Given today’s dCS announcement of an Audirvãna partnership, am keen to understand from the dCS community here the practical pros / cons compared to Roon. Sound quality, usability, features / innovation, wider compatibility, adoption / market share etc. Any insights welcome - thanks.
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Hi Andre,
In case you are interested, there is a long thread about this on the Roon community:
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And of course there is a similar topic on the Audirvana community:
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I wonder what it means to be “Audirvana approved” here.
Is it that playing Audirvana over UPnP is guaranteed to work well and gaplessly?
FWIW, Audirvana is my plan B if Roon goes under given the new Harman ownership.
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Hi Miguel,
‘Plāys with Audirvāna’ is not a proprietary protocol and does not add extra costs for the customers or the manufacturers. It is a certification based on a simple and comprehensive test protocol checking all aspects of the interoperability between the equipment and Audirvāna for the concerned connection mode: UPnP, USB and or Chromecast.
For manufacturers, this partnership is also a way to inform their customers Audirvāna can be used seamlessly with their products and deliver the ultimate audio playback quality they are known for. Even when they have their own software interface, Audirvāna can also be the adequate answer to many use cases, and thus extend the functional possibilities of their products.
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I’ve had Audirvana’s original standalone App for a long time - perpetual license, the most recent release is 3.3.50 (from maybe 2/3 years ago?). Sound quality wise it was no different than Roon or Mosaic. I rarely use it, the UI design is pretty bad, but it’s a very flexible App, ideal for testing things.
That standalone App has now been replaced with Audirvana Origin, I’ve never tried that, but I did test the full-blown Audirvana Studio about a year ago, it was so bug-ridden I stopped using it in a day. Hopefully it’s gotten a lot better since.
That said, Audirvana Studio’s subscription model is not an attractive one, I don’t expect to ever buy into it unless they offer a perpetual license; paying subscription for what is supposed to be a 100% transparent transport - it’s not supposed to sound different! - is pretty ludicrous in my opinion 
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