After the Elac DS-S101-G music server was
introduced four years ago, there were some
software updates but from mid 2017 it stopped.
Untill now, for the Roon Essentials version
1.7 update is out.
And it’s a big one.
For those that are not familiar with the Elac
Discovery, it is a complete network server
and player running a ‘light’ version of
Roon, called Roon Essentials.
The lifetime subscription is coupled to the
hardware.
The Essentials version has a number of limitations.
The number of tracks that could be indexed
was limited to 30,000, there is no signal
path listing, DSD files are not supported,
the DSP function is not available, there is
no Composer screen, no lyrics and it can’t
stream to Squeezebox renderers.
Add to that it didn’t have the updates the
full Roon version got, and the difference
between the two versions had become rather
big.
Recently Tidal changed their login mechanism,
rendering Roon Essentials useless for Tidal
playback.
It called for an update and it appeared that
this update would bring Roon Essentials up
to the same level as the full Roon version
for the functions Essentials supports.
Plus some nice bonuses, like no track limits
anymore.
Let’s see what further changed.
These two streaming services both offer real
cd quality and better.
Tidal uses MQA coded FLAC files for higher
sampling rates while Qobus uses regular FLAC
files.
Tidal was already supported by Roon Essentials
and the login procedure has been adapted to
the new protocol.
Qobuz is now added.
Both services are fully integrated with your
own music.
You can easily add an album from Tidal or
Qobuz to your music collection.
It then feels like you ‘own’ that music
while in fact only a link to that album on
Tidal or Qobuz is added to your collection.
Even if you don’t have your own music, Roon
Essentials is a better and nicer way to play
music - at least in my opinion - than using
the Tidal and Qobuz apps.
By the way, both Tidal and Qobuz require a
subscription and are add-free.
One Elac Discovery is seen as one user that
needs one subscription as where this one Elac
Discovery can serve all family members with
whatever supported network player they use.
Roon Ready equipment comes from many brands
nowadays, ranging from very affordable Raspberry
Pi based players to costly gear from brands
like dCS and Lyngdorf and anything in between.
Version 1.7 also brings proper internet radio
support.
In the main menu you can select Live Radio
which brings you to a screen where you can
select radio stations.
By tapping the globe icon you can select stations
on distance or language while further down
categories and popular stations can be selected.
Let’s select Music and go for Blues.
This brings us to an oversight of blues stations,
sorted by popularity.
But you can sort by frequency or name too.
Let’s go for Aardvark Blues FM of Houston,
Texas.
For copyright reasons I can’t let you listen
but believe me it’s playing.
If I like this station, I can add it to my
library.
It will now be listed in My Live Radio so
the next time I don’t have to search for
the station.
As you can see I have some Dutch stations
already added.
In the overview screen I found a function
that is not yet available in the regular Roon
1.7 version: Recent Activity.
You could already see the music you have added
recently.
There now is the option to see what you have
played recently.
And since each family member can have their
own user profile, each of them have their
own ‘played recently’ list.
As they already can have their own playlists
for their own playback system.
By the way, the Discovery does have two separate
stereo analog outputs plus one digital output.
See my earlier review.
Also new for Roon Essentials is the Playing
screen.
It is accessed by clicking the title in the
now playing bar on the bottom.
It can show the artist’s photo with album
art, just the album art, the album review,
the artist bio and the track credits.
If you place JPG’s or PDF’s with cover
art or booklet pages in the same subdirectory
as the music files, they can be shown too.
If you control the Discovery using a Mac,
you can have Roon Essentials announce a starting
track in the Now Playing widget.
On iOS devices this function is also supported.
Furthermore the zones now have icons.
And since we are at the footer bar, it has
undergone a slight redesign too.
The settings menu has been restructured.
All groups of settings are listed in the left
column, including ‘About’ and ‘Language’.
I now see English, German, French, Dutch,
Russian, Italian, Polish, Maygar - spoken
in Hungary, Mandarin, Swedish, Japanese, Norwegian,
Korean, Spanish, Danish, Vietnamese and yet
another Chinese language.
Services is to sign in to Tidal, Qobus and
Dropbox if you want to use these and have
a subscription.
Dropbox can be used to automatically back-up
the metadata-database Roon Essentials builds
from your music collection.
Scheduling an automated back-up is done here
and can also be stored on a drive or share.
The music files need to be back’d-up by
yourself separately.
Very handy is the list of keyboard shortcuts.
That was already present in earlier versions
but at this place it’s easier to find.
Version 1.7 also includes some bug fixes,
updates always do.
But more important is the improved search
engine that did improve the full versions
speed also.
There further is expanded file tag support.
For instance the tag INVOLVEDPEOPLE is now
supported.
This holds, as the name suggests, names of
people that are involved in that production.
Also an auto sleep function is added.
Roon advises a Roon server to have at least
an Intel Core i3.
The Discovery runs on a Variscite platform
that uses an NXP Freescale Cortex A9 quad
core at 1.2 GHz.
I thought the 30,000 track limit was due to
the limited processing power.
But now that limit has been lifted, it show
that this was not the case.
I hooked up the Discovery to the cheapest
Synology NAS around, the DS119J plus a USB2
spinning drive and had it index in total 51,839
tracks.
And although is wasn’t as fast as the full
Roon version running on an Intel NUC 7i3,
I know lots of music players that perform
slower.
Let me show you: I go to albums, sort by album
title and type sgt.
Immediately I see Sgt.
Pepper in the top left corner.
Here I encounter yet another change: you can
display all tracks in one go or limit the
view to either one disk.
And yes, the anniversary edition of Sgt.
Pepper spans two disks.
Another improvement: you can check the credits
from here, that - by the way - are quite complete
for this album and see the versions available.
First the Qobuz 96 kHz Anniversary version,
then the Tidal 96 kHz MQA version, the 24
bit 48 kHz version and so on.
Back to the speed.
Let’s search for Prince and go for the artist
known as Prince, choose Controversy and play
it.
I can’t have the audio switched on so watch
the lower bar that shows the track progression.
Again fast enough.
Only when it indexes your music for the first
time, it can be a bit sluggish but even with
this big collection of albums that was only
a few hours.
After that it starts completing metadata and
audio analysis in the background for some
days.
If you go to Settings, Library and set Background
Audio Analysis Speed to Throttled, you won’t
notice that.
You could even switch it off during listening
and set it at Fast when not listening.
After a few hours or days, depending on the
size of your music collection, it will be
ready and there is no need to fiddle this
setting further.
The Elac Discovery DS-S101-G music server
and renderer is up-to-date again.
I have always loved this neat and versatile
box for it is a very good proposition for
the average music lover that wantsa one box
solution, loves Roon but has limited budget.
For people that go for the sound quality of
my setup 3 or the lower end of my setup 2
the analog outputs are a good match.
For my setup 1 I can use it as server and
use the Auralic Aries G2 as Roon endpoint.
So I can place the Discovery near my setup
1 and 2 and give them each an analog feed
while connect the Aries G2 downstairs over
the network.
As you can see also the MiniDSP SHD Studio,
the Bluesound Node 2i, the NAD T758 V3 AV
receiver, two Sonos renderers and a Raspberry
Pi with Allo Boss DAC and Volumio software
are connected.
Each can be sent music individually while
the endpoints that are Roon Ready can play
synchronised music throughout the house.
The same goes for Airplay devices amongst
them and for Sonos devices amongst them.
At just € 1,100 it is an affordable and
simple to use all-in-one Roon solution for
it contains the Roon Essentials license, the
server and the player.
You can control it from a computer, tablet
or smartphone, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android,
iPadOS and iOS are supported.
Which brings me to the end of this video.
I love to see you back next Friday at 5 PM
central European time, in a new video.
If you don’t want to miss that, subscribe
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I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching
and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com.
And whatever you do, enjoy the music.
