 After the ELEC DSS-101G music server was introduced four years ago, there were some software updates, but from mid-2017 it stopped. Until 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 ELEC Discovery, it is a complete network server and player running a live 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 screen to squeezebox renderers. Add to that 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 function's 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 or better. Tidal uses MQA coded flag files for higher sampling rates while Kuboos uses regular flag files. Tidal was already supported by Roon Essentials and the login procedure has been adapted to the new protocol. Kuboos is now added. Both services are fully integrated with your own music. You can easily add an album from Tidal or Kuboos to your music collection. It then feels like you own that music while in fact only a link to that album on Tidal or Kuboos is added to your collection. Even if you don't have your own music, Roon Essentials is a better way and a nicer way to play music, at least in my opinion, than using the Tidal or Kuboos app. By the way, both Tidal and Kuboos require a subscription and are ad free. One e-leg discovery is seen as one user that needs one subscription, as where this one e-leg discovery can serve all family members with whatever supported network players 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 Lingdorf 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 the 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 Artfark 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 is now an 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 can already have their own playlist 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's bio and the track credits. If you place JPEGs or PDFs with cover art or booklet pages in the same sub directory 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 footed 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, Maiga, spoken in Hungary, Mandarin, Swedish, Japanese, Norwegian, Korean, Spanish, Danish, Vietnamese and yet another Chinese language. Services is to sign in to title, Kobus and Dropbox if you want to use these and have a subscription. Dropbox can be used to automatically backup the metadata database Roon Essentials built from your music collection. Scheduling an automated backup is done here and can also be stored on a drive or share. Your music files need to be backed up by yourself separately. Very handy is the list of keyboard shortcuts. That was already present in the 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 version speed also. Now further is an expanded file tech support, for instance the tech Involt People 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 very side platform that uses an NXP Freescale Cortex A9 Cort core at 1.2 GHz. I thought the 30,000 track limit was due to the limited processing power. But now that this limit has been lifted, it shows that this wasn't the case. I hooked up the Discovery to the cheapest Synology NASA round, the DS119J plus a USB spinning drive and had it indexed in total 51.839 tracks. And although it 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 Sergeant Pepper in the top left corner. Here I encounter yet another change. You can display all tracks in one go or limited view to either one disc. And yes, the anniversary edition of Sergeant Pepper spends two discs. Another improvement. You can check the credits from here, that, by the way, are quite complete for this album. And see other available versions. First the Kobus 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 prints and go for the artist known as Prince. Choose controversy and play. 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 the metadata and audio analysis in the background for some days. If you go to Settings, Library and set the 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 with these settings further. The E-Link Discovery DSS-101G Music Server M-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 wants a one box solution. Loves Rune but has limited budget. For people that go for the sound quality of my setup 3 or the low end of my setup 2, the analog outputs are a good match. For my setup 1 I can use it as a server and use the Aurelic Aries G2 as rune endpoint. So I can place the Discovery near my setup 1 and 2 and give them each an analog feed while connecting the Aries G2 downstairs over the network. As you can see also the Mini DSP SHD Studio, the Bluesound Node 2i, the NAD T758 Version 3 AV receiver, the two Sonos Renderers and the Raspberry Pi with LO Boss DAC and Volumio Software are connected. Each can be sent music individually while the endpoints that are rune ready can play synchronized music throughout the house. The same goes for Airplay devices amongst them and for Sonos devices amongst them. At just €1100 it is an affordable and simple to use all in one Rune solution for it contains the Rune Essentials license, the server and the player. You can control it from a computer, tablet or smartphone. Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iPadOS and iOS are supported. Which brings me to the end of this video. I love to see you back next Friday, 5pm C European time in a new video. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you like to support my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBProduct.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.