But go to the discover pages and let it inspire you to play something different, tell you the story of a band, the people involved, what else those people did, be they the performers, engineers or record label, and you'll find yourself on a thoroughly immersive voyage of musical discovery. Well, that's what happened to me last night anyway...
But that's not all (I should work on one of those home shopping channels ;-). Roon also has its own audio drivers built in and will bypass Core Audio on the Mac and use Exclusive mode on a PC - Plug a USB DAC into the PC like a Meridian Explorer and you'll get direct control over it and from using it for a couple of hours on headphones last night, it sounded WAY better than anything I've heard from my Mac before by some margin. I've also found that using Airplay into my Raspberry Pi2 (running Moode) has brought a new level of neutrality and depth to the Pi over using Moode with MinimServer from my NAS. They're planning on supporting the Pi (amongst other devices) with roon speakers so that will be very interesting when that arrives, but so far I am bowled over by just how good this is. No more navigating through albums with lists of text on a phone. This makes having a decent tablet an absolute must and a real joy to navigate. This is everything I ever wanted from streaming software and I'm overjoyed to say for the first time, something that looks and works more nicely than iTunes.
The only drawback - It's not free software, but given the musical voyages it will take you on, I think it'll be worth every penny.