Upcoming products/software from Antipodes

@MarkCole
I would like to ask what future upgrade/product plans are in pipeline for Antipodes . of course I realise you may not like to share certain upgrades you are working on , which might start an avalanche of “are we there yet” questions from us customers, but would like this thread to be used for what you can indeed share with us .

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This is like asking your wife what she would like to eat.
You won’t get an answer.

I think instead, maybe tell Mark, what we feel is lacking in the current line up.

I will go first , I think a possible integration with Dirac would be good for products that have player functions .
I think most people will benefit from an easy to integrate room correction .

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I can’t vouch for them or say how effective they are, as I have absolutely no experience with the units, but you could always add Dirac to your system by way of a mini DSP unit. It doesn’t really interest myself as I’d prefer to treat the actual room acoustics rather than use a sticking plaster, but then I’m lucky enough to have a room specifically set aside for my audio system. I can certainly see the appeal for those that don’t.
www.minidsp.com

I would love for them maybe develop their own play back software like how Innous does. Roon is getting quite erratic in sound quality between versions and it anyways was never developed with sound quality as primary focus.
Wish antipodes develops one purely with sound quality as primary focus

It seems to be that the next step for servers is software and hardware working together to achieve better sound quality. Some have already figured that out.

I think Antipodes has to go in that direction but I see that as unfortunate as the software business is brutal. Or more specifically, customers can be brutal when software isn’t working well. Even more so when software schedules slip, which they always do.

I’ve been somewhat a fly on the wall with respect to Taiko’s development of XDMS as a few close friends own Extremes. Since the goal of XDMS is the best possible sound quality, some things we take for granted are much harder to achieve. Gapless playback is one of the big ones. To be able to play gaplessly, the next track needs to be retrieved while the current track is playing. I believe that XDMS achieves such great sound quality because it shuts down all the noisy processes while a track is playing - but it can’t do this and also support gapless. Classical music enjoyment is greatly harmed by the lack of gapless, so the early releases of XDMs weren’t bringing much joy, as you might imagine.

I think the solution to the gapless problem will come from their new network card and switch. This will move the noisy operations to the switch, I believe. This is a good example of getting software and hardware to work together to improve sound quality but it doesn’t come cheap.

This was just a long-winded way of saying that credit owed to a manufacturer for advancing sound quality can be spoiled if the software doesn’t work perfectly. Having spent nearly my entire career managing software development programs, my advice to Antipodes would be that they stay out of the software business. But as a customer, I understand that they need to go there.

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