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    The Computer Audiophile

    Roon 1.7 With Valence Is Released

    Given that Roon 1.7 was a somewhat under the radar relase Wednesday evening, and those of us in the press were asked not to release any information until 9:00 GMT, there isn't much value to add to the official press release at the moment. The version 1.7 discussion began as soon as Roon Cores, clients and remotes beagn upgrading last night, and continues right now in the Audiophile Style forum here - https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/57706-roon-17-is-available/

     

    I have high hopes that Roon Valence is similar to Pandora's Music Genome Project, a technology that I believe it the best in the business with respect to separating musical attributes and finding different ways to link people with their favorite music (discoverd and undiscovered). I look forward to digging into Roon version 1.7 and putting Valence through its paces. 

     

    Note: The lifetime subscription to Roon has increased in cost from $499 to $699 with the release of version 1.7. The yearly cost remains $119.

     

     

    Official press release:

     

     

    Introducing Valence — finding your next music obsession with Roon 1.7!

    Roon Labs is proud to announce the largest project we’ve ever undertaken. After two years of focused design and engineering, we’re unveiling an entirely new technology we call Valence.

    Valence is a system built on a massive new cloud database, which uses machine learning algorithms – designed with our passion for music – to model the many dimensions of relatedness more deeply than ever before. And because you use Roon to explore, collect, and listen to the music you love, Valence understands you like no other.

    The secret ingredient is the Roon community; Valence learns from the musical tastes of over 100,000 expert listeners who use Roon. 

    The result is the ultimate music expert, which presents the world of music through a lens personalized just for you.

    If you’ve used the hugely popular Roon Radio, you’ve seen an early example of Valence in action. In the same way that the meaning of “radio” was transformed in Roon 1.6, today you’ll see Valence transform your understanding of ideas like “new releases for you” and “suggested for you” in Roon 1.7.

    Beyond Valence, there’s more to this update: we’ve brought the kind of experience you expect from Roon to the world of live radio, and Roon OS has received a massive performance boost. As always, feedback from the community has led to a number of other improvements as well.

     

    Roon 1.7 includes three entirely new features that are powered by Valence:

    New Releases For You

    roon valence 01.jpg

    In most streaming apps, “New releases” are just a list of everything that’s been released this week, or sometimes only certain titles that are being marketed. Valence lets Roon show you new releases you care about, based on your library and listening history. The more you use Roon, the better the “New Releases” will get!

    Recommended For You

    roon valence 02.jpg

    Valence also powers a small selection of recommendations on the album screen, selecting relevant albums and allowing you to a browse a nearly-endless supply of similar music.

    Artist Play and Composer Play

    roon valence 03.jpg

    These new play options use Valence to pick a selection of an artist or composer's best music by determining their “heyday” periods, finding their most popular albums (based on Roon users’ listening history), and digging deep to find lesser-known gems. Whether it’s an artist you know and love, or someone new you’re ready to explore, now you can just click Play.

     

    Valence now improves several long-standing Roon features as well:

    Faster, more accurate Search

    roon valence 04.jpg

    We’ve completely re-engineered our search algorithm based on feedback from the Roon community. Valence now tracks hundreds of data points when interpreting search terms, delivering more accurate and relevant results.

    Better context for classical Compositions

    roon valence 05.jpg

    Classical composer and composition views have been improved, presenting data more clearly and comprehensively. Most importantly, Valence uses the community’s listening history to allow sorting by popularity, so you can benefit from the expertise of other listeners when choosing performances of a composition.

    Credits metadata is vastly improved

    roon valence 06.jpg

    Valence has considerably increased both the coverage and quality of credits in Roon. Over 44 million additional credits have been introduced to fill gaps that existed before, and the roles associated with those credits are more consistent and accurate. This release also includes support for importing credits from file tags.

     

    Other features of the 1.7 release:

    Live Radio directory

    roon valence 07.jpg

    We’re thrilled to launch our Live Radio directory, a collection of more than 1000 live radio stations, hand curated by the Roon community. Now you can browse stations by genre or quickly find your local stations. As with all streaming content, live radio can be added to your library for easy access later. Remember, the directory is an actively maintained database; if you have questions, suggestions, or if there’s a station you can’t find, let them know in the Radio Curation category on our community site.

    Streaming Optimizations

    roon valence 08.jpg

    For music playing from TIDAL and Qobuz, Roon now buffers data in a less disruptive way, and there are optimizations which reduce disk activity, CPU usage, and memory traffic. This means that streaming content starts faster and slower internet connections (or lower-powered cores) may also benefit when streaming high-resolution content.

    Android audio improvements

    When playing on an Android device, Roon now plays in the background with metadata and transport controls available in the Android “notification” area. Roon performs more gracefully when the state of  an Android device’s audio output changes, including when a phone call is received, when a headphone cable is removed, when a video is started on Facebook, etc. Signal Path will also report exactly how an Android device renders audio. Like most Android apps, Roon depends on the device to set sample rates.

    Performance improvements on Roon OS

    Starting with Roon 1.7, when running on Roon OS, Roon will use the Microsoft .NET Core Runtime, which offers higher performance and improved memory efficiency.

    Library management aspects of Roon typically run 30-40% faster, use less power, and generate less heat. This also enables larger music libraries on the same hardware.

    Roon OS has always been the best way to run Roon for most users, but as of this change, we are confident that it is the best option for everyone, regardless of library size. Roon on Roon OS is now more efficient and performs better than Roon on any other platform or product.

     

    We’ve also listened to user feedback beyond the big-ticket features, and introduced a variety of little crowd pleasers:

    Zone Icons

    roon valence 09.jpg

    Roon has always included custom icons for Roon Ready and Roon Tested devices, but today’s release allows for more customization for the Roon zones around your home, with more than 40 zone icons included.

    More File Tag processing

    Roon can now automatically create “Roon Tags” from special file tags at the album or track level. This is a hugely flexible mechanism for the importing of nearly any external organizational system. This release includes support for importing lyrics and credits from file tags as well.

    Visual improvements

    Roon's font and color rendering has also undergone a major overhaul. Across the app, on all platforms, text shapes will appear cleaner and smoother, and the intent of the font is better preserved, improving readability. Additionally, the coloring of album covers should feel truer to the physical media on a wider range of LCD monitors.

    Text layout improvements

    In addition to looking better, Roon now has complete support for right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew. Faster performance in the user interface and less resource intensive rendering makes a significant impact, especially on tablets and phones.




    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments



    @frederick184@firedog read my trials and tribulations in previous posts on page one here-- how i ended up with audio zones that never existed in ver 1.6 and 2 zones of my brand new Schiit Yggdrasil GS one playing only  an end of  pathway of OS mixer/high quality and another one of Apple core audio playing lossless.

    I came here to AS and to Head-Fi.org for an answer because my last fiasco with ROON's socalled 'support'/'community' ended up like the ending line to a movie...."forget it Jake, it's just Chinatown" good luck/ keep me posted but i have no idea how to help you except what i did... disconnect everything shut the computer down unhook the dac then restart/rehook(and cross your fingers) you might be surprised what you may find 'new' on ver 1.7!

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    3 hours ago, firedog said:

    Did you try removing the account info so your account isn't registered and  then re-entering the info and re-registering?

    Yes, I did.  It didn't help.  The other core on my laptop accepts my credentials just fine.  I tried connecting to the server core, but I need to log in, and when I do it asks "are you online?"

     

    Colin

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    I have used Daphile years,.. and JRiver. 

    Al the years was Daphile the best... Only 

    Now I try a month audirvana and Roon!

    For me is it now Roon as Winner. 

    Play with a Intel nuc(roon rock) and on the USbridge signature Ropieee, Wow!

    It is  amazing now to 1.7 🎶

    I have my own music (wave) and stream qubuz and tidal, Qubuz is a musical winner. 

    I have buy roon for a lifetime membership now.

    I'm happy with the music 🎻 

     

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    1 hour ago, DancingSea said:

    How could they charge more?

     

    Because they can. Roon is the current darling of the Audiophile press. That is until a new player comes along. 

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    @DancingSea Hi- I think you are correct- for those of you that don't remember ROON evolved from and came from the same people who brought us Meridian's massively expensive system that was ROON on steroids- I remember drooling over it on the cover of Stereophile. I bought the 500$ lifetime subscription it has paid for itself but I don't how it helps ROON's bottom line. I love ROON's format SQ etc and this new version--- but A+3 with it's 'one man show' is much more friendly quicker to react to problems etc and world wide must far outdistance ROON in customers-it would be very sad if Amazon or Apple buys ROON it would be even less friendly/cooperative but have more customers.

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    Has anyone here encountered the track skipping issues with the new release?

    Just started today for me... not sure if it’s a Tidal issue or not. There’s a couple of threads over at the community.

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    23 minutes ago, Jud said:

     

    I don't use Roon. But it seems to me they have to find the money somewhere to pay people to provide the extra metadata and search facilities the software has.

     

    Jud, common sense has no place here in this forum...  😉

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    1 hour ago, JDoyle said:

    Has anyone here encountered the track skipping issues with the new release?

    Just started today for me... not sure if it’s a Tidal issue or not. There’s a couple of threads over at the community.


    I logged out of Tidal and then back in... seems to have fixed my skipping issue 

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    Nice to see the update. Incremental improvements.

     

    Please, Roon. Allow remote streaming from one's home Core, even if transcoded to MP3 320kbps for performance/data reduction.

     

    That would be the one obvious feature I suspect many desire (software like Logitech Media Server have been doing this for years) and worth a significant version increase.

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    2 hours ago, Archimago said:

    Please, Roon. Allow remote streaming from one's home Core, even if transcoded to MP3 320kbps for performance/data reduction.

     

    BubbleUPnP does it pretty well as well.

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    On 11/23/2019 at 7:36 PM, Jud said:

     

    I don't use Roon. But it seems to me they have to find the money somewhere to pay people to provide the extra metadata and search facilities the software has.

    Not to mention the functionality, look and feel.

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    On 11/23/2019 at 7:36 PM, Jud said:

     

    I don't use Roon. But it seems to me they have to find the money somewhere to pay people to provide the extra metadata and search facilities the software has.

    This. See the following quoted from Sound and Vision's recent review of the Roon 1.7 update; this is at least in significant part human labor that Roon subscribers pay for. Roon is software as a service, not just an app you download and run like Audirvana.

     

    "Valence has also led to improvements in several long-standing Roon features, including a re-engineered search algorithm that now tracks “hundreds of data points” to deliver more accurate and relevant results. Classical composer and composition views also now present data more clearly and comprehensively and enable sorting by popularity (based on the Roon community’s listening history). Meta data for credits has been improved in terms of the coverage and accuracy. Roon says more than 44 million additional credits have been introduced to fill gaps that existed before."


    Read more at https://www.soundandvision.com/content/roon-update-takes-personalization-next-level#2Df77Fj4Q31ZDbYW.99

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    On 11/22/2019 at 2:31 PM, bobbmd said:

    @The Computer Audiophile @rn701 as it turns out when i rebooted my mac and restarted ROON ver !.7   my Zone(s) for yggy gs gen5usb was now 2 different zones one with apple core audio one with OS mixer plus i now had 4 different zones i never had before or had set up one for my family room apple tv/one for my apple tv in living room/one for chromcast-google home in the kitchen and which i never automatically connected/one for my hdtv display. I have no idea why they showed up after the download of ver 1.7 and after i rebooted but all is ok for now and A+3 works just fine

    @rn701 that page you showed me is what i got if i clicked setup for the DAC that only played high quality just says device and there is no exclusive mode but if i click the other yggy DAC or ME2 dac it shows/offers exclusive mode because they are set up for Apple core audio. I have stopped trying to figure why these things happen like the bumper sticker says... "schiit(shit) happens" and trying to figure out how ROON acts and reacts is like "...forget it Jake it's just Chinatown..."

    A+3 Qobuz and TIDAL all work well alone now.

    will try to post a screenshot of what i am explained.

    thanks for all your help and i hope i have not worn out my welcome (if i ever had one) have a nice weekend and Happy Thanksgiving

     

    Did you reboot the modem/router?  I had several connectivity issues that were always solved with a modem power cycle.

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    @fpalm69 yes I did I had my cable provider Spectrum do it along with what I did while all my stuff was off/disconnected

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    Version 1.7/505 broke the "Prefer File" import functionality on my server.  I have a lot of classical albums Roon determines to be of an "unknown artist".  Prior to now, I'd selected "prefer file" on everything I could, and Roon consistently used my two-tier, file system naming scheme (composer then album) to form the album name.  As of 1.7/505, Roon ignores my names if it knows the artist, so I have a mess of inconsistent album names.  Come to think of it, this is how Room behaved when I first tried it, but it got better a year later and I subscribed.  Now it's back again.  Guess I'm a bit of an oddball in that I Iike most of the UI, but want their metadata handling turned completely off.  But then, that's how they justify the subscription fee.

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    On 11/23/2019 at 11:21 PM, DancingSea said:

     

    I write this not as a criticism of Roon, but rather out of software economics curiosity.  All the other players in this space, A+, Amarra, HQP, etc have not taken the subscription route.  These charge for a license for a given rendition, have free minor updates along the way, and then offer major, optional updates for an additional fee.  With Audirvana I paid $74 for 2.6 and paid another $40 to upgrade to 3.5 about 2 years later.

     

    The question is why are Roon’s financial needs so much greater than the other software players?  Why is a $500, and now $700 for a lifetime license, not sustainable for Roon? Is it because Roon is a larger company compared to the one man bands of A+ and HQP, thus have more mouths to feed?  Following the A+ pattern I described above of a 2 year upgrade cycle, it would take approximately 30 years to equal a total of $674 paid to Damien.

     

    I use Roon everyday.  Roon is a premium product and when combined with HQP, makes an outstanding system.  I understand Roon wants to maximize their profit and will charge what the market will bear.  I understand that a continual stream of annual fees will make Roon more money.  But I don’t understand how a $700 lifetime license fee is specifically unsustainable, or even $500.

     

    Roon does seem to have a corporate structure of VP’s, COO’s, CFO’s etc.  While HQP and Audirvana have a corporate structure of perhaps a few house pets.  And maybe that’s the ultimate difference of why Roon needs more money, to pay the big salaries?

     

    It’s an interesting strategic quandary.  The low price to get more folks in the tent vs a significantly higher price to get more from fewer.  I like Valence and appreciate Roon’s move to incorporate Pandora like recommendations, and the new radio features are interesting, but how much more can really be done to improve Roon in a major way?  And it seems they will one day have to move to monthly billing.  But isn’t $10/ month about the ceiling for album sorting software?  How could they charge more?  Seems they need a lot more customers and not yet higher prices.

    I don't know the details of the economics, but clearly Roon, with it's use of metadata data bases and full integration of streaming services into the UI and the user's library, has a lot of expenses - both royalty payments and server costs - that most of the other playback softwares don't have. Those are ongoing expenses, not one off charges, that have to be covered. So the economics of a program like Roon are quite different. 

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    If I understand it correctly, Valence is an adaptable engine that analyzes my musical tastes and makes recommendations based on my selections?
     

    if so, I would hesitate to use that, it sounds like the “Facebooking” of music, where you get more of what they think you like. 
     

    i could be wrong, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. What happens to the prediction algorithm when you listen to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with the Vince Guaraldi Trio on Christmas Eve?  Or The Messiah?

     

    Do I get Flying Lotus for the next three weeks?

     

     

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    32 minutes ago, SJK said:

    What happens to the prediction algorithm when you listen to “A Charlie Brown Christmas” with the Vince Guaraldi Trio on Christmas Eve?  Or The Messiah?

     

    Do I get Flying Lotus for the next three weeks?

     

     

    I hope the algorithm is smarter than to look at the name Charlie Brown and make decisions. If it’s like Pandora's it looks at way more factors.
     

    Roon has been tight-lipped so far.  

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    Chris,

     

    Then I’ll wait for an update from you. I do have hardware that is Roon Ready and don’t mind trying something new. 

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    I updated to 1.7.  No issues at all.  Works great.

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    If it wasn't for the RAAT protocol, which works seamlessy over many devices, I would using something else other than Roon. The handling of metadata really does have its holes.

    The box set identification mentioned before is really poor and a major gripe.

     

    There's examples like this which send me to despair...

    Dusty Springfield's "Am I the same Girl" on the Collection of A and B sides shows a link to three other versions in my library. 

    The same title is found on the Dusty Anthology disc 2,  Swing out sister's Live in Tokyo 2005 and 1992 Get in touch with yourself.

    Fine.

    When a query is entered into JRiver, there are two entries found.

    "Am I the same Girl" and "Am I the same Girl?" 

    The title with the ? is found on UMG Masters best of Swing out Sister, Dusty Anthology disc 2, and 1992 Get in touch with yourself. 

    In examining the tags for the latter three entries, JRiver is correct in picking up the ? from the tag information.

     

    Roon fails in correctly picking up the ? as it makes a mish mash of results. Either list all "Am I the same Girl" or "Am I the same Girl?" or as results are typed into the query box make the distinction, it doesn't.  This is just an example, many times I see, I wonder if another artist has covered, and I'm sure there is, but there are no links. Why bother.

     

    Also not fun are the critic's reviews, don't care about them, any extra information can be searched online and many are missing from my collection anyway, leaving a huge empty space.

     

    The worst feature is the Artists browsing page, where a photo of the artist (if it's not a grey tile) is a recent photo. This yanks my chain, since when Jriver browses the Artist, the cover pages of the album are shown which are far more familiar. 

     

    So I use Jriver to browse Artists or search for specific titles and play them in Roon.

     

     

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