PSB Imagine Series

It’s been said so often, it’s almost an audiophile cliché: the most important component in any sound system is the room in which it’s used. Like all clichés, this one contains a large measure of truth.

Read more: Reading the Room: An Interview with Nilo Casimiro Ericsson of Dirac Research

Back in 2012, when Canada’s Lenbrook Industries was getting set to launch its Bluesound line of multiroom streaming products, they made a critical hire. Who was that person? A software engineer who could oversee development of the operating system and apps that would underpin the new components? A hardware engineer who could design those components? A marketing director who could create a campaign to drive awareness of the new brand?

Read more: Help! I Need Somebody!

Am I kidding myself in thinking that I’ve put together an endgame music system? Make that two systems—one in my main-floor living room and another in my second-floor office. Recently, I’ve made some changes to both setups, and I’m delighted with the results. I fully expect both systems to keep thrilling me until I shuffle off this mortal coil or get carted off to a home.

Read more: Game Over!

When Canada’s Lenbrook Industries purchased select assets of MQA Limited in September 2023, audiophiles had lots of questions. One question was, Why? What interest could the owner of three major audio brands—Bluesound, NAD, and PSB—have in an audio format that had been embroiled in controversy for the whole of its existence? Critics of MQA (of which there were many) had even more pointed questions, such as, How is this thing not dead yet?

Read more: MQA’s Second Chapter

I consider it fortuitous that my semi-retirement coincided with the emergence of streaming as the dominant mode of music distribution. As I wrote in my kick-off feature for Simplifi, my missus and I downsized in early 2018 in preparation for our retirements. Our previous home had a dedicated listening room in a third-floor loft. In our new home, the hi-fi has to live in the living room. That multipurpose space can’t accommodate a conventional component system—hence my use of active speakers, where the amplifiers and other electronics are built into the speaker enclosures.

Read more: Mixed Media

Spotify began service in 2009, which means we’re 15 years into the streaming era. I’m generally a late adopter of new technology, so it took me a while to join the party. I got into file-based playback in a big way starting around 2011, but only began streaming in 2015. Now I’m all in. I’d guess that streaming (mainly from Qobuz) accounts for 90% of my listening.

Read more: Getting Physical

There are many things I like about my gig on the SoundStage! Network, but what I enjoy most are my colleagues. They all share my passion for music and audio, and they’re all very knowledgeable. And they have strong opinions that often diverge in interesting ways.

Read more: Getting Spaced: What’s the Future for Atmos-Encoded Music?

“Push that button,” Doug Schneider suggested after Jason fired up Roon and began streaming some music. Jason Thorpe, senior editor of SoundStage! Ultra, had recently built a Roon server using spare computer parts. He connected the server to an ancient Squeezebox Touch streamer, and that, in turn, to the USB port on the Hegel Music Systems H120 integrated amplifier–DAC of his main-floor music system.

Read more: Little Colored Lights: Drilling Down in Roon

As readers of my articles on Simplifi will likely know, my primary music-management application is Roon and has been for almost as long as I’ve been writing for SoundStage! But before that I used Audirvana as my main music-player app, and I liked it a lot. Audirvana has been through many changes since I switched to Roon. I thought it would be interesting to revisit it.

Read more: The French Connection—Is Audirvana a Worthy Alternative to Roon?

Somewhere in the middle of 2015, the whole Apple ecosystem—at least with regard to ripping music and plonking it onto my iPhone—stopped working for me. In fact, I can pin it down to sometime between May 1 and August 1 of that year. I know this because, until very recently, the newest Grateful Dead CD rip to make its way onto my iPhone was Dave’s Picks, Volume 14 (Academy of Music, New York, NY 3/26/72). Thereafter, every time I tried to sync my ripped music to my iPhone (be it my 6s Plus, 8 Plus, or 12 Pro Max), I was met with a dreaded “Waiting for sync to start” error that never resolved itself, even when I left my phone plugged into my PC overnight.

Read more: Apple’s War on Windows

During the first few months of 2024, I’ve seen some killer deals on the kind of hi-fi gear I most like. Seeing these deals has led me to ask some questions about the nature of Simplifi’d hi-fi, and to wonder how widely my preferences are shared.

Read more: Fire Sales

  1. Direct versus Retail
  2. Harman International Has Bought Roon Labs—What Comes Next?
  3. Getting Physical—Do LPs and CDs Have a Place in Simplifi’d Hi-Fi?
  4. Active Voices: Livio Cucuzza of Sonus Faber
  5. Is Roon Worth It?
  6. Out and About—Using Roon Away from Home
  7. Lakeside Streaming—Network Entertainment at a Vacation Home
  8. Streaming Update—Spring 2023
  9. Active Voices: An Interview with Paul Barton and Rob Nicholls of PSB Speakers
  10. The State of Streaming—2023
  11. Gordon's System, Re-Simplifi'd
  12. Mix Master: PMC's Heff Moraes on Making Music in Atmos
  13. Toronto Audiofest 2022, Simplifi’d
  14. The Great Debate: Is Component Hi-Fi Dead?
  15. Evolving Hi-Fi: My Journey with a Fleet of Devialet Silver Phantoms
  16. Simplifi'd Hi-Fi at Munich High End–and Elsewhere
  17. How We Listen
  18. Wayback Playback
  19. Listen While You Work
  20. The State of Streaming—2022
  21. Why "Simplifi"—Five Years Later
  22. The Evolution of BluOS: An Interview with Lenbrook's Andrew Haines
  23. Dolby Atmos Music in Your Home
  24. The Big Switch
  25. I'm Only in It for the Money
  26. Encore! Encore! An Interview with Patricia Barber, Jim Anderson, and Ulrike Schwarz
  27. The New Apple Music
  28. Moving Forward with Formation: An Interview with Andy Kerr of Bowers & Wilkins
  29. Glory Days
  30. Spotify Goes Lossless
  31. In Defense of Streaming
  32. Tinkering Simplifi'd
  33. Simplifi Defined
  34. Going Deep with Artison
  35. A Simplifi Yearbook
  36. A Perfect Pair
  37. The Critical Component
  38. Has the Time Come for Surround Music?
  39. My Top Ten Products of the Last Two Years
  40. Turning Pro
  41. All About That Bass
  42. Gently Down the Stream
  43. Big Events
  44. Rules of the Game
  45. The Name Game
  46. January 1, 2020: The State of Streaming
  47. Warsaw’s Audio Video Show 2019, Simplifi’d
  48. Toronto Audiofest 2019, Simplifi'd
  49. Hi-Rez à-Go-Go
  50. Streaming the Classics
  51. Play Nice Together -- An Interview with Rob Darling of Roon Labs
  52. Active Voices, Part Three: KEF's Jack Oclee-Brown
  53. High End 2019, Simplifi'd
  54. Active Voices, Part Two: Axiom Audio's Andrew Welker
  55. Montréal Audio Fest Simplifi'd
  56. Active Voices, Part One: Elac's Andrew Jones
  57. Let's Keep it Simple
  58. A Roon of One's Own
  59. How I Simplifi'd My Wi-Fi
  60. Are Downloads Dead?
  61. Hi-Rez Streaming: Tidal vs. Qobuz
  62. Toronto Audiofest 2018 Simplifi'd
  63. How I Simplifi'd My Hi-Fi
  64. Time to Celebrate: Five Years of Google Chromecast
  65. How Good Can Voice Recognition Get?
  66. Are Smart Speakers Any Good for Audiophiles?
  67. High End 2018, Simplifi'd
  68. Is the Smart Speaker a Dumb Idea?
  69. What's Up with Apple AirPlay 2?
  70. The Spotify Dilemma
  71. CES 2018, Simplifi’d
  72. Farewell, CES
  73. Room Tunes
  74. Social Streaming
  75. CEDIA 2017, Simplifi’d
  76. Classical Prime Time
  77. The Röst Reconsidered
  78. High End 2017, Simplifi'd
  79. Vinyl: There's an App for That
  80. Metadata: Life with Roon
  81. The Internet and Audio: The Good, the Bad, and the Impossible
  82. The State of Streaming
  83. CES 2017, Simplifi'd
  84. Why "Simplifi"

Page 1 of 9