Surprised how little information there is on the internet about this device, outside of your own channel. I recently purchased a used Discovery for $150, and for my needs it runs exceptionally well. I love having what is essentially a light version of Roon at such a good price, no subscription needed (beyond my Tidal one). Thanks for the great videos.
Hi Hans - thank you for the update. As a result I have purchased the Elac (at a competitive price.) It will provide me with a relatively inexpensive quality streaming solution (I am a Qobuz subscriber already and have already fed Roon Essentials with 70k plus tracks.) As I have a significant classical collection it is a pity RoonEssentials does not include the Composer functionality of the core Roon software but I shall live without that for now. Please continue the good work.
The Elac Discovery sound quality scales up enormously with a good power supply (meaning better or much better than e.g. Sbooster BOTW). Also the internal DAC fares surprisingly well, even when compared to the best. So naturally musical and so well layered sound stage. Very good software as well. It runs circles on some big names. Amazing value.
Hi Hans, like always your video was very helpful, thank you for that! One important thing you forgot to mention in the "what is new" list: Support of AirPlay 2 devices. I have several AirPlay devices around in my house from different manufacterers and they were updated in the meantime to AirPlay 2. With the old version 1.5 it was not possible to get music from these updated players but now it works perfectly again. The other features in the update make me love my Discovery Music Server again, 2 weeks ago I thought it was a kind of dead end buy!
This review sparked my interest for the Elac. I finally got it on sale for < USD$600 from Amazon and have been using it for a month now. It helps me discover more music. Also, it finds some music in Qobus that I can't find when I am in Qobus directly, be it desktop app, web player or Android app. Roon probably finds these with Qobuz APIs but Qubuz's own front end filters them out. While most of this "hidden" music found will play, some won't. I guess those pieces that won't play are really obsolete. Also, I have seen many songs in Qubuz & Tidal with the microphone icons and they do have lyrics. I am running Roon Essential 1.7 build 64. I also just got the SOtM SMS-200 Neo as Roon EP and occasional UPnP renderer from Audirvana runnng on an old Mac Mini when I want to play the few DSD albums I have. With the SOtM, I don't have to keep the Elac and the Mac next to my DAC and can move themi downstairs where it is cooler and also serve another music zone.
Thanks for the info Hans. I've been waiting for your review on the update. I'm going to be doing a review of my new system in a week or so Elac Discover streaming to Eclipse TD508MK3 speakers and Schiit Ragnarok 2 integrated amp. I'm curious to compare DAC's on the Discovery to the Ragnarok 2 Schiit Multibit.
Sorry - I originally added this to the older Discovery review...FYI - In the U.S. the price of this unit on Amazon right now (June 2020) is $590. Seems like a bargain - it's now the same price as a full lifetime Roon subscription, and you don't seem to lose a lot with Roon Essentials. It seems like it's time for ELAC to refresh the hardware of this unit. Reviews on Amazon are all over the map. Many concerned that it will turn into a paperweight if Roon goes out of business.
I took that approach which i think is valid but you do need to go into it with your eyes open as far updates go. Without the Tidal issue this update may never have happened. Also that pricing may indicate that retailers arent likely to stock muxh inro the future. That said it is a very good proposition at that price point and it removes a lot of complexity
I discovered the same deal and took a chance. Play back performance via airplay and MQA has been quite good. Indexing all of the tracks for volume leveling has taken about one week for 51,000 tracks. There seems to be a bug involving TIDAL session management. It seems that when any other TIDAL Player on the local network is disconnected, essentials crashes. Yesterday, it seem to crash even when the local essentials TIDAL session timed out . Being able to view my locally stored album art is a plus. Some very good nifty artwork biographies are also included. The speed is fairly crisp to scroll through several thousand albums, and 50,000 tracks. The radio function does a good job of creating a rudimentary radio station using my local music that corresponds closely with the last tracks that I was playing in the play queue. The play queue is far superior to other play cues that I have use for instance in iTunes and Plex. I am looking forward to getting the system running 100% in the next month but so far so good. Thank you Hans!
Hans, a very informative and clearly presented video! Does the Discovery act as its own renderer, or does it require a separate renderer and/or a clock add on before the signal goes to the DAC?
A feature that was lost with the 1.7 update was the Lyrics. I use the lyrics to get better understanding of music when the vocals are not clear. When I posted my concern on the Roon community discussion board, John Dahl indicated that this was an unintended bug that should be fixed in the future. Here's a quote of his response: "While not all of Roon’s lyrics features will be available in Essentials, lyrics were not supposed to be removed completely. It’s a bug and while I don’t have a firm timeline yet, it will be fixed. Sorry for the trouble @john_dahl." I am glad that we are seeing further development of Essentials and that my Discovery has a path forward. Elac support has been terrible and it is wonderful that Roon has taken up the reigns on supporting this device.
Hi, great review of the new version! One thing I don’t know about this server, do you need to keep your music library on a NAS? Or does it have internal storage? Or can you directly connect an external HDD to it? Thanks!
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel Thank you very much! This is looking like a great all in one solution, rather than buying a NUC, a Hifiberry or similar and a ROON Subscription.
Hans, took the plunge on one of these to add Roon to the house and a dac to my second system. In your experience did you find that adding an external power supply was a worthwhile upgrade for the discovery (used on analogue output). Thanks. Ken
So since yesterday, I have an ELAC Discovery and Roon Essentials. My music is on an external hard drive on a router. Roon Essential finds 18,000 files but it only shows one album after 4 hours. And it does not adding any file to the library With the Roon software I first installed everything was in the library after an hour.
Hi Hans Thanks for the update. I always thought ELAC produced a really nice proposition here which I think may have suffered because no other partners followed their lead, I do wonder that if we would have got this upgrade if Tidal hadn't created the authentication problem? I think it would have been nice if Chromecast and Logitech support had been added and the signal path info would be a nice to have but other than that I am not sure which of the full Roon features I would really miss. I do hope ELAC sticks with it as it is a nice sounding and well put together solution
It’s all hard to say. I hope version 1.7 uses the same code as the full Roon version, only with modules removed. Then keeping Essentials up to date would be easy.....
Hi Hans Thank you for informing us about the update and for the review of the new version of Roon Essentials. I can't say that I am thrilled about this since I have been asking on the Elac support forums for at least two years if they would ever update the Discovery. They never even responded to my questions, and now they don't even have any forums. Therefore I bought an Intel NUC, made a Roon Rock and subscribed to regular Roon. Oh well. I wonder if this means Elac is going to come out with a newer version of the Discovery? I had assumed my Discovery was an orphan, but now I don't think so. I do have a question about the new version of Roon Essentials I hope you can answer. Will Roon Essemtials now scroll lyrics as regular Roon does and if so can it be cast to Chromecast? I can't do either one even with the new update, and I would like to know if I am missing something, or if it isn't possible. Thanks
Dear Hans, as always a very informative review. I am an owner of the ELAC server myself and am glad that I can finally access TIDAL again. Unfortunately I have not been able to address the digital output since the update. Do you know the problem and may have a solution?
Does the Discovery also act as a Roon Core? My IMac as a Roon Core is not happy with Roon and keeps buffering, but the Node2i as an endpoint/ streamer works perfectly on its own.
I recently purchased the ELAC Discovery Music Server on amazon for a little over $519.38 USD. The price has gone up a tad since and supplies are limited. Yes, it acts as your Roon Core for sure. I ran Roon on the Mac and I did not like it there either. Besides the ELAC discovery has a very good sounding Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel Yes, thank you. I was wondering how many tracks can be in the library before the software slows down. They lifted the 30,000 limit now so they must believe it's capable.
Dear Hans, Allow me to ask a few questions which relate to the Elac discovery 1.7 update. My brandnew discovery runs the new roon software and is set up in the most simple way: 3 TB harddisc with two files containing all my music data ( bitperfect, flac and some mp3 ), directly feeding the discovery via USB. Endless work and „perfectly“ ripped, believe me. My internet is the fasted available through Telekom Deutschland, plus I didn‘t listen to any music while scanning/ loading files and stopped all other kinds of internet activities. My Problem: My discovery scans and integrates my admittedly large song library, including all covers ect for quite a few hours, however, for whatever reason interrupts this process reporting „connection to network interrupted“. Or, offers the rather non-sensical message „one of your storage devices seams to be offline“, possibly assuming that a NAS feeds the discovery. I have tried all the typical little tricks to regain access to the machine, however without success. In a final move to get going again, I have re-set the discovery completely and started all over again, however the same thing happened. Another long afternoon wasted. Now, after endless hours of playing around and checking the internet for info and finally after frustrating attempts to reach the Elac support center, Ím calling upon you. Could it be that there is a track limit after all? Is the processor too weak to handle 5000+ albums? If so, the discovery is a useless device for anybody with major music files. Possible buyers should think twice before buying the discovery. Or: Do you have any glorious idea what’s going wrong? I still fancy this device, but..!!!! Your advice would be highly appreciated. Thanks for your efforts. Wolfgang
Add a separate PSU to the HDD, or use a network server. Configure the Settings/Library audio analysis to "Throttled". I think there was an issue about partition size, though. What file system are you using? Try using multiple smaller partitions on the HDD and add them separately from Settings/Storage.
I really only care about local music playback and not concerned about the streaming services it supports not working in the future if they don't update the firmware. Is there any reason to think that accessing the data from Roon servers will stop working? If I could just keep getting the Roon data for the life of the device I'd be happy.
Bummer. Only downside to this product. Went with an Auralic Aries Mini since I have about 80% DSD, but would much rather have Roon for music discovery.
Surprised how little information there is on the internet about this device, outside of your own channel. I recently purchased a used Discovery for $150, and for my needs it runs exceptionally well. I love having what is essentially a light version of Roon at such a good price, no subscription needed (beyond my Tidal one). Thanks for the great videos.
My pleasure
Hi Hans - thank you for the update. As a result I have purchased the Elac (at a competitive price.) It will provide me with a relatively inexpensive quality streaming solution (I am a Qobuz subscriber already and have already fed Roon Essentials with 70k plus tracks.) As I have a significant classical collection it is a pity RoonEssentials does not include the Composer functionality of the core Roon software but I shall live without that for now. Please continue the good work.
Thanks for sharing
The Elac Discovery sound quality scales up enormously with a good power supply (meaning better or much better than e.g. Sbooster BOTW). Also the internal DAC fares surprisingly well, even when compared to the best. So naturally musical and so well layered sound stage. Very good software as well. It runs circles on some big names. Amazing value.
Thanks for sharing
Hi Hans, like always your video was very helpful, thank you for that! One important thing you forgot to mention in the "what is new" list: Support of AirPlay 2 devices. I have several AirPlay devices around in my house from different manufacterers and they were updated in the meantime to AirPlay 2. With the old version 1.5 it was not possible to get music from these updated players but now it works perfectly again. The other features in the update make me love my Discovery Music Server again, 2 weeks ago I thought it was a kind of dead end buy!
Thanks for the addition.
Dear Hans, Thank you for this video about the update. Well done.
You are very welcome
This review sparked my interest for the Elac. I finally got it on sale for < USD$600 from Amazon and have been using it for a month now. It helps me discover more music. Also, it finds some music in Qobus that I can't find when I am in Qobus directly, be it desktop app, web player or Android app. Roon probably finds these with Qobuz APIs but Qubuz's own front end filters them out. While most of this "hidden" music found will play, some won't. I guess those pieces that won't play are really obsolete. Also, I have seen many songs in Qubuz & Tidal with the microphone icons and they do have lyrics. I am running Roon Essential 1.7 build 64. I also just got the SOtM SMS-200 Neo as Roon EP and occasional UPnP renderer from Audirvana runnng on an old Mac Mini when I want to play the few DSD albums I have. With the SOtM, I don't have to keep the Elac and the Mac next to my DAC and can move themi downstairs where it is cooler and also serve another music zone.
Thanks for sharing
This is big and very good news, Roon essentials should really be installed on more products.
🙏🏻
Thanks for the info Hans. I've been waiting for your review on the update. I'm going to be doing a review of my new system in a week or so Elac Discover streaming to Eclipse TD508MK3 speakers and Schiit Ragnarok 2 integrated amp. I'm curious to compare DAC's on the Discovery to the Ragnarok 2 Schiit Multibit.
Glad it was helpful!
Sorry - I originally added this to the older Discovery review...FYI - In the U.S. the price of this unit on Amazon right now (June 2020) is $590. Seems like a bargain - it's now the same price as a full lifetime Roon subscription, and you don't seem to lose a lot with Roon Essentials. It seems like it's time for ELAC to refresh the hardware of this unit. Reviews on Amazon are all over the map. Many concerned that it will turn into a paperweight if Roon goes out of business.
I took that approach which i think is valid but you do need to go into it with your eyes open as far updates go. Without the Tidal issue this update may never have happened. Also that pricing may indicate that retailers arent likely to stock muxh inro the future. That said it is a very good proposition at that price point and it removes a lot of complexity
👍🏼
👍🏼
I discovered the same deal and took a chance. Play back performance via airplay and MQA has been quite good. Indexing all of the tracks for volume leveling has taken about one week for 51,000 tracks. There seems to be a bug involving TIDAL session management. It seems that when any other TIDAL Player on the local network is disconnected, essentials crashes. Yesterday, it seem to crash even when the local essentials TIDAL session timed out . Being able to view my locally stored album art is a plus. Some very good nifty artwork biographies are also included. The speed is fairly crisp to scroll through several thousand albums, and 50,000 tracks. The radio function does a good job of creating a rudimentary radio station using my local music that corresponds closely with the last tracks that I was playing in the play queue. The play queue is far superior to other play cues that I have use for instance in iTunes and Plex. I am looking forward to getting the system running 100% in the next month but so far so good. Thank you Hans!
Hans, a very informative and clearly presented video! Does the Discovery act as its own renderer, or does it require a separate renderer and/or a clock add on before the signal goes to the DAC?
It holds a Roon (Essentials) server and two separate DAC's So you only have to connect a drive holding music and an amp over analog (RCA) interlinks.
Good to hear. Plug and play basically. Found one new in Berlin for about US$600.
Dear Hans, thanks a lot for these complete Information about the Elac Discovery Update 1.7. Your Informations are very helpfull.
You are welcome!
A feature that was lost with the 1.7 update was the Lyrics. I use the lyrics to get better understanding of music when the vocals are not clear. When I posted my concern on the Roon community discussion board, John Dahl indicated that this was an unintended bug that should be fixed in the future. Here's a quote of his response:
"While not all of Roon’s lyrics features will be available in Essentials, lyrics were not supposed to be removed completely. It’s a bug and while I don’t have a firm timeline yet, it will be fixed. Sorry for the trouble @john_dahl."
I am glad that we are seeing further development of Essentials and that my Discovery has a path forward. Elac support has been terrible and it is wonderful that Roon has taken up the reigns on supporting this device.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi, great review of the new version! One thing I don’t know about this server, do you need to keep your music library on a NAS? Or does it have internal storage? Or can you directly connect an external HDD to it? Thanks!
There is no internal storage but you can use a USB drive connected directly, a NAS or a share on a computer.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel Thank you very much! This is looking like a great all in one solution, rather than buying a NUC, a Hifiberry or similar and a ROON Subscription.
Hans, took the plunge on one of these to add Roon to the house and a dac to my second system. In your experience did you find that adding an external power supply was a worthwhile upgrade for the discovery (used on analogue output). Thanks. Ken
Yes I did
So since yesterday, I have an ELAC Discovery and Roon Essentials. My music is on an external hard drive on a router. Roon Essential finds 18,000 files but it only shows one album after 4 hours. And it does not adding any file to the library
With the Roon software I first installed everything was in the library after an hour.
Hi Hans Thanks for the update. I always thought ELAC produced a really nice proposition here which I think may have suffered because no other partners followed their lead, I do wonder that if we would have got this upgrade if Tidal hadn't created the authentication problem? I think it would have been nice if Chromecast and Logitech support had been added and the signal path info would be a nice to have but other than that I am not sure which of the full Roon features I would really miss. I do hope ELAC sticks with it as it is a nice sounding and well put together solution
It’s all hard to say. I hope version 1.7 uses the same code as the full Roon version, only with modules removed. Then keeping Essentials up to date would be easy.....
Hi Hans
Thank you for informing us about the update and for the review of the new version of Roon Essentials. I can't say that I am thrilled about this since I have been asking on the Elac support forums for at least two years if they would ever update the Discovery. They never even responded to my questions, and now they don't even have any forums. Therefore I bought an Intel NUC, made a Roon Rock and subscribed to regular Roon. Oh well. I wonder if this means Elac is going to come out with a newer version of the Discovery? I had assumed my Discovery was an orphan, but now I don't think so. I do have a question about the new version of Roon Essentials I hope you can answer. Will Roon Essemtials now scroll lyrics as regular Roon does and if so can it be cast to Chromecast? I can't do either one even with the new update, and I would like to know if I am missing something, or if it isn't possible. Thanks
Not sure about your lyrics question but there is still no support for Chromecast in this release
Well, it is the 'light' version.
Where is the download URL link for this firmware 1.7 ?
The ELAC Offical product page is failed to download now. It’s disappeared for download
Have you asked Elac: elac.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Hi Hans. Using the coax out on the Discovery into a dac, where would you place it in your set ups? Would it make to 1/3 up your setup 1?
top of setup 3
Thank you Hans for your reply.
Dear Hans,
as always a very informative review. I am an owner of the ELAC server myself and am glad that I can finally access TIDAL again. Unfortunately I have not been able to address the digital output since the update. Do you know the problem and may have a solution?
I am not aware of a problem with the digital output. Sorry.
Does the Discovery also act as a Roon Core? My IMac as a Roon Core is not happy with Roon and keeps buffering, but the Node2i as an endpoint/ streamer works perfectly on its own.
I recently purchased the ELAC Discovery Music Server on amazon for a little over $519.38 USD. The price has gone up a tad since and supplies are limited. Yes, it acts as your Roon Core for sure. I ran Roon on the Mac and I did not like it there either. Besides the ELAC discovery has a very good sounding Cirrus Logic CS4398 DAC.
it does
How many tracks can you have before the Discovery UI starts slowing down?
You probably want to know how many endpoints can play at the same time. I have tested up to 8 endpoints playing simultaneously.
I now see I misinterpreted your question 🤔. You can easily have 30,000 tracks indexed and use it comfortably.
@@TheHansBeekhuyzenChannel Yes, thank you. I was wondering how many tracks can be in the library before the software slows down. They lifted the 30,000 limit now so they must believe it's capable.
Dear Hans,
Allow me to ask a few questions which relate to the Elac discovery 1.7 update.
My brandnew discovery runs the new roon software and is set up in the most simple way:
3 TB harddisc with two files containing all my music data ( bitperfect, flac and some mp3 ), directly feeding the discovery via USB. Endless work and „perfectly“ ripped, believe me.
My internet is the fasted available through Telekom Deutschland, plus I didn‘t listen to any music while scanning/ loading files and stopped all other kinds of internet activities.
My Problem:
My discovery scans and integrates my admittedly large song library, including all covers ect for quite a few hours, however, for whatever reason interrupts this process reporting „connection to network interrupted“. Or, offers the rather non-sensical message „one of your storage devices seams to be offline“, possibly assuming that a NAS feeds the discovery.
I have tried all the typical little tricks to regain access to the machine, however without success.
In a final move to get going again, I have re-set the discovery completely and started all over again, however the same thing happened. Another long afternoon wasted.
Now, after endless hours of playing around and checking the internet for info and finally after frustrating attempts to reach the Elac support center, Ím calling upon you.
Could it be that there is a track limit after all?
Is the processor too weak to handle 5000+ albums?
If so, the discovery is a useless device for anybody with major music files.
Possible buyers should think twice before buying the discovery.
Or: Do you have any glorious idea what’s going wrong? I still fancy this device, but..!!!!
Your advice would be highly appreciated.
Thanks for your efforts.
Wolfgang
I don’t do support, just lack the time. Sorry.
Add a separate PSU to the HDD, or use a network server. Configure the Settings/Library audio analysis to "Throttled". I think there was an issue about partition size, though. What file system are you using? Try using multiple smaller partitions on the HDD and add them separately from Settings/Storage.
Is the Discovery server still viable? I bought a used one for $250 with a 30 day return policy. Hope I don't need to return it.
Well, it's phasing out. But it still is a great device. Even more if you payed $ 250!
I really only care about local music playback and not concerned about the streaming services it supports not working in the future if they don't update the firmware. Is there any reason to think that accessing the data from Roon servers will stop working? If I could just keep getting the Roon data for the life of the device I'd be happy.
It's fantastic, but... the only thing they didn't add is being able to use your ipad/iphone or androidphone as an endpoint...
Yeah, well, it is the 'light' version of Roon.
So, still no DSD right Hans?
Correct
But will it convert DSD to PCM?
Bummer. Only downside to this product. Went with an Auralic Aries Mini since I have about 80% DSD, but would much rather have Roon for music discovery.