The time has come and I request advice...

I’m running a lightly used HiFi rose 250a into a Venus 2 12th.  I’ve played fairly extensively with Aurenders, & while conductor is good, I find HiFi rose app to be equal or better.  IMO these 2 for less than $5k to me is big value & I want for nothing in user experience or digital sound quality.

@ghdprentice 

There is a question of how long it will take… but the time will not be measured in decades but likely a few years.

Any thoughts on what that might look like?  Would Roon be likely to migrate users to a new platform in order to maintain the revenue stream, sell their metadata to a competitor, or simply cut bait, return to the dock, and sip margaritas?  Don’t you think they might have a strategic plan?

I am an early lifetime subscriber so have already gotten my value from the platform, but would like to see it continue.  I recently considered going with an Innuos Zenith Mk3 as a server into their Pulsar streamer but their not being a Roon partner caused me to pause, and I hedged my bet by going with a more generic server option. I may still try the Pulsar streamer, which apparently works fine with Roon but would allow me to also try the Sense app. 

Most likely the functionality of streamers continue to improve, leading to reduced subscriber numbers until they get bought and incorporated into one company’s products. Or they try and hold on, updates become less frequent and customer support goes away, and they slowly disappear into obscurity. Or they shift to licensing direct to manufacturers to incorporate inside components, instead of separately sold to users. 

Today’s special purpose software gets incorporated gets incorporated into the operating system of integrated suite. That has been the way since, well, the first computer language.

If you’re a lifetime user, then just enjoy it until you need to buy something that doesn’t use it. It’s nice not having a monthly fee.

It’s nice not having a monthly fee.

A small win, until I think about Tidal, Qobuz, internet, television, Sirius, etc. etc.   I used to think $30 a month for cable tv was a lot! 🤔

Today’s special purpose software gets incorporated gets incorporated into the operating system of integrated suite

I have been using various special purpose and always independent software with  massive user base for decades that never got integrated into anything. But it's far from audio subject I guess