Looks like their strategy has not changed that much as the new streaming apps have been announced.
SA-35 similar to SA-30
SA-45 even higher end at $5K
It pisses me off that they haven’t just improved the existing app for new and old customers.
I am sure this has nothing to do with technical limitations, but instead the mothership Samsung deploying a smartphone strategy requiring a new replacement purchase every 2-3 years.
I don’t think it has anything to do with Samsung, but who knows?
I’m also pissed off at them for the way they managed this. Relesing completely new app only for new devices and stopping FW dev for Sa30 means that effectively this product is dead for them.
Which means that as much as i like Radia series looks and i’m sure they will sound great, i will not trust Arcam with my money anymore…
I have been emailing Arcam every few months to see if any update on Tidal FLAC. I tried again this week and they basically said they have no plans to do anything more for SA30 software. im quite pissed about this, missing Tidal FLAC hiRes is quite annoying for me. and to see a lot of other brands updating their software to support Tidal FLAC hiRes makes it extra annoying. I will probably buy a Wiim and use that as my steamer. but I told Arcam I wont buy this brand again, as they have effectively abandoned SA30 owners- got no reply to that email!!
That’s pretty sad, but then I suppose they and others feel pretty annoyed they had to do the MQA certification for Tidal and now that’s being dropped. I get that something is always changing and and they can’t support every device for ever, but I can’t get my head around this attitude.
I’m a Qobuz user (which is FLAC) and don’t plan to switch back to Tidal any time soon, but this puts me in the same frame of mind as you, I.e. don’t buy an Arcam streamer ever again, and think seriously hard about anything else that might be so software reliant.
PS: wondering if CDS50 and ST60 are in the same situation 
I own a CDS50 and I haven’t seen an update for it in a long time.
I use Roon for Tidal and Qobuz so I have only used Tidal connect a few times and if you forgot to disconnect the Tidal App you needed to reboot the amplifier for it to work again (or at least that was my memory).
It is disappointing to see that Arcam has completely abandoned a full product line within a few years. THE SA30 and SA20 were still getting reviews towards the end of last year, so if I had bought one off the back of that I would be mightily annoyed.
It has made me think that I want to break the link between streamer and amplifier in the future and get a dedicated amplifier. I have several external Streamers and streaming DACs already, but the one box to do almost everything was strong.
Truth be told the SA35 and SA45 look very strong, but I am not sure if I could bring myself to buy one of I needed one🤔
(Where are the incredible trade in offers from Arcam by way of apology)
Officially announcement from Tidal that the company will no longer support MQA tract starting 24 July. This should be an issue for arcam team to make an update!!
I dont want to spend more on the external streamer if my current one still has potential 
They (Arcam) never make announcements about anything except new kit releases 
. I do agree it’s disappointing
Here and there I pick up on this from hifi blogs. There is an opinion that hi-res (beyond CD quality) isn’t all that, as many people realise there is so much else going on in quality of recording, dynamic range the gear you listen through and your surroundings. The number of times I hear “the old 90s CD release is the best one to get….” for example 
Personally although I’m a Qobuz user I’ve decided “hi-res” isn’t worth chasing after so much. And I’m listening to more vinyl now than I ever have!
Did Arcam ever really sell that many SA30? What percentage of those users bought it just because of supporting Tidal MQA (which isn’t all “hi res” anyway)? And what percentage of those pay for the top subscription? Given they are no longer making the SA30, what ‘s in it for Arcam to do anything about the Tidal FLAC hi-res situation? It’s just cost to them and making no further money, so I can’t see them ever being able to justify it from a business perspective.
Go to the lower subscription tier on Tidal, and just go enjoy the music until the SA30 dies, or you may as well replace the SA30 completely imho. 
Well…
What’s in it for them? Company credibility? User satisfaction? You know, those little things that help sales of new devices?
As said before - as much as i like the sound of SA30 and am sure new Radia devices will sound same or better, i will never buy Arcam again because of lack of support. And there’s more people like me on this forum.
In the era of social media, abandoning users who spent a lot of money for their devices is just plain stupid. It WILL impact company credibility and sales in the end.
Of course they will still sell Radia devices, mostly to people who don’t know (YET) of their practices. But sooner or later it will hit them.
For some reason NAD, Lyngdorf and some others are able to justify support for older devices. You know why? Cause they understand that this is the way to get loyal customers.
Yes, customers will use those devices for a longer time, but when looking for a replacement they will likely go back to NAD or Lyngdorf.
I will also use SA30 for a longer time probably, just using i.e. external streamer. But i will NEVER go back to Arcam. They lost me, same way as they lost many others. So their way of working is a straight way to make sure you will NOT get loyal customers.
How’s that for business justification?
I guess by asking the question I was thinking more of the financials (bottom line) than anything else. Appreciate there may be other less tangible things, customer satisfaction etc. (net promoter scores anyone? ). I don’t know how big the SA30 customer base is, but I would be surprised if it were a large one. I would assume it’s a relatively niche market, and more therefore for Arcam to gain financially by getting new customers for new products that they put their “lessons learned” into, than keeping the exisitng SA customers and maintaining the “old” devices,
Well, if Arcam is looking only at CURRENT financials, i don’t want to do any business with them 
But i get your point.
And my point is, that in any business customer satisfaction is and should be important. It’s a selling point, so it has financial impact in the end. It can also be a tangible thing, if only company is managed in a right way. If management is looking only for a short term profit, company is not managed correctly…
Well, any potential Radia series buyer that reads this forum or comes across SA30 owners messages in social media or asks SA30 owners will really think twice and probably NOT buy it in the end.
If anyone interested in Radia series would ask me, i would strongly say “do not get it”.
I have no idea if they learned their lessons. They just annouced Radia all-in-ones, so we don’t know if it’s not going to be same fiasco as SA30. We don’t know if they will not be abandoned after a year or two. So why should i trust them i assume they have learned anything?
Especially that when announcing Radia series they abandoned SA series at the same time, so they definitely didn’t learn ANYTHING on customer satisfaction or customer service.
I just think most radia buyers will look at it in isolation without any knowledge or thought for SA30. If anything they might be influence by Arcam brand reputation but I don’t see that damaged as yet, even given experiences of a lot of people hereabouts. Also how many happy SA30 users are there without issues? If you are one you likely won’t be on this forum or looking to discover issues.
I’m not fundamentally disagreeing with you, but my impression is Arcam (or at least the current owners) don’t care so long as they are still making money one way or the other…
I have never bought Arcam before. I bought it based on a solid dealer recommendation and Dirac. I will never buy Arcam again. It has terrible resale because of the poor reputation of support and fast model recycle. I would rather spend twice as much up front on gear that holds its value and has a strong history of support. I do like my Arcam gear. But I have been in the audio hobby for 30 years and I am not used to taking a beating on what I consider low end high end gear. Never again.
In all fairness, i think SA series was the first one to be abandoned so early in the lifecycle. In the past their product lifecycle was actually pretty long.
But of course support always sucked. If i remember correctly there are still some unresolved bugs left in FMJ AVR’s. They had plenty of time to solve them, as FMJ was present for some time, but they are just not willing to. So that’s yet another share of customers, that will not be getting Arcam in the future…
Probably before Harman then Samsung acquired them. My guess the old Arcam doesn’t exist anymore. I love the look and specs of the new SA 45 but I would only purchase it after its been on the market for 2 years bug free, then only at half price or less… 
I hereby attach the reply an owner received from Arcam Support when he complained about Tidal HiRes, lack of updates etc. It was posted on a Facebook group. I think it sheds some light on the issues we discuss here:
" I’ve taken a look at your previous case for some context around your query. It would be wonderful if I could provide a simple one word answer, but unfortunately it’s not quite so simple.
Tidal connect’s changes bring up the issue of licensing – we are certified with Tidal Connect to do MQA through our platform. Tidal connect has changed, and so there would be a new certification process. They do support Tidal Hi Res via Roon, due to a quirk of how their license and software works, so it is accessible in some way.
You are right in that development resource is being funnelled towards the new products, and were they using the same hardware platform as the ST60 and SA30, there is a good chance that the certification for the new Tidal platform would be backwardly valid. However, as there’s a different hardware component that may not be the case, nor would the same code-base necessarily work. There are investigations ongoing behind the scenes as to where they stand, but nothing I can shed any light on at this time.
One thing I am able to say is that in terms of documentation and communication, overall customer focussed development, and software development there have been a great number of changes in recent years which will not be visible until the next range of products is out.
We have seen various comments on social media --perhaps the same that you have seen – but unfortunately, until last October, every product on the market had reached the point of no return in development prior to Arcam’s purchase by Harman, so they were developed by a very small team (fewer than 25 people total by recollection, including warehouse, sales and admin staff) so software development contracts and general market leverage was limited when it came to ensuring we had future support to provide long term in-depth feature change support.
The Radia products are the first products developed with Harman’s resources and it has allowed us to expand our team and invest more in every aspect of the products which I hope will pay off, as we have been working hard on making good use of what we now have access too. The unfortunate thing is that while the purchase happened in 2018, no meaningful changes were able to happen until the near-release products were actually released… and then a new product development cycle had to begin, so nobody will see those changes until much later.
All that is to say that I am unsure if the ST60 and SA30 will see any updates, but only because we aren’t sure if the software that allows Tidal’s Flac output to function is compatible with the that platform. Even so, they were developed and designed by a largely different team, and technically by a different company. The plans for the upcoming products are different, but only time will tell how that goes, but based on what I’ve seen, I am confident that people will be quite pleased with what re release.
I appreciate that this is somewhat long, and doesn’t really say a great deal of specifics, but as somebody who has been personally involved in product development and ongoing support from the days of the FMJ range, I am more excited about the upcoming products than anything I’ve previously been involved with.
That doesn’t change the status of previous products of course, but it does mean a great deal towards future product support, and that is all that most of us can contribute to at this stage."
Right, so in other words “we know we messed up and failed the customers, but it wasn’t really our fault. But now we promise we will not do that again. Ok, we promised that in the past, but this time you can really trust us” 
Also i don’t understand the statement about the platform. So new devices use same platform as old one, so it might be possible to get certification. But it’s also possible that certification will not happen, as they are using different hardware (platform).
So which one is it? Is it same or not?
I think It’s saying if it was the same platform between the ranges the likelihood is the development work on the new range could be reused or ported somehow to the SA30/ST60……IF…. So on the one hand they offer hope but anlso ancknowledge, “But they’re different”.
Would it not have made sense then, since the radia series is new, to build that on a compatible platform as the previous generation?
Anyway, it sounds to me like they are saying if it s easy we might still update it but don’t hold your breath, you already have roon certification which is the way to get the hi res FLAC playback, so it’s not a priority. But also we’re not going out of our way to recertify the older product. I’m sure we’d all happily take a free roon subscription from them 
I think what he was trying very hard to say in a nice way is " We know we dicked the previous owners, and well we enjoyed it. And please bend over for Radia as its a special time in our Arcam-Hardman lives! "
You nailed it Ken