What are the design concepts and conditions informing the Prisma network player and application design?

We continue to work to improve the Prisma application, but it may be helpful to understand the original design concepts and the current conditions of the Prisma network player platform.

The Prisma bundle of network was never designed to have music streaming services such as Radio, TIDAL, or Qobuz embedded into the application. Rather, the Prisma application was designed for two purposes only:

• Control of a network connected hard drive
• Input and control configuration

All streaming services were to be accessed through casting using either AirPlay or Chromecast (with the addition of both Bluetooth and Spotify Connect for less critical, more casual listening), and the option of adding Roon and Audirvana for those who wished to have a more comprehensive and sophisticated playback experience from stored as well as streamed sources.

AirPlay and Chromecast were relatively new technologies at the time of Prisma’s development and held the promise of being able to use the streaming services’ native application for the best user experience while casting from a growing number of streaming services across the globe.

The expectation was that certain limitations found with each of the casting platforms would be addressed over time, improving the user experience even further. However, those expectation have not been met:

• AirPlay – although providing very stable network connection and offering gapless playback, 44.1kHz remains the maximum audio playback resolution (with 48kHz specification for video playback) even following the release of Apple Music HD, in addition to the audio performance limitations and control lag as a result using the associated mobile device as both controller and signal source.
• Chromecast – although providing high resolution playback of up to 96 kHz, the expectation was that it would be bought up to 192 kHz, along with MQA processing and gapless playback. More significantly, network connectivity remained unstable, particularly with higher resolution playback platforms like Qobuz and Tidal, even following updates from Google to the platform to improve conditions that were incorporated into the Prisma implementation. Finally, recent changes at TIDAL mean that any file above 24/48 kHz will be played back at 16/44.1kHz resolution when using Chromecast, with more details here.

With these lingering issues and the inability to offer connect options from TIDAL (and soon from Qobuz) due to concerns regarding future updates to the basic platform over time, we elected to embed TIDAL and Qobuz, with more details regarding this decision here.

With the hope this helps clarify the design concepts and conditions informing the Prisma network player design, and the pledge to continue to improve the application within the relative limitations of the basic design, as well as AirPlay and Chromecast implementation whenever possible.