Audirvana Studio

[Whya Duck]

A few thoughts on the move to a subscription model for Audirvana Studio.

 

1. Either (a) a subscription model or a (b)yearly fee for maintenance seem to be the only options for ensuring a steady revenue stream to support continuous app development. For those users who listen to music thru Audirvana several times a week, long-term support of the product (through future desktop and mobile OS releases) is important. (a) With a subscription new users can begin using Audirvana Studio at a lower cost that the current $96 USD purchase price. (b) The yearly fee for maintenance is less attractive to Audirvana because some users may choose to discontinue the "upgrade" and stay with their current release. In the end, I think the subscription model is the most appropriate one for a music app.
2. With the subscription model, users will expect continued product enhancement. instead of major releases (that include additional app functionality) every 2 or 3 years, I imagine we'll see feature enhancements several times a year.
3. The $70 USD/year subscription cost is a little higher than I'd like, although it's definitely less than the other popular music app's subscription cost. I appreciate the "discount" to $50 USD/year for current Audirvana owners; it would be fantastic if that price were to continue after the first year. I think $50 USD/year is a really easy cost for most current Audirvana users to justify.
4. I'm excited about the product redesign that better integrates local (library) music and that from streaming services. I'm hoping the exploration feature (that allows you to view similar artists/albums available on your streaming service) while playing a local (library) track will extend to listening to Internet radio. It would be fantastic to be able to stream www.fip.fr and favorite the current song or album that's streaming.
5. I'm hoping the install-on-multiple-computers-but-only-play-from-one-at-a-time licensing feature will support switching between 2 computers via the iOS remote app. I can see the use case of having Audirvana installed on both a laptop and a headless PC and desiring to be able to control switching between the 2 without needing to interact with the Audirvana UI on the headless computer.
6. Although I've only owned Audirvana for 1 year, Damien was super responsive to the one major issue I had with iOS remote playback (whose root cause was a large (>2MB) album art image for one of my library albums.

I'm looking forward to Audirvana Studio's release next weekend. I'll trial the app and begin my annual subscription as soon as the trial expires.

[Whya Duck]

3 minutes ago, DonaldM said:

But paying for an update every other year amounts to about the same kind of money. Software you 'own' is outdated in a few years, so you are forced to renew from time to time anyhow.

The subscription model is reasonable for users whose primary player is Audirvana, but it does impact those who only occasionally use Audirvana. That group will be unlikely to continue as a subscription customer.

 

For occasional users, Audirvana won't be a price-competitive option for them. But HQPlayer is a hefty step up in price. And my understanding is that other lower cost competing apps don't have the same feature set as Audirvana 3.5.

 

From my perspective, I'm fine with paying a higher yearly cost for Audirvana in return for a product with more features. However, that's not true for all current Audirvana 3.5 users. In the end… Audirvana Studio is morphing into a more powerful app, at the expense of losing some current users.

[Whya Duck]

33 minutes ago, SteveS1 said:

Unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be anything much here for people who don't stream.

I agree that the Audirvana Studio experience is intended to merge the local library and streaming content into a single collection. That’s a huge benefit to streamers with local content, but less appealing to local-only or streaming-only users. 
 

It would be wise for Audirvana to consider offering local-only or streaming-only versions of Audirvana Studio at a discounted price. 
 

While the Facebook reveal described commitment to supporting version 3.5, I imagine that “support” will be limited to OS release compatibility for

the next 2-3 years. 

 

It’s difficult to continue to support 2 products, with a separate codebase, for the long term. 

[Whya Duck]

20 minutes ago, RunHomeSlow said:

Subscribing is paying for something you don’t own, i don’t like that either.

 

I want, i pay, i own, i do what i want. When OS doesn’t work anymore you revert back and stay there with what you bought.

 

this update has to be massive, all bugs before solved + some improvements in sound and in look and possibilities to makes what we like in database vision…and not messing with all that was working in v3.5

Good software development requires continuous revenue, from both new user purchases and existing customer upgrades. As others have stated, purchased software has a limited lifespan of usefulness. If people posting to this thread want Audirvana to succeed, they’re silly to not want to pay for new features and enhancements. 
 

That license you “own” when you purchase software is worthless without the continued support of a developer to enhance and maintain the app thru future OS releases. Think of how many mobile apps you’ve purchased that no longer run on your current phone.  What value is there in “owning” those abandoned apps?
 

Every user who finds value in Audirvana wants the product to be maintained. And that’ll only happen by paying Damien every month, year, or every couple years.

 

Both Roon and HQP are apps that do different things at different price points… but I’ve found that Audirvana (currently) is a valuable product for me. I’d gladly purchase an upgrade to version 4.0 or pay a subscription. 
 

I require a music app for local and streaming music; it’s just as necessary as my DAC, amp, and headphones. If another product fits my needs better than Audirvana, then I’ll move to that. But It’s silly to think a one-time purchase now will continue to be of value for me for the next 3, 5, or 8 years. That’s why I’m looking forward to supporting the Audirvana development. 

[Whya Duck]

I’m concerned that a) the remote app might not be released within the 30-day trial and b) reported issues won’t be corrected within the trial period. 
 

It’s a reasonable question to ask why AS (as a subscription-model app) wasn’t rolled out to existing 3.5 users in waves. And also… it seems as if the 30-day trial period isn’t going to be long enough to resolve issues that are high priority for a significant number of users. 
 

I understand that any user interface change requires an adjustment period, but I find the look/feel of AS to be far less pleasing than the simpler interface of 3.5. 
 

it would be fantastic for

the user to be able to better control the level of info that’s displayed on the artist screen, for example. The ability to hide all the streaming integration (and simply view all your library albums for an artist) would be appreciated. 

[Whya Duck]

56 minutes ago, Torq said:

 

Yes.

 

It adds a "MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID" tag to each file.

Updating all tracks with an ID3 tag is a horrible decision for AV to have made. 
 

it’s not uncommon for AV users to have thousands of tracks on a network storage device. Adding a tag to each file is incredibly slow.

 

l now have 888 tracks to removed the silly ID3 tag from AND correct their modification date back to that of their parent folder’s date.

 

Glad I’m not one of those who back their music to the cloud; the AV Studio file updates might have triggered mass backups of their files. 

[Whya Duck]

1 hour ago, fourstrings1891 said:

The new MusicBrainz functionality is also very glitchy. Suddenly AS shows metadata on my tracks that I have not asked for. See artist here, this is not how I have tagged them:

 

 

But then with some reloading of the view and opening the folder in Finder, all tracks are suddenly displayed again how I tagged them:

 

 

I don't want AS to override my own tagging. But maybe that's just a bug.

I’ve also found AS displaying musicbrainz album title (instead of my metadata title) to be inconsistent. 
 

This new “feature” of AS    displaying musicbrainz info instead of my embedded metadata is a concern for me. One week ago, I spoke in support of the AS subscription model. After 1 day of use, I think that any advantage of AS is completely overshadowed by its weird UI design decisions (and the dumb need to update track with a musicbrainz  tag). 
 

I intended to sign up for the $50 first-year subscription on June 15, but now I’m sure I’ll just stay with 3.5 for the time being. The odd design on AS, coupled with poor communication of technical changes prior to roll-out, means that I’m won’t be an AS customer at the subscription start.
 

 

[Whya Duck]

Ok. I’m very satisfied with my purchase of Audirvana 3.5 less than 12 months ago, but the new subscription model has changed my appetite for paying more $$$ for a music player. AS has ambitions to be a more powerful music player than 3.5, and in doing so inches closer to Roon pricing territory. 
 

I’m interested in the local-streaming integration that AS is trying to accomplish; I just am

not happy with the UI decisions made (nor the issues experienced by others during the rollout). 
 

The Audirvana 3.5 vs Roon was an easier decision to make (if I was satisfied with the more limited feature set of Audirvava). But the AS subscription changes things. 

 

So… I’m thinking that a Roon 1.8 trial might be something I should consider. With Roon, I’d get local/streaming integration with an emphasis on music discovery, an intelligent radio option (not just the ability to play internet radio stations), a mobile control app, and support for my Bluesound endpoints. 
 

Can others share their experience with Roon 1.8 and why (apart from the higher cost compared to Audirvana 3.5) they decided on Audirvana?

 

[Whya Duck]

46 minutes ago, jtm said:

 

What file format was it?

Flac?

 

I had run AS over my NAS folder with DSF files when I read about these metadata changes, but could not retrieve any changes in my files (yet).

This makes we wondering which file formats have been changed under which condition by AS...

 

Does same behaviour occurs for AIFF files then ...???

My DSF files had the musicbrainz metadata tag added.

 

The analyze process didn’t appear to go sequentially through each album. Instead, many of my albums had some tracks modified and some yet-to-be-modified. 

[Whya Duck]

18 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

An opt-in would in my view be a very nice feature, and I would suppose many others consider it essential.

 

Meanwhile, on Audirvana's forums, a poster has advised that bulk selection and deletion of the MusicBrainz ID tag is possible with ID3 Tag Editor (at least - perhaps other metadata software will work also, I don't know).

For now, I’m leaving the new metadata tag in the files already analyzed. But it bugs me to lose the file modification date. 
 

For macOS users, you can use the “touch” command to change a files modification date to match another files. 
 

touch -r fileA fileB

 

…changes file “fileB” to have the same modification date as file “fileA”. 
 

Because AS analyzer didn’t update all my album tracks, I could use their modification date to revert to. 
 

touch -r "`ls -t *.dsf | tail -n1`" *.dsf 

 

…updates the modification date for all my DSF files with the oldest modification date of any DSF file for that album. 
 

For those albums where no tracks were unaffected by AS analyzer, I used the modification date of the JPEG album cover file. 

[Whya Duck]

4 hours ago, Musicophile said:

Damien would have been smarter had he called this a public beta test or something around these lines instead of calling it a launch. 

Yeah. Had he done so I wouldn’t have installed AS on day 1… and I

wouldnt have begun a Roon trial last weekend. 
 

With a purchase model, I can understand the justification for some to be users of Roon and Audirvana. Not so sure I’ll be likely to subscribe to both.