Harman acquires Roon

I tried Roon but found audio quality better using the native Lumin app, so I wonder if there are improvements to be had in that department. I really liked the interface and algorithms.

Good points. The integrations possible as mentioned by @wharfy are really compelling. Warnings about the misdirection of Roon are serious, and the potential for Roon to become "bloatware" are real, too. 

Companies that make good hardware frequently stumble when they try to develop software.  It makes sense if the company has enough resources to swallow up a software company for the obvious synergy.  I am not a Roon user but there is no denying that their innovation has really helped the file management end of digital.  It looks as though Harman has had a light touch with their other companies and hopefully will give the creative side of Roon free rein 

They will almost certainly be seeking a functional streaming app (at minimum) from the components of Roon as the HK/Arcam MusicLife app is dreadful (I could not get it to work and keep working at all).

I would imagine they'll add movies so people can have an audio/video whole house solution, i.e., choose device/TV, then choose what movie or song/album you want there. Group them, something different in each room, different users/guest have their own choices, whatever someone wants. Makes total sense.

Harman International is owned by Samsung. It markets its products under various brands. These include Arcam, Harman Kardon, Mark Levinson, Lexicon, Revel, Infinity and JBL. 

I could foresee them selling audio integrated amps with Roon-specific proprietary streaming software, or Roon enabled active/wireless speakers. They also market car audio systems. It's possible in any of these configurations they and could offer Roon that would bypass the need to use IOS/Android devices.

The question is why. It could very well be they feel it’s cheaper to buy Roon than develop their own in house music software, but what they think music software should do may be very different from the Roon user base.

Would be a shame if Harman acquired Roon for some small part of the tech stack and then abandons the rest of it.

Of course, one more rung up on the corporate ladder is Samsung which owns Harman.  Many storied brands under the Harman umbrella. 

high hopes but hopefully some of the $ will go to bulking up customer support beyond the crowdsourcing mantra of “ reboot 6 times, it worked for me “ model that seems popular w some brands…

On the topic of Roon,  I just got the update where they break out Roon Core into separate parts including now Roon Server.  That makes sense but have not seen any of the performance enhancements Roon touts for this materialize yet.  If anything it seems slower and buggier so far. So a bit of a stumble there so far but hopefully a short lived one.   I still am a big Roon fan. 

Yes hoping that Roon gets a big financial boost to help it move forward even faster. Just as long as the current customers who made Ron a success do not get tossed aside it should be good. 

That should certainly inject a large amount of money into Roon technology; be interesting to see what happens...