bnbayer

Finally the new Remote for Studio and Origin is available, and in a quick test... it's not so hot. Not nearly the usefulness of the same remote used with 3.5, and still can't do basic things Audirvana did when I first bought it 10 years ago. OK, good things first. Audirvana Remote has learned it's alphabet: the navigation letters down the side have returned, so you don't have to scroll hundreds of screens to get where you want to be in a playlist. That's a really big plus. Also, in my quick test, I didn't have any "Request Errors", so I'm optimistic. Then to throw it all away, a really big problem: Remote still won't play groups. Audirvana version 1 played groups perfectly (OK, it used iTunes and iTunes always had this ability, so Audirvana always had it.) Audirvana Plus 3.5 plays groups perfectly, including with this remote. Quit Origin, launch 3.5, and the very same remote is great. Why did you throw away such a basic feature in Origin and Studio? If I want to play a Symphony for instance, how do I tell Remote to play these 5 (or whatever) tracks ONLY, and not load and play the other 50 tracks in that album? The new remote, despite adding the navigation alphabet (which of course it should have always had, as it was already there in 3.5) is a fail.

For me it went well. No problems on the install and the new version is a big improvement in navigation - with the alphabet added to lists - and letting you play (as well as just display) groups. Now, for those of us who run headless, we need the update to the iOS remote. I just want it to work for Origin the same way as it does for 3.5

I'm not interested in Studio. I assumed, since the poster's complaints were about Origin,that the response to try the beta was also origin.

I only see the Studio v2 beta...

? I thought this was the Audirvana forum. Where is this beta? Or do you have to be invited?

My metadata (in Yate) - Simon Rattle: London Symphony Orchestra Origin’s metadata (on screen) - Sir Simon Rattle, London Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle, CBSO, Simon Rattle: London Symphony Orchestra That’s right: For each track Sir Simon is displayed 3 times (once with honorific), the LSO is displayed twice, and the City of Birmingham SO (which Sir Simon had left 21 years before this recording) is thrown in once just for fun. There are other examples where Origin has added a second conductor who had nothing to do with the recording listed. Love the sound. Happy to pay the price for that sound. But I won’t use this mess of a user interface, and and I can’t deal with the arrogance of replacing careful and accurate metadata.

I have delayed trying Origin after my negative experience with Studio. Today I bit the bullet, and the trial is already over. The sound is great - clearly better than 3.5, which is good. But the rest of the program has the same characteristics that people complained about in Studio: The navigation alphabet on down the right side of lists on the remote is gone. With thousands of albums / tens of thousands of tracks, it is virtually unusable. It can take 10 minutes to scroll down to letter R, for instance, most of the time waiting for the covers to load. You can no longer do anything with groups (again, using remote). They display (in really ugly all caps) but you can’t play them - there are no controls at the group level. For classical music, groups are everything as most pieces have more than one track. It’s still adding incorrect and bizarre artist information. Inexcusable. I want my metadata and ONLY my metadata. It is claimed that they are not changing the metadata, but if the program won’t use my metadata, what good is it? (And by the way, some of the stupid, incorrect data has filtered back to 3.5 after only about 10 minutes playing Origin.) The sound is wonderful, but database management and navigation is unusable - far worse than version 1, or any of the updates up to 3.5

Unfortunately, with that growth came a legal obligation to always act in the best interests of the shareholders. (NOT, you'll note, in the interests of the customers.) Also, acting first in the interests of the shareholders often drives away the creative people who created the product in the first place, just for love of the challenge and the fun of creating something new. Woz and Jobs become Sculley and a whole team of lawyers... Any of this relevant to Audirvana? I don't have any inside knowledge, but from the outside the pattern looks familiar.

! ! ! It's a plural, not a possessive. And capitalisation, like punctuation, does actually affect meaning. "bios" was correct; "BIOS's" is not. lol indeed.

The new Mac Minis have the M1 as well.

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.)

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...

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?

I got the same email today. (I wonder how many of us were "the first one to raise it"?) In any case, we're now at a reasonable exchange rate, at least for today (since rates constantly change). I'm on the fence as well: I hate the UI, and have lots of issues with the remote, which is the main way I deal with A+. None of the new features are relevant as I don't stream... But the sound really is a big improvement, so it might be worth the upgrade (now CAD 64.99) to see if we really do get regular fixes from the subscription model.

I haven't had a response to an email (to contact@...) about the pricing. I will subscribe at the announced price, but not for $20 USD higher, which is what they are charging for Canada.