There are a couple of open source alternatives that you could try out too:
Volumio
Rune
Moode
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I believe Volumio can do that too with the paid extension MyVolumio, which is €2,99 a month or €28,99 a year. This also offers a few other benefits like automated backups, CD-ripping and artist biographies and music discovery (similar to Roon).
You can find more details or a 15-day trial on the Volumio website.
Yes, that is a concern - as I bought macOS versions if I no longer have a mac which will run the required macOS version I could get locked out, though have a few possible workarounds.
I tend not to run the latest macOS version anyway, but when security updates stop we are pretty much compelled to update to a newer version if the hardware supports it, and that could be an issue.
I’ve downloaded the last good version (it’s in the FAQ somewhere), but if the company flounders for any reason activation of a new install may be impossible.
Wasn’t aware Studio needs constant internet connectivity - I can’t see the need, only to initially authorise the licence, and presumably to ensure subscription hasn’t expired monthly or annually. Without deauthorising you couldn’t install elsewhere anyway it seems.
Over at the Audirvana discussion site someone posted about Foobar2000 and they’d set up some nice skins or plugins with VU meter displays and spectral analysis - suspect it can be minimalist or customised, not sure if it handles Qobuz/Tidal etc or not.
I went back to 3.5 yesterday and got loads of tracks skipping part way through, had not had that for quite some time, I hope the new version hasn’t upset the 3.5 installation, and the potential that it has inserted metadata tags without asking permission to do so is concerning. Someone commented that they had several TB of data which is now subject to an automatic backup cycle as tags had been added and modified the files, what a nuisance.
Foobar2000 is a great free audiophile player yes, i was using it close to 20 years ago already! It’s not a streaming player like Roon or Volumio by default though with an app or webinterface. It’s a standalone program that runs on a normal computer, similar to how iTunes runs for instance.
It’s possible that with some plugins a lot can be extended though, i haven’t used it in a few years!
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I have 3.5 on an older Mac mini that I don’t apply updates to and it works fine. However it still has to connect to the audirvana server to continue working and I have still not seen any confirmation that it will continue to do so. For the subscription model to work they will need people to sign up to it and I fear for 3.5 going forwards. I don’t use audirvana much now, my innuos wipes the floor with it, but like others at one point I’d built my system around it so I can see why there is concern
I should have added that a control app is a mandatory must. I have zero interest in actually using a computer to play audio. In fact, the last time I even plugged a keyboard into my Audirvana box and looked at the screen was to fix that broken install due to Windows update issue.
My Luxman DAC has free Windows and Mac player software too but no app = useless (to me), The living room is a computer-free zone essentially.
FWIW, I spent an hour knocking up something really basic.
- Set the default audio device to the USB ASIO driver.
- Install a web server
- Make a page that navigates using the Artists and album tags
- When I hit play link, put everything in a playlist and call a Power Shell command line to play the WAV files natively in the right order
Hey presto, it worked. It was damn ugly; text links only; but it worked from my phone! Didn’t get as far as stopping or even forward and back. But as a proof of concept for local streaming, it works. It uses the MediaPlayer libs to unpack PCM and do IO to the driver and I did [not] compare quality.
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Both Rune and Volumio, previously mentioned by @litemotiv, have mobile apps for control. Not sure about Moode.
Well, I’m less than impressed.
No wonder my system has been beach balling and everything has been sluggish, I can now see that Audirvana Studio has indeed been modifying files on the NAS over wi-fi. It never asked if I wanted to do this and has probably crippled my network accessing, and re-saving large files over wi-fi. What a mess it’ll be trying to work out what’s been modified in 3 different LAN locations.
Audirvana Studio crashed several times, so what’s the chances some of these files will be corrupted during writes - I couldn’t work out why it was taking so long to update the library, now I know - I’d assumed it was a bug in the UI.
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Uninstalled this now what a load of rubbish it is. Didnt like 3.5 liked this even less and no idea what it was doing to make it sound so thin and unatural. Definitely not worth paying for.
I hope it’s not connected but Roon was showing the wrong album artwork for an album earlier - Stiff Little Fingers album cover (which I have) for a completely different pop album.
Sounds like a suspect device.
.sjb
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That’s a bit of inflammable material John.
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Hard to tell, either Roon database is iffy or Audirvana Pro has mucked around with more than MusicBrainz tags.
Haha - just got it!
Just found it again, not pop (depends on your opinion I suppose). From my local library Roon is showing:
Right great, just tried playing and I’m getting buzzing/white noise.
How the heck to I find the path of a file in Roon these days?
Thanks, I tried that and don’t get the options, odd.
Right, did get the file info in track view.
Completely corrupted but not modified since 2019. Gets weirder.
Have you tried the fundamental if all else fails of rebooting the machine Roon is on and restarting Roon?
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