Volunteer sir sanders zingmore Posted November 27, 2023 Volunteer Posted November 27, 2023 Interesting https://news.harman.com/releases/harman-acquires-roon-a-popular-multi-device-multi-room-audio-technology-platform 2 3
MattyW Posted November 27, 2023 Posted November 27, 2023 Damn..... I hope they don't just integrate into their own product and basically kill the existing service through lack of development and support.....
Mpr_65 Posted November 27, 2023 Posted November 27, 2023 And the word becomes that little bit smaller. At least it remains a separate business (for now).
MattyW Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Might get more marketing behind it.... Hopefully Roon address some of the long standing bugs and annoyances people have with it. That said, it's perfect for me as is
BugPowderDust Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 The beauty of Roon was the vendor agnostic ecosystem of Roon Ready equipment vendors that let you build a RAAT capable system from everything from a MSB DAC to a Raspberry Pi and have them all play nice together. I hope Harman invest in the platform but that they don't make it a proprietary solution in their brands' ecosystem. There is still a lot of low hanging fruit for Roon improvements (podcasts anyone?) to be delivered and I hope the cquisition allows this innovation to continue rather than the product to die on the vine. 4
Volunteer sir sanders zingmore Posted November 28, 2023 Author Volunteer Posted November 28, 2023 25 minutes ago, BugPowderDust said: I hope Harman invest in the platform but that they don't make it a proprietary solution in their brands' ecosystem This is my concern. As it stands, Roon supports many products that probably compete with Harman products. What will Harman do with that model now? 1
Steff Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 23 minutes ago, sir sanders zingmore said: What will Harman do with that model now? And with those customers on a "lifetime" subscription? Inevitable, really, that a successful niche product is bought out by a heavily capitalised industry giant. (Discogs is probably on the amazon shopping list already). 1
Kaynin Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Lol. I was looking at signing up next year along with Tidal. Think I'll just hang back for a bit...
POV Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 I’m not stressed. It would make no sense at all to purchase a business like Roon and then heavily restrict its market by containing to Harman owned hardware. I think it’s likely that they’ll do similar to what they have with Arcam which still operates under its own management. Worst case scenario if they do limit hardware I’m pretty confident they’d have to provide a refund option to lifetime subscription holders. Would be less than ideal but with the combination of Bluos and DIRAC via NAD and Bluesound hardware I think I can get by pretty well!
MattyW Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Be nice if it ends up cheaper so it’s market share can grow 1
Guest Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Harman needed Arcam for it's AV Receiver platform/tech - after JBL Synthesis became very outdated and hadn't evolved. Lenbrook has been making big inroads with streaming, and Bluesound has really become a benchmark for both hardware and more recently its software too. Harman would have been observing this. JBL is releasing more and more higher-end "lifestyle" products (forget its cheap stuff), and PSB is getting "smart" with its speakers. Revel is due for a BIG overhaul ... So my question is what role does Harman see owning Roon mean for all of this. I highly doubt they're going to turn the highly successful platform on its head, nor will they not honour the lifetime subscribers. But they wanted something in the tech, of that there is no doubt. Harman plays a big role in the automotive arena too, so I would LOVE to see Roon Arc natively adopted in cars (not via Carplay which audio wise is terrible). Unless anything has changed in recent year, to get Roon certification you need to send physical product along with a lot of technical information to Roon Labs. I guess under the new ownership, that database of products and its tech info could be very handy to Harman for its existing brands, or let's say, perhaps a complete reboot of Harman Kardon? Interesting times! 5 1
Keith_W Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 My first thought is that they will put Roon into all their lifestyle products and compete with Sonos. I doubt if any Roon user should be worried, the people who should be worried is Sonos. Imagine Harman's huge portfolio of bluetooth speakers, HT gear, wireless IEM's, etc. all acquire Roon connectivity. 3
BugPowderDust Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 18 minutes ago, Keith_W said: I doubt if any Roon user should be worried, the people who should be worried is Sonos. Imagine Harman's huge portfolio of bluetooth speakers, HT gear, wireless IEM's, etc. all acquire Roon connectivity. I agree. I use Roon in a very near Sonos type setup in my house with over 9 Roon zones that can all be grouped and synchronised as they all run RAAT. The ability to buy hardware that isn't Sonos and get a Sonos like expereience is a really appealing part of my current setup. 1
MattyW Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Mmmm, I guess they won't have to pay Roon for certification of products now. I'm guessing the costs could have been quite a bit.
Guest Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 22 minutes ago, MattyW said: Mmmm, I guess they won't have to pay Roon for certification of products now. I'm guessing the costs could have been quite a bit. "How much do we have to pay to get all our new products certified?" "$10,000 for each product, boss." "10K each? How much to just buy the whole company...?" 2 1 3
MattyW Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 5 minutes ago, Marc said: "How much do we have to pay to get all our new products certified?" "$10,000 for each product, boss." "10K each? How much to just buy the whole company...?" Haha, likely cheaper yes 1
John0001 Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 I know its unlikely in the extreme but maybe, someday, in a parellel universe Roon gets Apple Music integration similar to its Qobuz/Tidal integration as a result of this acquisition...
Keith_W Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 14 minutes ago, John0001 said: I know its unlikely in the extreme but maybe, someday, in a parellel universe Roon gets Apple Music integration similar to its Qobuz/Tidal integration as a result of this acquisition... This is NEVER going to happen! Apple wants to keep their best features in the ecosystem. Anything non-Apple might "sort of" work, but it will be a crippled experience. I suspect that they want to keep it this way.
John0001 Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Yeah... I know. A man can dream though... Apple Music library married to Roons UI would be god tier.
MattyW Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 We might be lucky and get other streaming services integrated other than Apple..... That said I'm not moving of Qobuz unless Roon makes it easy to update your playlists from one streaming service to another. It's just too painful.
alistairm Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 Gah... I was hoping not to have to ever change off Roon... fingers crossed I suppose.
alistairm Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 1 hour ago, MattyW said: We might be lucky and get other streaming services integrated other than Apple..... That said I'm not moving of Qobuz unless Roon makes it easy to update your playlists from one streaming service to another. It's just too painful. How to you presently sync them? I have found Soundiiz effective...
Rhymenocerous Posted November 28, 2023 Posted November 28, 2023 13 hours ago, Marc said: Harman needed Arcam for it's AV Receiver platform/tech - after JBL Synthesis became very outdated and hadn't evolved. Lenbrook has been making big inroads with streaming, and Bluesound has really become a benchmark for both hardware and more recently its software too. Harman would have been observing this. JBL is releasing more and more higher-end "lifestyle" products (forget its cheap stuff), and PSB is getting "smart" with its speakers. Revel is due for a BIG overhaul ... So my question is what role does Harman see owning Roon mean for all of this. I highly doubt they're going to turn the highly successful platform on its head, nor will they not honour the lifetime subscribers. But they wanted something in the tech, of that there is no doubt. Harman plays a big role in the automotive arena too, so I would LOVE to see Roon Arc natively adopted in cars (not via Carplay which audio wise is terrible). Unless anything has changed in recent year, to get Roon certification you need to send physical product along with a lot of technical information to Roon Labs. I guess under the new ownership, that database of products and its tech info could be very handy to Harman for its existing brands, or let's say, perhaps a complete reboot of Harman Kardon? Interesting times! A Harman/Kardon reboot suggestion went down like a lead balloon! 1
Volunteer El Tel Posted November 29, 2023 Volunteer Posted November 29, 2023 On 28/11/2023 at 2:50 PM, Keith_W said: I doubt if any Roon user should be worried, the people who should be worried is Sonos. Imagine Harman's huge portfolio of bluetooth speakers, HT gear, wireless IEM's, etc. all acquire Roon connectivity. Until there is a re-engineering of architecture of Roon that moves away from requiring a user-supplied device for use as a Roon Core then Sonos will remain peerless in that turn-key space. Although the traffic-flows would be horrendously bandwidth intensive on first consideration, it could be done if Roon-Core-as-a-Service was offered with a cloud-based compute module. Only the big cloud operators could offer this at scale to Harman for pass-through to consumers and the pricing would be crap too (just ask @Marc about his AWS bill ) and would need to be rolled into some kind of subscription that would need to be paid for when buying any Harman device they wanted to offer with Roon - and that subscription would be separate to whatever streaming service was required. The mind boggles with how they are going to leverage the acquisition...
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