Newsflash - Jord discusses Pink Faun’s new OS and their Scion streamer Oct 2024

I managed to get hold of the busy Jord of Pink Faun in between meetings and moving his office to a new building and had a chat about their current offerings and future plans. Some of what follows is already in dealership newsletters and known to existing Pink Faun customers but some interesting development facts and operating details perhaps not.

The Scion streamer is PF’s mid range streamer. From user feedback, and the high cost of running Euphony, it was decided to build this streamer to run Roon playback software rather than Euphony/Stylus. Unfortunately as everyone knows, as good as Roon is in library management, it falls short in sound quality. So PF decided to build their own OS to host Roon and attempt to improve the sound somewhat for the Scion.

It was decided to develop the software using the Ultra platform and build the new OS with deep integration with Roon. Using Archlinux and the Roon software development kit, it took 16-18 months to build the new PF OS to the level where it matched Euphony’s sound quality but using the superior Roon library interface. Faced with this success and the potential of further improvements, Jord decided to further develop this new PF OS/Roon for use in the Ultra streamer also and went all in on its development.

Presently the PF OS/Roon system is based on

• running Roon in
• a custom PF Archlinux kernel using
• custom network, storage and audio drivers all developed from ground up.

This setup has already exceeded Euphony/Stylus in sound. Both Roon and the PF OS runs entirely from RAM including the Roon database. The system performs a backup every 3am to the drive. Because the drivers are custom, the data routing is different. The Linux IO is bypassed entirely and the RAM PF OS now directly communicates with PF’s audio cards.

I enquired about the way Roon is updated frequently and often breaks optimisations made to handle it. Jord replied that their OS is specially designed to manage this issue and is resistant to Roon sound variations from Roon updates. The audio engine has been separated from Roon’s library management and is currently being developed using advance linux audio architecture. Any changes in Roon updates that adversely affect the sound are automatically adjusted for through the PF Update Server and rolled out to the PF streamers.

All the above is only possible because PF has control over the entire hardware and software chain. Jord says with this new OS, finally he can realise the full potential of the hardware - the power systems and Ultra clocks can now show itself fully. It’s just like how Apple does with their iPhone hardware and their in house iOS. This tight integration of hardware and software effectively makes Pink Faun streamers the iPhone of music streamers!

All new streamers leaving PF will be using this new PF OS. There are around 50-70 units out on the market already with the new OS. Existing Ultra users under Euphony/Stylus will be reached out to next year with an option to update to the new OS. This takes time and has to be done one at a time manually.

Asking about future work, Jord says that in 2 weeks, there will be a major announcement of OEM work for a major brand and they might also consider offering the PF OS as separate external software or to equipment manufacturers but without the dedicated drivers. FPGA dedicated sound cards and switches is also in development too.

Interesting update from Jord, looks like all pistons are firing there!