The (near) future road, to Roon or not to Roon:
.....the sound quality coming from Roon far exceeds what the alpha testers are experiencing now coming from XDMS, and it's been 100% consistent over the past months of Roon 1.8 and 2.0 builds.
I read Emile's post 5 times and each time I'm left slack-jawed for several reasons. To begin, the transparency of his remarks is simply stunning. Does anyone know of another CEO that so openly reveals his strategic plans for a similar high technology product? It's unheard of and more than that he's been doing it since the product's inception.. Can you imagine an amplifier designer, for example, telling you exactly what he is going to design and how he''s going to do it 2 years in advance of their next product iteration? Wow. Not gonna happen, period. That, combined with a proven track record of making continual upgrades at no charge for the end user, is why I bought an Extreme to begin with.
The XDMS vs Roon comparisons that we see here are not only exhausting to read about IMO, but hold little interest for me to explore although now that switching between the two in the latest alpha release is easy, I am getting closer to trying XDMS. I applaud all those users that are providing excellent feedback to the development team to implement changes that will make this easier to use for people like me. But then, when I read remarks like those from Emile above, I am stunned and think, OK, just hang in there as the possibility of having yet unrealized benefits to Roon are not that far off. And if I like Roon now, which I do, how nice it will be to have even better sounding options down the road for both Roon and XDMS.
One thing I'm pretty certain of is that no matter how good XDMS becomes, it will simply not be the commercial success that Taiko aspires to unless it offers the user flexibility that Roon is famous for implementing. There's a big difference in commercial potential by offering a program that provides superior sonic performance for a few hundred users, vs one that is used as a de facto standard by tens of thousands+ of users. Taiko knows this as well, and it makes perfect to sense that the solutions Emile is offering will benefit both player programs. A rising tide lifts all boats. The fact that Emile's approach is not putting a gun to anyone's head to use one or the other, since you will be able to use either, is yet another example of his forward thinking.