RKH

Chris, thanks for showing such great patience! I wanted to do a #1 on Patric's comment about the cost of Roon. This is a consideration for me as well. The $119 I believe is a yearly subscription. There is a lifetime offer at $499 and then I think it is a Pro version at $1000. No doubt the developers are very smart fellows and their work is worth something. I seem to remember there was a short discussion about this in the Roon Blog on their website. On the positive side there is a 14-day free trial. I plan on taking full advantage of that as you suggest. It is the only way to take a full measure of the Roon program. By the way I really enjoy your site and will continue to be a member for years to come. RKH

Good Morning, Chris. I watched your entire presentation via YouTube and was fascinated by the extensive database that can be developed with the Roon software. However, I apparently have missed something on this site as well as the Roon site detailing the audio features of the program. For example what type of adjustments can be made such as upsampling, bit rates and so on? How does the program sound? Is there an integer mode? I think you get my drift. For me it is all about the sound. If it is no better then JRiver, JPlay, Amarra and so on what is the point. This is pricey software so I hope it is several leaps above the 4 or 5 top rated computer based programs currently available in playback sound quality and the ability to tweak the output to the DAC. A last thought. I have been using JRiver for many years now and spent three years ripping my extensive collection of CD's. Do you think Roon with be able to correctly read the tagging data that JRiver uses and also retain the cover art? Thanks again for the super overview which I thought was extremely well done. Almost a how to manual! Hope this didn't come across as being to crabby but I just think the audio portion of the Roon software has been slighted in favor of the extensive cataloging and metadata capabilities of the software. Regards, RKH

I just wanted to plug the new effort by the JPlay team regarding their new playback engine. The developers or now out of Beta and into RC1b. I have found the sound in playback to be quite excellent. There are some other pieces of software that are needed to realize a complete setup, all of which are free. I am using JPlayStreamer/Kazoo (by Linn)/MinimServer. There is a complete set of install/setup instructions in their forum, specifically under version 6. Since JPlayStreamer is still a product in development, I had to learn a few new things about Windows to reset software if a stop was encountered (specifically Task Manager). This is all explained on the forum. Regarding sound, my system has never sounded better. I am a dedicated JRiver user but to my ears the JPlayStreamer setup is much more transparent with greater air around instruments, nice detail in the bass, and excellent sound stage in all directions. There is no doubt that through the beta process some teething problems developed but both Marcin and Josef have been right on the ball with fixes. I was very pleased with their "tech" support. After all, you are talking directly to the developers. If you are interested in the best playback possible, I would recommend giving the new software a try. Everything is free and if it doesn't suit then just remove it and go back to whatever you are using now. Regards, RKH