Audirvana Studio

[bodiebill]

My trial ended today (after an extension). I am not going to subscribe as everything feels wrong about AS as a player apart from the sound, which is the best I have had when convicted to using the network.

However, its SQ is easily bettered by a network-free setup with a NUC and wtfplay so I am going that route for serious listening (I even ordered a stand alone player), and will continue to use JRiver for browsing or casual listening via the network.

[JoeWhip]

I am subscribing as the SQ is a clear improvement over 3.5. I only listen to local files and the interface  and app work great for me. Could they be improved? Sure. What can’t be improved. I have the program because of the SQ, that’s really all that matters to me.

[bnbayer]

Does anyone know how the subscription works? If you cancel - or don't renew - some years down the line, do you get to keep using the version you have? (With no updates, obviously...) Our do you get the "Your subscription has expired." message like we did today on the trial?

[Mike Rubin]

1 hour ago, bnbayer said:

Does anyone know how the subscription works? If you cancel - or don't renew - some years down the line, do you get to keep using the version you have? (With no updates, obviously...) Our do you get the "Your subscription has expired." message like we did today on the trial?

The very nature of this economic model is that you have no permanent license to use anything within the subscription license.  If you stop paying, you have to find some other software to play your music.

 

In contrast, the permanent license model that Audirvana used through 3.5 does allow you to use the software for as long as you wish after you have paid the license fee.  If your Studio subscription ends, you can revert to 3.5 if you paid for a 3.5 license.

[lucretius]

4 hours ago, bnbayer said:

Does anyone know how the subscription works? If you cancel - or don't renew - some years down the line, do you get to keep using the version you have? (With no updates, obviously...) Our do you get the "Your subscription has expired." message like we did today on the trial?

 

If your subscription expired this is what you will get when you fire up Studio:

 

 

Then when you try to sign in, you'll get this:

 

[Manolo47]

Is the remote app working for you as supposed? I am having issues as it does not obey the command to “play album” it sticks to the first track and repeats it. 
it does happen with 3.5 and it was also doing it in studio. However, I cannot find out 

definetely if that has been corrected in studio because the trial is up, and don’t want to pay more for something that is not working properly.

[bnbayer]

18 hours ago, Mike Rubin said:

The very nature of this economic model is that you have no permanent license to use anything within the subscription license.  If you stop paying, you have to find some other software to play your music.

That's what I feared.

So, A+3.5 has cost me about $150 so far (Version 1 full price; upgrades to v2, v3, and v3.5, plus the iOS remote, which wasn't originally free.) For that price, I've had great sound for more than 8 years so far, and can continue as long as there are Macs which will run it. (The machine running A+ doesn't do anything else, so no need to upgrade to new Mac OSs that might eventually not run 3.5)

 

The next 8 or more years will cost me nearly $1000 ($90 per year), and I still don't own a player and to keep sending money... That's quite a price increase. It puts us in a different market.

 

The AS sound is great, but really, 3.5 sounds great already. $1000 for the next decade makes HQ Player seem like quite a bargain.  Even Roon lifetime PLUS HQPlayer. Or a NAIM hardware network player. Or...

 

[Mike Rubin]

14 minutes ago, bnbayer said:

That's what I feared.

So, A+3.5 has cost me about $150 so far (Version 1 full price; upgrades to v2, v3, and v3.5, plus the iOS remote, which wasn't originally free.) For that price, I've had great sound for more than 8 years so far, and can continue as long as there are Macs which will run it. (The machine running A+ doesn't do anything else, so no need to upgrade to new Mac OSs that might eventually not run 3.5)

 

The next 8 or more years will cost me nearly $1000 ($90 per year), and I still don't own a player and to keep sending money... That's quite a price increase. It puts us in a different market.

 

The AS sound is great, but really, 3.5 sounds great already. $1000 for the next decade makes HQ Player seem like quite a bargain.  Even Roon lifetime PLUS HQPlayer. Or a NAIM hardware network player. Or...

 

You have explained both the conundrum for users and the fundamental change in economics for Audirvana.  Audirvana has been around long enough that I suspect it is a profitable enterprise, but, if the company's calculations are correct, this change could be incredibly rewarding for it.

 

In the end, I bit the bullet for $50 for two reasons:  because sound quality over my network is exemplary and because that SQ justified my financing the purchase by refusing to renew my subscription to the phenomenally-overrated Roon.  I have little love for anything else in Studio honestly, so I maintain a parallel installation of JRiver for metadata editing and as a backup when Studio inevitably hangs or crashes at some point.  I also hate how hot my NUC and Dell XPS8930 current gen i7's run with Studio's DSP compared to anyone else's, but that might be more NUC and XPS cooling issues than anything awful in Studio.

[matthias]

1 hour ago, bnbayer said:

So, A+3.5 has cost me about $150 so far (Version 1 full price; upgrades to v2, v3, and v3.5, plus the iOS remote, which wasn't originally free.) For that price, I've had great sound for more than 8 years so far, and can continue as long as there are Macs which will run it. (The machine running A+ doesn't do anything else, so no need to upgrade to new Mac OSs that might eventually not run 3.5)

 

The next 8 or more years will cost me nearly $1000 ($90 per year), and I still don't own a player and to keep sending money... That's quite a price increase. It puts us in a different market.

 

The AS sound is great, but really, 3.5 sounds great already. $1000 for the next decade makes HQ Player seem like quite a bargain.  Even Roon lifetime PLUS HQPlayer. Or a NAIM hardware network player. Or...

 

 

Exactly these considerations let me stick to A 3.5 as long as possible.

Since I use Audirvana for Qobuz only a second option will be Spotify Hifi.

 

Matt

[Jud]

47 minutes ago, bnbayer said:

$1000 for the next decade makes HQ Player seem like quite a bargain.  Even Roon lifetime PLUS HQPlayer. Or a NAIM hardware network player.

 

If you look at the flip side of this, AS might cost as much over a decade as HQP plus a Roon lifetime subscription, *if* HQP doesn't charge for upgrades for 10 years (unlikely), and without having to pony up $700 in one go.

[lucretius]

41 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

If you look at the flip side of this, AS might cost as much over a decade as HQP plus a Roon lifetime subscription, *if* HQP doesn't charge for upgrades for 10 years (unlikely), and without having to pony up $700 in one go.

 

Roon lifetime plus HQPlayer3 together cost me $657.72.  I have no good reason to upgrade HQPlayer from 3 to 4. If anything, I can even drop HQplayer3.  There is no way, I am going to pay Audirvana $69.99/year for the next 10 years. Consider also that the subscription price will rise over the years. 

 

I still have Audirvana 3.5 for Windows and it still has all the user interface bugs it had from the first Windows version and most of these bugs were carried over to Studio.  I did my best to report the bugs in the pre-Studio versions. I also spent the last two months (on trial) testing Studio and reporting bugs, etc. Looking back, I am not sure why I bothered as I have not got much of a response from Audirvana either back then (pre-Studio) or these last 2 months with Studio.  

[bnbayer]

49 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

If you look at the flip side of this, AS might cost as much over a decade as HQP plus a Roon lifetime subscription, *if* HQP doesn't charge for upgrades for 10 years (unlikely), and without having to pony up $700 in one go.

I don't mind paying for upgrades, if they're aimed at my needs and enjoyment of the player. With the upgrade model, I can always call a halt as I still own rights to the older version. I would have been happy to pay for an upgrade to A+ 3.5 that gave us this great sound without clogging things up with Roon-lite features. (BTW Roon really wouldn't be on my list - along with Musicbrainz, it's the opposite of what I want in a player.)

[Jud]

1 hour ago, lucretius said:

 

Roon lifetime plus HQPlayer3 together cost me $657.72.  I have no good reason to upgrade HQPlayer from 3 to 4. If anything, I can even drop HQplayer3.  There is no way, I am going to pay Audirvana $69.99/year for the next 10 years. Consider also that the subscription price will rise over the years.

 

Yes, one can always choose to stick with what one has.

[jos]

Audirvana Studio 1.6.0 is currently the newest version available.

[jos]

Still having stuttering problems, but not when I lower my bitrate output to 44.1. Damien is still looking into it… Any suggestions out there are welcome too… 🤗 

[jos]

14 hours ago, jos said:

Audirvana Studio 1.6.0 is currently the newest version available.

Sometimes it stops playing, I noticed.

[jos]

2 hours ago, jos said:

Sometimes it stops playing, I noticed.

I did send a log file to Damien…

[rex4539]

Maybe related to your specific DAC?

 

Have you tried playing the files with another DAC or bypassing your DAC?

 

Of course, Damian fixing the bug is the ideal way to go 🙂

[jos]

54 minutes ago, rex4539 said:

Maybe related to your specific DAC?

 

Have you tried playing the files with another DAC or bypassing your DAC?

 

Of course, Damian fixing the bug is the ideal way to go 🙂

Thanks, but the latest bug is new to 1.6.0 and someone else noticed this too. It is not related to my stuttering problem, which I don’t have with other sources.

[bobbmd]

@Musicophile hello 👋 how did you upgrade your MacBook to M1 processor ? Can I do that to my late 2012 i7 Mac mini or do you have a much later MacBook than my Mac mini 

[rex4539]

7 minutes ago, bobbmd said:

@Musicophile hello 👋 how did you upgrade your MacBook to M1 processor ? Can I do that to my late 2012 i7 Mac mini or do you have a much later MacBook than my Mac mini 

In order to upgrade to the new Apple Silicon ARM architecture, you would need to buy a new Mac.

[Musicophile]

3 hours ago, rex4539 said:

In order to upgrade to the new Apple Silicon ARM architecture, you would need to buy a new Mac.

To clarify, which is what I did. I had some hardware issues with my 2017 13’‘ MacBook Pro that would have been expensive to fix. The local Apple store gave me a rather generous offer to purchase the old machine back at a decent valuation so I was able to get a brand new M1 MacBook Air for less than $600. 

[bnbayer]

6 hours ago, bobbmd said:

@Musicophile hello 👋 how did you upgrade your MacBook to M1 processor ? Can I do that to my late 2012 i7 Mac mini or do you have a much later MacBook than my Mac mini 

The new Mac Minis have the M1 as well.

[jos]

Audirvana Studio 1.6.1 is currently the newest version available.

[Mike Rubin]

I just installed Windows 11 beta on my NUC.  Audirvāna Studio is the only app or application that would not run after the OS update.  It will install and load, but the settings menu is unresponsive and the app thus cannot be set up.  
 

I know it’s early in the lives of both Windows 11 and AS, and things almost certainly will be worked out, but this is disappointing.  I really don’t want to reinstall Windows 10 just to use AS. (In contrast, JRiver, thus far, seems to run well.)