Micromega M-100/150 field reports

Ok I got to finally play with my wife's work ipad not sure I can keep the app on it, anyway, yes this is what I thought this thing could do.  It's an older version so it wouldn't put the latest app release on but it plays radio stations from all over the world as well as internet only stations. I don't need jriver or bubbleUPnP.  any other third party media player just share a folder with your ripped music just make sure you have DLNA enabled on windows 10,  or use a DLNA NAS and the amp finds it and plays. I think I might buy me a new ipad mini to get the latest app version. 

Just FYI, Roon will also play internet radio.  For the price of an iPad mini, you might be able to buy a lifetime subscription to Roon and that may have a better Android interface (I don’t have any to check but it should be easy enough to find out on the web).  You can try a trial to see.   I’ve become a big fan of the interface.  

I suppose I could try Roon for a year but the iPad mini is $100 less than a lifetime Roon subscription. Besides the app on iOS does everything I need it to do and I can use the iPad for other things as well since my old table is getting pretty long in the tooth. 

They are also also adding Roon to firmware hopefully by the end of the year

I don’t know Roon or Roon Labs much, but I do see they have Roon Remote app for Android. Not being a Roon Core owner, all I get is a "Looking for Roon Core" pulser in the UX. From what I could see it appears way, way more polished than the Micromega app for Android (no surprise).

The little I’ve read/seen about Roon Core suggests it has a slick UX, lots of tagging/cataloging/library features including access to a jumbo-size metadata collection, some nice integration with music services (esp. Tidal) and endpoints (amps/dacs/playback devices), the usual commodity streaming/playback features you’ll find on lots of other apps like this, and some ’trophy’ features like MQA transcoding, DSD support and maybe some others.

Best I can tell there’s no credible, empirical data or experiments in the literature that demonstrate Roon Core produces ’better’ output than any one of a number of other playback apps - including free ones. Whether it ’sounds’ better to someone, well, that by definition is subjective. $119/yr or $499/lifetime is a bit dear, given what one gets and what I value. Relative to the alternatives out there, both paid and free, I might consider it at half that price.

I am grateful to the Roon Labs COO for obliquely dismissing some of the industry hype around ’audiophile cables’ (in this case ethernet cables), here: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/validity-of-audiophile-ethernet-cables/30251/25.

A mildly bold move: biting a finger on the hand that feeds them, as it were.

Djones51 - I’m always up for an excuse to buy a new toy.  My wife loves her iPad mini and I use my iPad Pro all the time.  

Usery - in my limited time playing with Roon, Audirvana, and iTunes as the means to get music to the M100, I would say they all sound mostly the same.  Some of the fancy Izotope DSD filters in Audirvana can affect the sound but I’m not sure if I prefer or not.  

Where im digging Roon is on the management of my music.  I’ve got 1300 albums and over 17,000 tracks and it does a great job of suggesting and browsing.  I’ve rediscovered a lot in my collection the last few weeks.  I’m just about to the point where I feel it’s worth the lifetime subscription.   But to each their own.