What I miss a bit is the correct use of on-screen and hardware keyboards when Voice Over is running. It would be nice to be able to mark liked albums. Regards Robert
Hi Robert,
If we’re not doing what we should be doing with regard to VoiceOver (or any other accessibility features) then can you drop me an email to [email protected] as I’d like to understand where it falls short and address it as far as possible…
I presume you’re meaning a kind of favourites list that is able to hold tracks from all different sources (UPnP, TIDAL, Qobuz, Deezer etc.)?
Cheers
Phil
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The problem concerns both the on-screen keyboard and, even more so, the hardware keyboard. When entering text into the edit fields in the DCS Mosaic Voice Over application, it does not read the letter that has been entered. VO cannot read the letter you type. This is only a problem with DCS Mosaic. If I make a mistake while typing into the edit field, it is not possible to correct the mistake because VO does not read the letters entered in the edit field when I move in the edit field using the arrow keys. .
After enabling full support of the hardware keyboard in the iPad options, VO goes silent in the DCS Mosaic application. Earlier, I wrote to James about it. He explained that at the current stage of work on DCS Mosaic, it would be difficult or even impossible to implement the correct keyboard support in DCS Mosaic. If the keyboard support was improved, it would be an almost exemplary application in terms of accessibility for people with disabilities. Best Regards Robert
@Phil Phil, I would like the ability to sort offline Qobuz favourites alphabetically. I will buy you a pint if you can sort this. 
As promised, all suggestions will be passed in to the team.
Just be aware that some things may seem easy or obvious but may not be possible for obscure reasons.
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I think Whitecube comes up with some interesting ideas
A mosaic2 could be useful. It would be tied to dCS customers, of course, because reaching out to other platforms would more than geometrically increase the complexity and cost.
So I wonder how much money whitecube thinks that dCS should invest in this project. And how many existing customers would buy into it. That, at least, gives an RRP. Yes, there might be new dCS sales that occur because of this mosaic2 capability. Maybe whitecube could throw a number out for that too.
Thanks so much for that feedback Robert … James has confirmed that he’s been in contact with you previously and that he’s aware of this too so we’ll try to ensure that we keep accessibility in the software devs crosshairs!
Phil
I downloaded Mosaic a week ago when it appeared on my iPad. I hit download leaving everything on. It took a long time and then I shut everything down. When I restarted i lost sound in one channel. Heading off Monday to get my tube amp repaired
I totally agree with you in terms of user friendly of the interface and the stability of the streaming. The difference between is that you use the Aurender and I use the Lumin U1. I am waiting for the day that I can drop my Lumin U1.
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I’m torn on this one. I recognise the value Mosaic brings, yet can see how it could be improved. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want Mosaic to become a distraction from dCS making music sound as wonderful as they do.
One option might be for dCS to extend their product line to create a physical music player with Mosaic 2.0 running on and funded by that product. However, developing a product in an adjacent market is not always ideal as it can become a distraction and divert R&D funding from other products.
After all, Roon is available for $10 a month and ‘all’ the Roon development team have to focus on is to make it easy to discover and play music - with the economies of scale that come with working with pretty much every DAC out there. At the same time, if you don’t like Roon, there’s no guarantee you’d like the dCS equivalent.
In summary, if you’re the size of Apple, you can afford to take the battle into adjacent markets, but this is less true in niche markets.
PS dCS could consider creating a server that runs Mosaic by default (which, again, helps fund future development of Mosaic), but with the option of switching to Roon, but this is going off at a tangent now!
Hi Jeremy,
Mosaic isn’t something that would need to run on a server though…
Roon is a combination of a background application that does all the heavy lifting of database management, data levelling and service / device aggregation and there isn’t anything like that happening with Mosaic.
Personally, it’s really interesting having been in the position of having dealt with several manufacturers own control apps and seeing the reaction to those apps…
Phil
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Hi Phil
That’s certainly true, Roon needs a pretty powerful server to run. Developing something that could run Mosaic as well as Roon might be like attaching a jet engine to a sports car!
My thinking was that the revenue from a streaming server could help support the development of Mosaic (as well as providing a device most of us need to have in our systems), but is not without potential pitfalls!
Jeremy
For me, Roon is the classic example of bloatware - too big and cumbersome, way too expensive and generating a ton of spurious net traffic. Sure it has some nice features, but also a shed load of stuff I simply don’t need or want. And with hi-rez streaming from Qobuz now being so good and comprehensive, local database functionality and its requirement for servers is obsolete!
What I like about Mosaic is that it’s lightweight and no-nonsense. I know what I want to listen to, so Mosaic is pretty much all I need. If I want more information or explore links and connections, I can use the excellent Qobuz app with comes with the subscription. IMHO Roon is a dinosaur.
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I think it’s horses for courses. I completely get that some people don’t need full-on Roon and that others love it. The deciding factor for me is the ability to have multiple DACs from different manufacturers with a single user interface, all running over ethernet.
However, I disagree that Roon is a dinosaur - if anything being able to correlate artists and music to help people find new artists and tracks they would also enjoy is ahead of its time.
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Hi Jeremy,
The hardware required to run Roon is pretty much open ended depending on how big a music library you have locally, which external services you use (TIDAL, Qobuz), how many Roon Endpoints you have set up, how many Roon Endpoints you have in use, how many simultaneous streams you have playing and how much transcoding of file formats is required for playing on those various Endpoints and I suspect that their published hardware requirements are scaled appropriately to make sure that there are no issues in any setup likely to be encountered … I’ve had Roon Core running here at home with about 40TB of local audio, TIDAL, Qobuz and four Endpoints (three Roon and one Airplay) on a £35 HP T620 “thin client” with 4GB and a 120GB SSD and didn’t get any issues at all in use.
The thing is, Mosaic doesn’t actually NEED or even USE a server to run on - Mosaic is a control interface that simply talks to the Bartok / Rossini / Vivaldi / Network Bridge / Lina across the network and provides a handheld visual user interface … it doesn’t have any backend processing that could go onto a server - or are you suggesting that we turn Mosaic into a Roon equivalent?
I’ve passed through two companies that make ripper / server devices … it’s not an area I’d ever encourage dCS to go into. 
Cheers
Phil
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It may be problematic that MinimSerwer is actually a one-man company. If something happened to the developer or he gave up developing his product, we are left with nothing. The Mosaic capabilities are very closely related to the MinimSerwer. In my opinion, introducing the ability to easily find other albums by the same artist would be an interesting addition to Mosaic. Additionally, the limit of 100 songs per playlist is quite a limitation.
Not at all … UPnP is UPnP (as long as the UPnP Server authors stick to the at times somewhat vague UPnP standard definition).
Even if Simon gave up MinimServer development tomorrow then the MinimServer platform would still continue to function just as it does today (although the recurring cost subscription version that provides for the creation of new custom browse-tree entries might lapse but relatively few users actually do use that functionality).
We recommend and test against MinimServer as it is one of the most reliable and fully featured UPnP servers out there and has a history of properly following the standards without deviating from that to tuck in something that the developers felt would be nice to have but goes outside the standard (or conversely that the developers couldn’t be bothered to implement so did a Friday afternoon early knocking off job on).
Mosaic (and the dCS streaming platform) are a UPnP client and MinimServer is a UPnP server but there is no specific link to MinimServer beyond that. If Mosaic is pointed at a different UPnP server then it will simply provide the browsing structure that that UPnP server provides.
Is that functionality not provided by “Browse by Artist”?
Be aware that the functionality that it is possible for us to implement as a UPnP Client is limited to what information we are able to receive from the UPnP Server so for example searching is generally limited to the items within the current view.
Interesting that you mention that as I’m looking into this for someone else who mentioned that last week - we don’t have a 100 track limit on playlists, so I’m curious as to where this limitation that you are seeing is coming from.
The limit is currently 100,000 tracks to a playlist within Mosaic (according to the Mosaic developers) and I have tested that out over the last couple of days by creating some 10,000+ track playlists which I have been able to load in, play and scroll through from beginning to end picking tracks at random to play.
I hope to have some time to look at this this week to see if I can recreate that limitation on my own setup here.
Best Regards
Phil
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In the context of owning a dCS DAC, I always take great issue with folks that consider Roon to be “way too expensive”. In fact, even at current price levels, a lifetime subscription to Roon costs less than the fancy brick-size dCS hardware remote control!
Folks, get a grip.
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Remember that the cost of Roon varies depending on whether you are willing to “roll your own” Roon Core …
Many people don’t want to do that and that DOES make Roon significantly more expensive if you go for a Roon Nucleus but again a lot of people are spending more on a set of interconnects that the cost of a Nucleus and lifetime Roon subscription.
Cheers
Phil
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Indeed. But the thing I’d like to stress that the SOFTWARE part of Roon costs a pittance compared to many hardware bits involved in your average dCS-centric system. And if you have a spare reasonable Mac, PC or Linux machine lying around the incremental cost for the Roon server is negligible.