I just saw this. It felt inevitable that a bigger fish would swoop them up. I just hope my lifetime membership remains such.
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Over in the Roon forum Danny Dulai (founder) stated the following in the second post, which can be found here:
Things can always change with acquisitions - time will tell I guess. I could see lifetime subscriptions to purchase (new) coming to an end at the very least. I could also see devices needing their own one-time purchases of Roon activation for devices - like DIRAC - for both lifetimers and monthly users/payers. Regardless, and like many others here, hoping the current lifetime subscriptions continue to be honored. |
There's a comparison with the photography world here. I'd say it's a safe bet that the change of ownership will be used to start to obsolete perpetual licences using the model which has become prevalent in photography i.e. the original software will continue to work - for a time a least - but additional features will have to be paid for and once there is a major computer OS change the "legacy" software will not be updated to be compatible. |
We’ll see what happens at annual budget time when Roon audio engineering leadership meets corporate finance. Roon is an engineering-driven company. If Harmon is just buying technology, we’ll see some personnel changes at Roon pretty fast. If Harmon keeps a lighter touch and lets Roon continue it’s underdog role, we Roon users could see some pretty cool stuff. We’ll see how anxious non-Harmon companies are now to embrace Roon Readiness… |
2 more years and I have broken even with my lifetime membership. If someone got one recently no-one knows what will happen, but there are plenty of competitors/alternatives, so I would guess at worst they could say you just prepaid for the next 6 or 7 years, then we will remove your lifetime membership. It certainly won't be as bad as buying a Betamax or HD DVD player. :) |
I was about to pull the trigger on a lifetime subscription. Since the announcement of the merger, I've noticed that Roon is no longer functioning on my Sonos products. It does still work on my main system and I love its functionality and the information is provides. Still, the sudden Sonos glitch makes me think I'll just go with the one year subscription for now and wait and see. |
Who knows if they'll continue to offer lifetime subscriptions going forward, but not honoring lifetime subscriptions purchased pre-merger would most definitely lead to lawsuits and/or disputes being filed with credit card companies. SiriusXM got sued a couple years ago when they tried to say that the lifetime subscriptions sold by Sirius (prior to merging with XM) only meant for the lifetime of the device the subscriber was using at the time of purchase versus the lifetime of the subscriber. They (SiriusXM) lost. |
It’s been a couple of months since the acquisition. What are people’s thoughts so far? Obvious and not so obvious changes: - Nucleus Titan and Nucleus One - Interface seems a little bit snappier and responsive (at least for me) - Requesting feedback via survey - Tidal playlist synchronization (if I add track to a Tidal Playlist within Roon, the song is also added on the actual Tidal playlist). Unsure if this is recent, though, just something I recently stumbled upon. - Folders for Roon playlists - Still hoping for Roon Live Radio through ARC (fingers crossed) Seems like there’s more positive than negative. |
I am fine with Roon, as always. However, they are still not shipping the Nucleus Titan or the Nucleus One. Is there a parts (chip?) shortage affecting manufacturing? Good to see they are able to do the Nucleus One at only $500. It has a fan but if you set it up away from your audio system that should be no big deal. |
