Streamer apps critical

It's true. I own Aurender, and they have a great app. But a number of my friends have bought other streamers, some over $10K and they have very poor apps. 

Having been in software development for much of my life I can attest to the fact that programmers do not naturally gravitate towards user friendly applications and interface software development is not usually a core strength of a company that produces hardware. 

So, all in all, not surprising. 

Even Aurender, who I really like and are very customer friendly struggled for many months during the most recent upgrade. Fortunately the end product is good now and getting better. 

For me, Roon was an easy choice to bring my current streamer and all future streamers into the same excellent user interface. I know the price seems high at first, but if you think about it, a lot of people spend the amount of the lifetime Roon license cost on stuff like cables or tweaks. This is what you actually interface with while browsing your music, that's a critical thing to get right!

Prior to Roon I owned multiple streaming players or music servers with what I'd call half-baked UI designs. I don't care how great the sound is, if interacting with it feels like a chore, that's a no from me. Might as well go back to vinyl at that point.

Roon is garbage. In my experience. 

Not surprising, +1 what @ghdprentice  stated. Roon and the other music player app firms likely expend far more resources on software development vs the streamer manufacturers with their native apps.

As for sound quality, Roon and other independents have to work with virtually all streamers, variability in sound quality is a result. Generally speaking Roon and the others with sophisticated interfaces will require more processor resources so low latency important for best sound quality.

What is freaky is that a relatively young startup, WiiM, came out of nowhere with a cheap streamer ($99) and over a few months, listening to user feedback, developed their software to the point that it is even better than BlueOS or at least very comparable.

I don’t get it. How did they do that? And if they have such a great, easy to use software that doesn’t flake out very often, the sky seems to be the limit with putting it on ever more capable streamers.

Their $329 Ultra is said to be very good, about like a Bluesound Nano in sound quality, which is better than the original Node significantly.

Either they have their eyes on continuing to go up market with their devices, or be content selling tons of them to those without deep pockets.

Even so, they and more upscale steamer companies would do well to ask about licensing their software.

I could only imagine something really, really good in the $1000 to $2000 range running WiiM’s software. On the other hand, how about a super streamer only with a great onboard clock circuit, a quality LPS, and no DAC, having I2S, USB, Coax, and Optical outputs so we could buy our own DAC?

Bottom line for many is that a difficult to use device won’t get used much and will be a source of frustration instead of listening pleasure. As important as hardware is, software and the user experience is foremost to many.

In my hobby of amateur astronomy, I’m reminded of people who bought honking big telescopes and only get them out maybe four times a year because they are too hard to use, while someone else gets a modest "grab and go" telescope and uses it a few times every week.