2 hours ago, ray-dude said:

Given the scorched-earth/witch-burnings/spanish-inquisition that happen over in the Roon forums when one even vaguely suggests that differences between servers (or playback software) are audible, will be interesting to see how this cognitive dissonance plays out

Where's the dissonance?  Is there any claim that this server sounds "better"?  I don't see it.

The claim is that it is optimized to run Roon, and has high-powered CPU, fast SSD storage, etc. - nothing about sound.

4 hours ago, firedog said:

There are such claims about servers on the Roon forum. I think that's the reference.

I've never really understood the value of the whole Nucleus hardware ecosystem. One can install Roon Rock  OS on an existing PC for much less and get almost all the benefits claimed for a prebuilt Nucleus. 

Again, if someone is interested in the ecosystem, and wants the (assumed) great asthetics of Titan, that's another story. Or I guess there are people who just want it all on a prebuilt "appliance". I get that. Not a value proposition for me. 

Understood - I actually use a sonicTransporter i9 as my core / server, and it works great.  I bought it instead of a Nucleus because it had better "horsepower" (at the time) for my large library and I like the fanless design (much like the Nucleus).

If the Titan had been available at the time, I might have bought it instead for the form factor and (hopefully) adequate horsepower ;)

7 minutes ago, Markus8 said:

So far even the feedback on the Roon forum and thus their own community is very underwhelming to say. 
They also seemed not to take care what the first public sign or message they convey with the Roon/Harman fusion is. Other than providing value based on bugfixing or new features to their Software etc. they come up with an overpriced luxury hardware.
So if that is the direction the new Roon/Harman is heading too than the worry of users will further increase.

Everyone wants to catch the whales out there.

Well sure as an "add-on" that's what can be done. Though in the current state of Roon there are far far more important things to fix. And this definitely is not the sign that the community wants to see. And the user posts on their forum thread speak a clear language.

15 hours ago, botrytis said:

 Also good for hard rock.... (I had to do it)

and a version for heavy metal

52 minutes ago, krass said:

 

and a version for heavy metal

Only if it is pure heavy metal 😁

I find it odd that they didn't publish pictures of the Titan, as one of the big selling points are the looks.

11 minutes ago, firedog said:

I find it odd that they didn't publish pictures of the Titan, as one of the big selling points are the looks.

Samsung does build some powerful Notebooks. It wouldn't be hard to use those innards in the Titan.

Here's a look at Titan

Wow....Designer colors....

Glorified mini-PC..

One must not forget that Samsung makes processors, graphics cards, memory, and SSD's. They could possibly use one of their ARM SOC's. That is one distinct possibility.

That is what I am saying

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Here's a look at Titan

 

As expected, quite striking and I can see those who value looks going for it. 

Looking at the rear panel, it looks like a 11 or 13th gen NUC board in a more fancy case.

Not surprising, since the Intel boards used in the original Nucleus/Nucleus+ are no longer available (at least not in quantities - you can still get them from various Internet vendors, but not from Intel directly).

Lets hope they have also switched to much more reliable (albeit more expensive) Samsung SSDs, which will improve the overal reliability of the platform.

PS. I'm sure that wooden top is not helping with cooling. 

Samsung will license SCL6 from Lenbrook. The protocol will be hardware-implemented into Samsung phones and Samsung earbuds. Owners of both devices (phone and buds) will be allowed to use Roon on the phone without paying monthly fee.

Right on time.

I disabled Roon server about 2 months ago and was thinking about removing it altogether.

I was preparing to life without Roon for several months (acquiring hew music server's hardware, endpoint hardware, operating systems and player software).

One of reasons was Roon's requirement for internet connection.

Now, i might reconsider return to Roon.

But. I already have got accustomed to new software. I don't feel a need for Roon any more.

9 hours ago, firedog said:

A message from the Roon founders

Roon Software Discussion

 

 

 

 

Feb 7

 

 

1 / 151

Feb 7

 

1h ago

 

 

 

ennoEnno VandermeerRoon Labs Founder

1

15h

 

Click to read entire post here.

To everyone in the Roon community,

Last November, Roon Labs was acquired by Harman International. This marks a new beginning for Roon, our industry partners, and our team. Today, we want to discuss what this means for us, for you, and for the future of Roon.

 

These past few months have been incredibly busy as we merge our company into Harman, an organization many times our size. We’ve been deeply impressed by the resources, funding, and infrastructure available at our new home, and Harman’s leadership has more than delivered on their promise to support us as we chart our path forward. Many of our ambitions that were difficult or impossible as a small company are now within reach, and we can already see how this will benefit our users and accelerate our progress.

 

We’ve found many Roon enthusiasts at Harman and Samsung. Like everyone in our community, these people – including the most senior executives – share our passion for music and sound quality. Harman acquired Roon to serve a business strategy, but it’s important to understand that the decision-makers responsible have a deep appreciation for our product. They admire what we’ve done and are committed to preserving Roon and helping us improve it.

Before the acquisition, we dedicated several years to expanding Roon’s reach by targeting new audiences. We put real effort towards enhancing the product experience for people with smaller music libraries, as well as casual listeners in hobbyist communities like gaming and headphones. Although these enhancements did help us find new audiences, they sometimes had the unintended consequence of disappointing our most loyal, long-term user base of music collectors and audio enthusiasts.

 

At Harman, we’ve been given a mandate to reconnect with our core audience. These are the curators who are passionate about shaping their music collections, the audiophiles who appreciate the nuances of high-performance audio equipment, and the genre experts who depend on Roon to expand their knowledge of music. These are the people who have multiple streaming services or who have extensive libraries of music files – the people who simply want the best platform for experiencing their music library. Within this community, Roon is still the only product that comprehensively caters to their diverse needs, and now, at Harman, we’re excited to refocus our efforts on serving them.

 

We’ve taken some steps in this direction. In 2022, we introduced an internet connectivity requirement to Roon. That decision was driven by strategic considerations, but we acknowledge that the change caused genuine dissatisfaction among our users, and we understand why. Today, we’re announcing a return to Roon’s pre-2.0 behavior. This means our users can once again enjoy their music collections without the need for continuous internet connectivity.

 

We’re also moving the product forward. Just a few weeks ago, we rolled out a significant update to ARC’s downloads functionality, and today, we’re excited to announce the release of support for TIDAL MAX, bringing a vast library of hi-res PCM content to every Roon user with a TIDAL HiFi Plus subscription.

Going forward, we aim to prioritize features that best serve our community. Roon occupies a vibrant niche, and our strategy at Harman no longer requires us to seek larger audiences. As a result, you can expect real changes in the types of features we focus on and deliver.

 

We’re paying attention to neglected aspects of the product – prioritizing performance and reliability – to ensure that Roon remains rock-solid. We’ll revisit long-requested features that we’ve avoided, like folder browsing and enhancing the way Roon handles box sets. Major improvements to our playlist functionality are in the pipeline (Hallelujah!). In the coming year, we’ll be focusing on features that center on your music library, rather than non-library streaming content.

 

Roon’s acquisition by Harman signifies a fresh start for our product. We’re committed to realigning with our core audience and focusing on the needs of music lovers and audio enthusiasts. We’ve already made strides in addressing user concerns, like reverting the internet connectivity requirement, introducing exciting new features like TIDAL MAX, and delivering an updated ARC downloads experience. With Harman’s support, we look forward to a future of improved performance, reliability, and features that cater to you, the Roon community. If you’re interested in hearing more, please check out the podcast we did with David Hyman 42, a long-time Roon user, audiophile, and music industry veteran who founded MOG (which later became Beats Music and eventually Apple Music).

We’re excited about what lies ahead, and we’re grateful for your continued support. Thank you for being a part of this journey. We can’t wait to bring you more exciting updates in the coming months.

 

The Roon founders

 

Thank you @firedog for sharing that information.
 

Is it too critical to assume that these founders can change their mind about privacy again when they have gained reasonably enough new subscribers to harvest data ?

I need to admit that the ROON network utilization had been my biggest concern, and I am not sure if any audio player software accessing metadata pools will respect our interest in user privacy at all. I may assume that connected hardware does that, too ...

To be fair, I may imagine to handle the ROON comfort for my hifi system as an investment, which means I may pay for a lifetime license under the premise that I am allowed to use the software without any internet access plus access and store the necessary library metadata on my NAS or another unit in my network ( a PiHole server, for example ?).
Its finally an privacy issue, and for more than 800 Euros I may feel damm right to demand such a solution.

EDIT: I did run Roon for almost 2 years and made the upgrade from 1.8 and then abandoned it.

9 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

Thank you @firedog for sharing that information.
 

Is it too critical to assume that these founders can change their mind about privacy again when they have gained reasonably enough new subscribers to harvest data ?

I need to admit that the ROON network utilization had been my biggest concern, and I am not sure if any audio player software accessing metadata pools will respect our interest in user privacy at all. I may assume that connected hardware does that, too ...

To be fair, I may imagine to handle the ROON comfort for my hifi system as an investment, which means I may pay for a lifetime license under the premise that I am allowed to use the software without any internet access plus access and store the necessary library metadata on my NAS or another unit in my network ( a PiHole server, for example ?).
Its finally an privacy issue, and for more than 800 Euros I may feel damm right to demand such a solution.

 

EDIT: I did run Roon for almost 2 years and made the upgrade from 1.8 and then abandoned it.

Hi Tom, I think the key word is CONTINUOUS, in Roon statement "This means our users can once again enjoy their music collections without the need for continuous internet connectivity." 

Internet connectivity is still a requirement. What it's used for other than subscription verification isn't known by me. The cynical side of me thinks the app just stores everything to upload once per 30 days (or whatever the requirement for connectivity now is) rather than a free flowing consistent stream of data collection. I could be very wrong though and hope I am. 

30 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Hi Tom, I think the key word is CONTINUOUS, in Roon statement "This means our users can once again enjoy their music collections without the need for continuous internet connectivity." 

 

Internet connectivity is still a requirement. What it's used for other than subscription verification isn't known by me. The cynical side of me thinks the app just stores everything to upload once per 30 days (or whatever the requirement for connectivity now is) rather than a free flowing consistent stream of data collection. I could be very wrong though and hope I am. 

Perhaps in my European ears that Roon formula (now explained) sounds a bit weak ... I may trust your language skills a tiny bit more than my own.
edit for clarity