Harman acquires Roon

[Vincent Kars]

Wonder if this is going to ruin them

 

[Stuart83]

Doubtful they have a much deeper pocket.
It will be Samsung's by default

 

[daveh75]

Wonder if this is going to ruin them

It'll remain over hyped bloatware regardless of ownership...

 

[Al ears]

It'll remain over hyped bloatware regardless of ownership...

It will be interesting if they decide to pull the plug and drop it!

 

[manicm]

It will be interesting if they decide to pull the plug and drop it!

Harman wouldn't have bought it to drop it. My guess is they'll reduce the price and implement it as a streaming platform across their brands - their current weakness is they have weak and disjointed platforms i.e. they have jack sh*t , and in typical incomplete WHF fashion nowadays, remember Harman owns Arcam too.

NAD/Lenbrook/Bluesound have BluOS, Denon/Marantz have HEOS, Sonos. WiiM have their own excellent platform. PlayFi is crap. Naim has an established platform, ditto Linn.

So the Harman group desperately need a decent platform, and Roon can provide it, along with streaming income, pun intended.

 

[bristollinnet]

I suspect the ‘lifetime subscription’ model will soon be jettisoned for new subscribers. Whether Roon will honour existing lifetime subscribers beyond (say) 5 years is moot.

 

[manicm]

I suspect the ‘lifetime subscription’ model will soon be jettisoned for new subscribers. Whether Roon will honour existing lifetime subscribers beyond (say) 5 years is moot.

I see Roon as a streaming enthusiast product, like high end cartridges for turntables.

The logical and correct thing to do would be to implement it as a platform and offer the app for free on the Harman group of products. And maintain the current model for third party products, hopefully reducing price, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[Rodolfo]

Seems as impressive and promising as Samsung's acquisition of Harman. I read here that Roon will roll on, develop, and be both "independent" and integrated, as I believe or guess Harman has.