The maker says the cadence of new Roon Ready certifications has increased tenfold since the start of the pandemic. In 2020, just a handful of new products were certified each month, and in the first half of this year Roon Labs is already announcing over 100 new Roon Ready and Roon Tested devices. Forty new brands have submitted products for certification in that timeframe. This includes key product ranges and new launches from notable audio manufacturers, including Arcam, Astell & Kern, Cambridge Audio and JBL.
Now working with nearly 200 audio brands – including globally recognised names such as Bowers & Wilkins, Denon, Devialet, KEF, Harman, McIntosh, Naim Audio and StormAudio, supporting over a thousand individual products, the manufacturer argues with some justification that it has fast become an essential feature in the listening rooms of music industry heavyweights, music collectors, and audiophiles.
The platform plays with audio products as varied as network streamers, DACs, wireless speakers, all-in-one systems, and AV receivers – at prices ranging from $100 to $100,000. Versatility and widespread compatibility mean users can have the best music experience with every audio product in their homes, regardless of manufacturer, product type, or price.
Recent announcements about lossless and high-resolution streaming from Apple Music and others have kindled new interest in high-quality audio. For listeners who want to go beyond their mobile phone with Bluetooth headphones, the platform provides the largest and highest-performance ecosystem for listening to high resolution music on the widest range of audio equipment.
In addition to Roon Ready products, there are hundreds of Roon Tested products that bring the Roon experience to the rest of the home. Support for Sonos, AirPlay and Google Cast streaming devices – as well as USB and HDMI receivers and DACs – means that Roon helps users get the best performance out of a huge number of audio devices.
With its attractive and feature rich user interface (as evidenced by the recent Roon 1.8 update) and support for high-res PCM, DSD and MQA digital audio file formats, Roon looks to work with the highest level of performance the industry has to offer.
Roon is billed as a rich and engaging way to browse, organise and listen to music. Artist photos, credits, bios, reviews, lyrics, tour dates, and composers are located automatically, then interconnected by links to build a surfable digital magazine. Roon is also a multi-room, multi-user networked audio platform – it offers features such as bit-perfect playback, DSD and PCM up-sampling, multi-channel support, and Signal Path display.
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