We had the pleasure of speaking with some fantastic artists and recording teams last year about their creative process. We spoke to cuban jazz artist Daymé Arocena, jazz pianist and singer Patricia Barber, the engineering team behind Patricia Barber’s grammy nominated album Clique, songwriter and pianist Stephan Moccio, and singer-songwriter AHI.
In celebration of International Jazz Day, we spoke to the Havana born and raised 28-year-old singer, choir conductor, and composer Daymé Arocena about her music journey and Cuba’s rich music history.
Husband-and-wife engineering team Jim Anderson and Ulrike Schwarz discussed the making of Patricia Barber’s latest album Clique which has since been nominated for a 2022 Grammy for Best Immersive Album. Between them, Jim and Ulrike enjoy decades of combined recording and technical experience, awards and Grammys.
Canadian Oscar-nominated and Grammy-nominated pianist, songwriter and producer Stephan Moccio spoke to us about his new album Lionheart. Stephan discussed the relationship between his pop songwriting and his solo classical piano work, the inspiration behind Lionheart, and his career highlight of composing the 2010 Vancouver Olympics theme.
Canadian songwriter AHI talked to us about his new album Prospect. We covered the influences behind the album and certain tracks, AHI’s songwriting process, and the ways in which AHI’s extensive travel have influenced his music.
We look forward to speaking with more artists and recording engineers this year. Keep an eye out on our blog and socials for more editorial content.
For each interview we created an accompanying playlist, these can all be found in the Roon Playlists section of the Home Screen in Roon.
We had a busy December with an impressive array of seven new Roon Ready and Roon Tested devices from audio heavyweights Astell&Kern, Cocktail Audio, Dutch & Dutch, Lumin, Mcintosh and MiniDSP. For a full list of our partner brands and every Roon Ready and Roon Tested device, visit our Partners page on the Roon website.
Astell&Kern SP2000T Roon Ready
Astell&Kern released their eighth Roon Ready device with the SP2000T. The SP2000T combines the OP AMP configuration of the SP2000 with a nostalgic vacuum tube amplifier adding a vintage feel to the portable player.
Cocktail Audio N25AMP Roon Ready
Cocktail Audio added the N25AMP to the Roon partner family.
The N25AMP is an all-in-one network audio player featuring a built-in 125W amp, a Sabre32 Reference DAC chip and a high-performance Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 processor and is certified as Roon Ready.
Dutch & Dutch 8c Roon Ready
We are delighted to announce that the Dutch & Dutch 8c is now Roon Ready.
With its origins in mixing and mastering studios around the world, the Dutch & Dutch 8c are taking the audiophile world by storm. They deliver the kind of sonic experience one would expect from a system of separates and matched speakers four times the price. With built-in boundary matching, listening position optimization, and room equalization, the 8c adapts itself to your listening environment in order to deliver the performance as the artist intended.
Lumin P1 Roon Ready
Lumin added their 11th device to the Roon partner family with the P1.
The Lumin P1 has an array of features, including analogue and digital inputs, and Roon Ready functionality. Designed to be the heart of your system, you can use the P1 as a streamer, DAC and preamplifier or all three.
McIntosh RS150 and RS250 Roon Ready
The RS150 and RS250 wireless speakers are the latest additions from McIntosh to join the Roon family and are McIntosh’s first to offer networked Roon Ready playback.
The RS150 and RS250 combine wireless music streaming with legendary McIntosh sound quality for easy modern listening. The RS150 delivers big sound in a small package while the RS250 is McIntosh’s most powerful and advanced home audio wireless speaker system.
MiniDSP Roon Ready
We welcomed MiniDSP into the Roon Partner family this month with their first Roon Ready devices, the SHD, SHD Power and SHD Studio.
The SHD has extensive connectivity options with three digital inputs, two analog inputs and USB audio enables the SHD to fit right into any modern audio system.
The SHD Power includes a 120W per channel low-distortion power amplifier for powering your main speakers, and two additional analog outputs for connecting a subwoofer or subwoofers.
The SHD Studio includes a variety of our powerful but user-friendly DSP audio tuning software – ten-band parametric EQ per channel, crossovers up to 48 dB/octave, compressor/limiter, and a flexible 2×4 matrix mixer.
We created a set of playlists for the winter holidays, covering a range of genres. We start with Fireside Jazzon TIDAL, a playlist of festive and winter-themed jazz, with a significant proportion from Norwegian artists. Acoustic jazz highlights include winter-themed tracks from Hoff Ensemble, Rob Luft, Stan Getz, Esbjörn Svensson Trio, Pat Metheny and Stephan Moccio.
For those who enjoy a more festive feel, we feature acoustic arrangements of Christmas carols from Bugge Wesseltoft, Vince Guaraldi, Jan Gunnar Hoff, Ola Gjeilo, Charles Lloyd & The Marvels and Cyrus Chestnut. Vocal highlights include Norah Jones, Katie Melua, Dianne Reeves, and Norwegian singers Ellen Andrea Wang, Helene Bøksle, and Solveig Slettahjell.
Solveig Slettahjell. Photo: Andreas Frøland
Our playlist Christmas Carols, for TIDAL, is a celebration of traditional choral Christmas music. This playlist contains carols ranging from Renaissance composers William Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria to contemporary composers such as John Rutter and Philip Stopford. The playlist begins with Voces8’s Praetorius: Est Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen, a composition dating back to 1609, and Cornelius: The Three Kings. English composer Benjamin Britten’s choral works have become a staple of many Christmas concerts. A Ceremony of Carols: Balulalow and A Hymn To The Virgin are performed here by The Sixteen.
Highlights from award-winning choir Tenebrae are Tchaikovsky: Legend (The Crown of Roses), Tavener: The Lamb and Rathbone: The Oxen. Siglo de Oro takes us to Renaissance Mexico with composer Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla’s Joseph Fili David from Christmas in Puebla. Other highlights include carols from Rodolfus Choir, Stile Antico, Oxford Camerata, Cambridge Singers and Trinity College Choir, Cambridge.
We end with carols from The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge and The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge with german composer Otto Goldschmidt’s A Tender Shoot and the traditional carol The Linden Tree arranged by Reginald Jacques.
Stile Antico. Photo: Marco Borggreve
Our playlist Winter Warmersfor Qobuzis full of festive favorites, both old and new. Many of us tire of hearing the same Christmas pop classics played on repeat during the winter months. Here we highlight some less well known festive music along with classic Christmas crooners such as Nat King-Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.
We begin with new releases from Norwegian rising star Sigrid’s Home to You (This Christmas), Norah Jones’ Christmas Glow, and ABBA’s Little Things. We then feature the iconic Joni Mitchell’s River, followed by Brit-award Rising Star Celeste’s soulful A Little Love. The silky vocals of jazz-band Pink Martini’s A Snowglobe Christmas brings a peaceful cheer, along with female crooners Stacey Kent, Carole King, Holly Cole, Natalie Cole, Emmylou Harris, Aretha Franklin, Jane Monheit and Doris Day.
Kandace Springs brings a jazz-inspired rendition of (Everybody’s Waitin For) The Man With The Bag, followed by Amy Winehouse’ I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus from new release The Singles Collection.
We then turn to a blues and country Christmas with The Teskey Brothers’ Dreaming of a Christmas With You and Brandy Clark’s Merry Christmas Darling. We end with the festive nostalgia of Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Simon & Garfunkel, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Otis Redding.
Norah Jones: I Dream of Christmas
Our playlist Soulful Season is full of old-school Soul, R&B, Jazz, and Blues holiday classics and originals. Motown and Stax Records heavies Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, The Temptations, and The Staple Singers stir up sounds that warm the spirit. We include soul giants James Brown, William Bell, Solomon Burke, and Donny Hathaway.
Early R&B, Doo-Wop, and New Orleans sounds come courtesy of The Drifters, The Penguins, The Harmony Grits, The Moonglows, and Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, adding fun and rhythm to your holiday party. Kenny Burrell contributes jazz guitar groove that’s matched in kind by two kings of the blues, B.B. and Freddie King.
Chuck Berry brings his rocking homage to the most famous reindeer to lead Santa’s Sleigh. Perennial favorites from the classic 1963 Phil Spector LP A Christmas Gift for You From Philles Records are sprinkled in liberally, and plenty of other surprises await.
Donny Hathaway. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Enjoy these and all of our playlists directly from your Home screen in Roon. Happy holidays from all at Roon, we hope you enjoy this music.
With our Fall 2021 release, you’ll see some great improvements to Roon, but the big news is that we’re rolling out the first of a series of fun web-based tools to our community of music fanatics. The goal of these tools is to let you contribute your expertise to Valence, our cloud-based data system, making the Roon experience richer for the whole community!
Art Director
Everyone benefits from better-looking artist photos and band logos, so we’ve created Art Director, the first in a series of fun web-based tools that puts Roon users in control of how artist images are shown in Roon. Using Art Director, you can adjust the positioning of artist photos, upload your own band logos and images, and vote for your favorites. By doing so, you’ll be helping the whole Roon community and making perfect artist images a reality.
How does Art Director work?
When you visit our new Valence page and select “Contribute”, you sign in with your Roon account and select Art Director. You’ll be presented with images from the Valence database that need your artistic eye. If you want to adjust images for a specific artist, just type their name into the search box. From there, you’ll see all of the adjustments contributed by other users, as well as any images that still need your direction.
Art Director allows us to be far more dynamic with the images used in Roon, giving us the ability to adjust photos to fit into specific shapes. For example, you can adjust the main image that is displayed at the top of an artist page, as well as their circular ‘avatar’ that is shown on the Artists page and within search lists. This means no matter where an artist image is displayed in Roon, it will always look fantastic. If you have a band logo or a photo of an artist that you love, you can also upload it to Art Director to be featured in Roon.
You and the rest of the Roon community can also vote for your favorite image on an artist’s page. Just click on the heart next to any adjusted image; this is how Valence decides which images are shown in Roon. As the Roon community begins to vote and adjust artist photos, you’ll always see the best possible images in Roon, and they’ll constantly improve based on the efforts of our community.
Local image edits are still possible, but if you have previously spent time improving artist images in your own library, you can now make these changes in Art Director to update your library while improving the Roon experience for everyone.
To start contributing, just sign into Valence using your Roon account details at valence.roonlabs.com
Playlists by Roon
Our team lives for music, and it’s our goal to create the best experiences for other music lovers. In addition to Roon itself, we do this by collaborating with artists, our community, and with our own music team to bring you editorial content and playlists that we think you’ll enjoy. Over the past year we’ve worked with artists including Patricia Barber, Daymé Arocena, AHI, and Stephen Moccio to bring you exclusive interviews and editorial, as well as producing weekly playlists with a particular genre or theme.
Up until now, the playlists we have created have only been available on TIDAL and Qobuz, and haven’t been accessible in Roon. In our latest release, you can now access everything our music team has curated, directly from your Home screen on both streaming platforms.
Smarter search
Back in the summer, we released the first of many updates to improve how you search for music in Roon. In this update we’ve taken the next step and completely overhauled the search function to make it easier than ever to find the music you’re looking for.
Now, when you search for music in Roon you’ll see more accurate and concise results (with fewer inaccuracies!), especially when it comes to your library content. Roon will be able to detect when you’re searching for classical music, presenting composers and compositions first. We’ve also overhauled text filtering across the app, for more consistent handling of special characters and punctuation.
The updates we’ve made to search this year are just the beginning. Search has been a top priority for us this year, and led by our data team, it will continue to be a focus into 2022 and beyond.
Rock-solid streaming
We’ve completely overhauled Roon’s buffering and caching infrastructure for playing streaming content. The new implementation is designed to be less demanding when interacting with your network and internet connection, making streaming music both more stable and less intensive on your Roon Core. This should minimize playback interruptions from TIDAL and Qobuz, as well as making it possible for people with slower internet connections and networks to have a better and more reliable experience while using Roon. It will also ensure your Roon Core is more resilient to latency issues caused by Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and the geographic distance from your source.
Easier volume limits
We’ve redesigned the Zone Settings screen so it’s even easier to set volume limits that prevent your music from getting too loud. The new design also makes it easier to configure auto-sleep functionality and other settings for your audio devices.
Other new improvements in this release include: improved iOS lockscreen control implementation, new cover art on playlist screens on mobile devices and added the album type to artist’s “Recommended albums” for easier browsing of main albums, singles, and EPs. You can see a complete list of improvements over on our Community post.
We want to thank our subscribers for everything you have done to help us improve Roon and grow our amazing community this year – we couldn’t have done it without you!
We hope you enjoy the new update and if you have any questions or need some support , you can reach out to our dedicated Customer Success & Support team via our Help Center or head over to our Community and join in the discussions with thousands of other Roon subscribers.
The gear that music fans use when they listen is – as the number of posts on our community site suggests – one of the things they’re most passionate and opinionated about. For six years, we’ve been working with nearly every audio manufacturer to make sure their products work like magic with Roon. In that time, we’ve tested, certified, and (maybe most importantly) lived with hundreds and hundreds of audio devices. From inexpensive USB DACs to the most exotic audiophile equipment on the market, we’ve literally seen it all. No person or company has had the privilege of laying hands on as much gear as we have (you have to see our test lab to believe it).
Our whole team uses Roon Ready and Roon Tested gear in real life, and we constantly switch, compare, and contrast them. Along the way, we’ve learned a huge amount about how audio products are designed. We’ve become attuned to subtle details… the things that can make one piece of gear a joy to use every day while another one collects dust on the shelf.
Over time, we’ve received more and more questions from users about which products have this or that feature, which would be better for a bedroom vs a patio, or which offers the best value at a particular price point. All that interest has inspired us to think about how to provide a new service for Roon users. Shopping for audio gear online isn’t especially easy or fun, so we decided to do for the audio shopping experience what Roon itself did for music browsing and discovery.
We’re very excited to introduce the Roon store – the only e-commerce site designed with the music lover (and Roon user) in mind.
What’s different about the Roon store? Simple: it’s focused entirely on audio equipment that works incredibly well with Roon. Every product is hand-picked for qualities that make it stand out, so you won’t be faced with a hodgepodge of all the gear on the market. If you see something in the Roon store, you can be sure we’ve lived with it and can share genuine, first-hand experience about how it fits into your listening life.
We’re starting off with just a small, curated selection of products in a single category: the all-in-one Roon Ready speaker. These are all decidedly non-traditional audio products that can be daunting to shop for, and one of the things that makes them special is how perfectly they work with Roon. Just connect them to your network and voilà … instant system.
Every product on the site is there because we think it deserves to be showcased. To that end, we’ve created content for the site ourselves, from product photographs and instructional videos to insights about features and performance. Our goal is to show – from extensive experience – what makes each of these products unique, and exactly what you can expect from them.
The Roon store has taken inspiration from the most innovative e-commerce sites out there – a focused product offering, high-quality editorial, and all the shopping convenience you could ask for. It doesn’t yet feature anything like a full range of products, but many more are coming very soon. We hope you enjoy this first step on our journey to provide you the best audio shopping experience in the world.
We kicked off this fall with an impressive array of 7 new Roon Ready and Roon Tested devices from audio heavyweights Arcam, AVM, Audiolab, NAD, and TEAC. Read all about them in our latest partner update below. For a full list of our partner brands and every Roon Ready and Roon Tested device, visit our Partners page on the Roon website.
Arcam AVR5 Roon Ready
Arcam have added the AVR5 as their eighth certified Roon Ready device. The AVR5 is a high-performance A/V receiver that delivers stunning realism for the ultimate home cinema experience.
AVM SD 6.3, SD 8.3 Roon Ready
AVM joined the Roon family in June 2021 and now have six Roon Ready devices.
The SD 6.3 and 8.3 are the latest additions to the OVATION line. The SD 6.3 is built on AVM’s pure solid state technology while the SD 8.3 features a tube line stage for a warm and natural sound reproduction.
Audiolab Omnia Roon Tested
We welcomed Audiolab into the Roon Partner family this month with their first Roon Tested device, the Omnia.
Omnia is a ‘just-add-speakers’ all-in-one system that caters for a music lover’s every need. It’s packed with features, including an integrated CD player, extensive inputs for external sources, and high-quality amplification to make the most of whichever speakers or headphones you choose to partner with it.
NAD C399 Roon Ready
The C399 is the latest NAD device to be added to the Roon family.
The C399 is an integrated amplifier with DAC utilizing NAD’s Hybrid Digital technology. It incorporates the latest generation of NAD’s Modular Design Construction for future extensibility and can accommodate all digital and analogue sources.
TEAC UD-701N, NT-505-X Roon Ready
The TEAC UD-701N and the NT-505-X are the latest additions to join the Roon family.
The UD-701N is a new USB DAC/Network Player with a high-current headphone amplifier and full analog pre-amplifier functionality. It features their newly-developed TEAC ΔΣ (Delta Sigma) discrete FPGA DAC which implements state-of-the-art engineering and conversion algorithms. It’s a versatile all-round unit that matches new listening styles for a new era.
The NT-505-X is a USB DAC and network player featuring dual ES9038 Q2M DACs in order to achieve the highest levels of signal-to-noise. Its headphone amplifier uses TEAC-HCLD 2 analog output circuits to ensure high current output capacity in all scenarios.
Every year an interesting shift occurs in my listening preferences at about the middle of October when the evening air turns crisp and the autumn sun flames out in fallen-leaf orange behind the trees on the hill. The tones from my speakers reliably reflect this seasonal change, with pastoral hues of wet earth and black trees, as the hypnotic strains of British Folk drift through my space. I can’t quite explain why my mind equates colder weather with that genre; perhaps it’s an ancestral memory that has been stripped of all its features but sound. Whatever the cause, my default fall selections are always a familiar narrow rotation of Brit-Folk favs. Just as routinely, I have vowed that I’ll investigate the golden era of British and Irish Folk music more thoroughly. And, despite never having managed to keep that promise in the past, I’ve always meant to.
The problem has been that as much as I love this music, and recognize a smattering of artists and albums outside of my favorites, exploring the genre can feel at times like getting turned around in the forest. There’s so much stylistic similarity in the landscape, ensembles absorbed and discarded personnel frequently, and groups embraced new sounds so often that it’s quite difficult to find your footing on the path of discovery. But if one is fortunate enough to have Roon, and a synced streaming service as a guide, the same challenge suddenly becomes an inspired adventure of autumnal acoustics.
This time I tried something different by beginning with a favorite selection and then allowing Roon to influence my new route – the scenery promptly changed and offered a wealth of surprise and variety I’ve never encountered previously. A few hours later I’d been reacquainted with a few forgotten gems and had acquired a handful of new discoveries. Each one of them linked to my original selection by Roon’s unparalleled understanding of the web of sound. All the listener must do is simply follow the notes.
My first go-to of fall is always Traffic – John Barleycorn (Must Die).It’s something of a wonder that the record exists as a Traffic album at all. It was to be Steve Winwood’s first solo release, but it was having trouble getting started. Former bandmate Jim Capaldi was invited ‘round to collaborate, a second former partner, Chris Wood, showed up – and a trio incarnation of Traffic was accidentally formed. Winwood, at twenty two years old, reimagined an Elizabethan-era folk standard for the title track which recounts the story of John Barleycorn – a character who suffers a wrath of indignities that correspond with the phases of barley cultivation. It exhibits a staggeringly brilliant folk authenticity not found anywhere else on the album, and only rarely in Traffic’s discography. You’ll catch yourself checking the credits in Roon incredulously for confirmation that this was a trio when you hear how much music these guys put down. Winwood’s delicate acoustic guitar ties Celtic patterns through his accompanying piano chords as Chris Wood weaves flute airs around Jim Capaldi’s tasteful rustic percussion. Winwood and Capaldi’s vocals relay the story of Barleycorn’s saga with the skill of master storytellers. It might not even be British Folk by some definitions but it defies any effort to argue it otherwise.
From Barleycorn, my go-to is always Fairport Convention but this time I vowed to do things differently. So instead of instinctively queueing up their What We Did On Our Holidays album I scrolled to similar artists instead, and chose Sandy Denny. Her discography revealed the long out-of-print compilation I’ve Always Kept a Unicorn: The Acoustic Sandy Denny, which served up Sandy Denny with Fairport Convention – She Moves Through the Fair. A favorite from the aforementioned Fairport album, but here rendered in a deft acoustic version, with guitars simultaneously articulate and percussive supporting Denny’s angelic voice to absolute perfection. Fairport Convention could strip the music down to nothing and still dig into the marrow of the listener. This track is a superlative example of that. As always, Roon makes unearthing these previously unknown alternate versions an unburdened joy. New favorites are always waiting at the end of a few mouse clicks.
Nick Drake – Time Has Told Me is synonymous with fall to my ears. There isn’t a year that goes by where Nick Drake doesn’t become a regular on my turntable. I’ve heard that listening to his music is permitted at other times of the year as well but I’ve never risked testing the theory. This beautifully written and performed original is the auditory equivalent of a warm fire in the cold of the countryside. And it’s a natural follow up to the previous selection because two members of Fairport Convention contribute to it. If that’s not something you knew previously, it’s no problem. Roon hips you to that stuff in the track credits. All through the software it’s that simple. This track is one to follow the lyrics on, it’s another example of Nick Drake’s poetry outshining the transcendent music that carries it along.
I typically follow Nick Drake with Bert Jansch or John Renbourn, but this time I let Roon point me toward Pentangle – Basket of Light where both were band members. I chose the album because I recognized it’s cover from a former roommate’s vinyl collection but had only a vague memory of the music on it. The record is a spellbinding chimera, an eclectic hybrid of Indian influenced modal sounds and progressive jazz-psyche infused with British Folk originals. It provided an intriguing inroad into a band I’ve been curious about for years. In Roon the transition from curiosity to discovery is as natural as the change in seasons.
From Pentangle I was served up a selection in the Similar Albums section that yielded a thick vein of gold that cut straight through to the heart of the music. Various Artists – Anthems in Eden: An Anthology Of British & Irish Folk 1955-1978 is an eighty four track, multi-disc collection, that reveals the complete genetic encoding of the idiom. Finding recordings that thoroughly unlock the mysteries of a genre is commonplace in Roon because the design was built with this in mind. Try to imagine another place where that’s facilitated with such ease, effortless discovery of new favorites that are informed by an intimate understanding of the interconnected storylines of the music we already love. That’s what Roon does, and it’s the reason why I’m finally able to explore British Folk in the way I’ve always wanted.
Tell us about your experiences! Does a certain genre, artist, band, piece of music, song, or album make you think of the arrival of Autumn? If so, we’d love to hear about them. Share them with us in our Autumnal Acoustics music thread on Community. And thank you all for your wonderful contributions in the Classical Community Conversations thread! We’re looking forward to sharing your recommendations in an upcoming playlist. Please stay tuned for that!
My name is Thomas and I’m the co-founder of Soundiiz, a French startup created in 2013 with my friend and co-founder Benoit.
You may be asking yourself, “what is Soundiiz?”.
It’s a handy tool to manage your music streaming services in one place, allowing you to connect and move your music collection between more than 40 services.
While we support a lot of music streaming services, many of our users have local media files and music collections that they have curated over the years. And, it’s in this context that Roon was introduced to us, thanks to our users, as powerful software to handle a local music collection.
I met the Roon team a while back and we decided to collaborate as we saw so many synergies between our respective communities. Many Roon listeners are streaming their music with the help of Roon’s support of Qobuz and TIDAL. For a Roon subscriber, the ability to export their music collection using Soundiiz, is a step forward in empowering the listener to feel like they “own” their collection.
We are proud to work with Roon, and to be a part of this new export feature that all Roon members can now enjoy.
Now, let’s see how easy and fast it is to export a personal playlist created in Roon to a music streaming service of your choice.
First, you need to open the playlist you want to export in Roon. Then, select the playlist option “Export” using “…”.
You will see the option to export a Soundiiz CSV file. Click on “Save to desktop”.
Next, go to the Soundiiz website and create an account* if you don’t have one. Once connected, select “Import playlist” in the top right of the interface.
*Use code “ROONVIP” at checkout to get 15% off the Soundiiz Premium subscription.
Choose “From File” and pick the CSV file you have previously saved to your desktop.
Confirm the tracklist and the playlist configuration (title and description).
Finally, select the music service where you want to import this playlist and… it’s as simple as that!
In a few minutes, your playlist will be available on your chosen streaming service and ready to be played! If some elements don’t match (they might not be available in your chosen streaming service, for example), you will be able to see and download a list with details of the elements found vs not found.
We hope you find Soundiiz useful for managing your playlists! Visit soundiiz.com to find out more.
By: Thomas Magnano, Co-founder of Soundiiz Guest contributor to Roon Blog.
The 39th edition of the What Hi-Fi? Awards took place on November 4th which saw 21 Roon Ready and Roon Tested products win across 11 different categories.
There were multiple awards up for grabs at the prestigious event in London, which included product ‘Best Buys’ and ‘Product of the Year’ awards across 26 product categories, as well as five ‘Special Awards’ – all of which featured products from the Roon family.
You can read about them all below.
Product of the Year Awards
Five Roon partners were awarded the ‘Product of the Year’ accolade, celebrating the very best tech of the year.
“The Mu-so Qb retains an inherently likeable presentation, but has matured over the three years since its first generation.”
In addition, a month before revealing the overall ‘Product of the Year’ winners, What Hi-Fi? announced all of their ‘Best Buy’ products, featuring thirteen Roon partner devices.
“If you’re happy with your hi-fi system but simply want to smarten it up by slotting a streamer next to your separates, the Arcam ST60 is a strong choice.”
“If you loved the DragonFly Red as much as we did, and you’re looking to make the next step up without compromising on size or form, the Cobalt represents something of a no-brainer.”
“There isn’t another DAC around at anywhere near this sort of price able to communicate so torrentially, so unambiguously or so effortlessly. We like it a lot.”
“The Nait XS 3 is a gentle upgrade but remains one of the most musically enticing options at this price”
Our friends at TIDAL also picked-up ‘Best music streaming service’: “TIDAL’s expansive, accessible and hi-res-inclusive catalogue remains the best option for streaming-savvy audiophiles”.
Three of our audio partners also won in the ‘Special Award’ category which acknowledges their outstanding innovations and contributions to the audio industry.
“The Evo 75 is a shining example of just how appealing a just-add-speakers streaming system can be”
Linn Klimax DSM AV | Roon Tested Temptation “When it comes to insight, clarity and dynamic expression, Linn’s exceptional range-topping Klimax DSM is second to none”
“Clearer and punchier than its award-winning predecessor, Marantz’s latest entry-level amplifier never puts the formidable 6000 Series dynasty in doubt”
Congratulations to all of our award-winning partners this year! You can find out more about the What Hi-Fi Awards 2021 and see all 109 winners here.
We had the pleasure of speaking with Canadian songwriter AHI about his new album Prospect, out today. In Prospect, AHI reflects on his own identity and that of his community, fully embracing himself for the first time by putting his face on the album cover. AHI is known for his storytelling, with a unique voice full of influences from his travels, community and his West Indian upbringing.
[Editor] What can you tell us about your new album Prospect and the meaning and inspiration behind it?
Prospect is the title track of this album, and it’s also the opener. As the hook says, “I just want to live like someone before my time is counting on me…and walk beneath the wings like someone from another life is looking out for me.” For me, Prospect is a reflection on our shared humanity and what it means to be a link in a chain that stretches both forwards and backwards through time for eternity.
It’s a heavy concept, but I truly believe that our lives are part of something bigger and more meaningful than we understand. You and I are the prospect, and the gravity of our impact on one another is far greater than we can ever imagine.
Can you tell us about your songwriting process? Has anything in particular shaped or influenced it?
For me, songwriting is all about conveying a message that will reach people in a meaningful way. Sometimes it starts with a melody, and sometimes it’s a word that will spark inspiration, and other times songs will simply come to me in my dreams. But no matter how the inspiration may come, my first step is almost always to grab my guitar and record it while it’s fresh. From there, I usually let the feeling of the melody inform its lyrics.
My songwriting has definitely been influenced by the greats – Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, Tracy Chapman, Michael Jackson, Lauryn Hill, Bill Withers – artists who found ways to express the most complex human emotions in the simplest of ways that we can all relate to. It might sound simple, but as a songwriter, that’s often the hardest thing to do.
AHI
You wrote Coldest Fire during the pandemic, can you tell us what it means to you and what you hoped it would bring to your audience?
I wrote this song at the height of the summer 2020 protests. While I’m often advised to stay safe and neutral with the hope of bringing people together, the world was more divided than I had seen in my lifetime and at times trying to find a balance felt like warfare inside. For me and countless other Black people, it can often feel like we are constantly living in a duality, where we have to silence a part of ourselves just to exist peacefully.
Coldest Fire represents the vulnerability that comes with that duality, but it also reminds us that we can find solace in our relationships with one another. I hope that anyone listening to that song can hear it with empathy and find comfort in knowing they’re not alone.
We understand that Danger came to you in a dream, can you tell us what story this song tells?
Music comes to me in my dreams all the time. Danger was one of those songs where I dreamt I was singing the chorus to a huge crowd as they sang along to every word, and I immediately woke up and recorded it with a sense of urgency. This particular dream song was about a young man who falls victim to a stray bullet and his mother Evelyn who immediately senses trouble.
Little did I know, my song told the story of a real mother whom I would later meet for the first time, a woman named Evelyn Fox from my hometown of Toronto, whose son had been lost to gun violence in a manner eerily similar to the lyrics of the song I had dreamt. As I later learned, Evelyn now works tirelessly as an activist for community safety alongside other mothers who have lost their children and loved ones to senseless gun violence.
We finally met face-to-face for the first time on the set of my music video for Danger, and hearing her story affirmed for me that the solution and healing we are looking for is rooted in the realization that every life is fragile and precious.
AHI
We understand you’ve done extensive travel through the Ethiopian Highlands and jungles of Trinidad. Can you tell us how your travels have influenced your music?
Throughout my travels, I often relied on the kindness of strangers who helped me on my journeys, let me into their homes, and just plain cared about me a lot. When we’re not thinking about it, at the core of humanity we all just want to see the best for each other and see the good in all people.
As corny as this might sound, traveling the world has shown me that we are really more alike than we are different. We’re all looking for purpose, connection, community and human connection, and I think these have become underlying themes in my music, which makes it almost universally relatable.
Roon is all about enjoying your music listening experience at home. Can you tell us whether you have a specific home set up for music playback, how do you listen to music as a fan?
My family and I love to blast anything out of our living room speakers, and as a father of four, one of the best feelings in the world is watching your children fall in love with great music from before their time.
The other day I awoke to hear my 11-year-old daughter playing Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life on the record player, completely of her own choosing, and it’s now one of her favourite albums. Some days it’s Mavis Staples or BB King, some days it’s Mos Def & Talib Kweli, and other days it’s Carole King & Fleetwood Mac. But whatever the mood, I think the best way to listen to music is always to enjoy it with the family.
AHI
AHI’s new album Prospect is now available on TIDAL and Qobuz.
