Roon Vs jriver

[firedog]

It all depends on how you interface with your collection and what you are looking for. 

 

JRiver is great with its UI built for a large screen. It's great if you conceive of your collection in folders and want to navigate it that way. It also does things like video, that Roon doesn't. If you know exactly what you want to listen to, use JRiver.

Roon is a different user experience. It's for people who like to see relationships between different albums and artists.  For people who like to recreate, in a sense, the experience of the LP cover and it's information. For people who like to have instant access to Internet info related to their music. And for people who like to do a bit more wandering in their collection, or have their playback UI "surprise" them by reminding them of something in the collection they haven't listened to in a while. And of course, it gives you full integration of Tidal into your library. 

 

 

[firedog]

On 8/15/2017 at 3:35 PM, koupa said:

Second it is a database and not a conventional player. So it lacks a file manager. I have three different hard drives with music. I can only filter the root drive and not a subfolder. So if I want to manage my Beatles collection I can't. I cannot choose D:/The Beatles folder. 

You can get just about any result you want with Roon. Depends how you set up your tags and what you tell it to do with them, and how you search. 

 The Bookmark feature will also allow you define a very specific result (like the content of your Beatles folder, if it is included in your definitions of your library) and you can save that definition so yo can call up that result again. 

[firedog]

On 8/15/2017 at 4:46 PM, Johnseye said:

There's a big difference between a 3" and 10" screen.  I listen to a lot of live music and some bands like the Dead, Panic and Phish have over 1000 shows.  Roon's Android app can not browse through those albums, or shows, smoothly.  In fact it can take over a minute to move one scroll through.  I've repeated the behavior on multiple tablets.  I've posted the issue to the Roon forums with no response from the dev team there.  

Don't have this issue on my 13.3 inch Android tablet. Works fast and smoothly. So I'm not sure your issue is Roon. 

[firedog]

On 8/15/2017 at 5:58 PM, jimm2 said:

and didn't use such draconian tactics on their support forum. The latter really drove me to not want to buy their product anymore. 

Yep. They were jerks here in their sponsored forum, also.

[firedog]

1 minute ago, Johnseye said:

 

It is Roon without a doubt.  I've had a conversation with Danny and Mike from Roon about it and shared a video of what I've experienced.  Danny explained the Android tablet UI is completely different from the phone.  He loosely explained one is browser, the other is screen  The next big release of Roon will unify the phone and tablet UI with a complete redesign.  I have no problem with the phone app, it just sucks for scrolling because it doesn't have a bar.

 

It comes down to Roon's inability to handle a large number of albums.

Okay, but I'm not having that issue.

In any case, I've also got a pretty basic 9.7 inch iPad, and it is a better tablet than any Android one I've seen and works great with Roon. is definitely a better experience than Android for Roon. Unless something drastic changes with the next big release, I'd tell people to get an iPad for Roon.

And we won't even mention JRemote for Android tablets; when I asked JRiver why it was so basic and lacking, and not really suitable for tablet use, they basically told me (my paraphrase): "it's designed for phones, we don't care if it looks crummy and doesn't scale properly for your tablet.  We aren't planning on doing anything about it"

[firedog]

9 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

I'm guessing your album count for any one artist isn't large enough.  I've found the delay starts occurring at around 100+ albums.  One of my artists has 1500 albums.  Essentially, every live show they performed is considered a multi-disc album.

 

Do the edges of your screen tear in Roon on the Android tablet?

I don't have an artist with 1000 albums. But I just brought up a view with over 2000 albums, and it doesn't have the issues you mentioned. Works fine. Scrolling has some split second delays, but nothing worse. I don't know what you mean by screen tear, so I guess I don't have it. 

[firedog]

3 hours ago, jriver said:

If you're taking a swing at JRiver, it was probably also me that you recall.  

 

Two things:

 

I would never call you a jerk.

 

We've never had a sponsored board here.  We do have an ad that has run for a long time.

 

Sorry about calling your threads a sponsored forum.

 

Don’t know who you are, since you don’t use your name. I also don’t know if either at your threads here or at your own support forum who the person is posting as a representative of  JRiver the company and if it is always the same person. 

 

What I do know, is that your company’s posts are regularly rude and dismissive to customers.  “Jerk” means being obnoxious or treating other people badly (that’s from Merriam Webster); in my world, if you do that, the term “jerk” is accurate and fitting.

 

Sorry if you find the term insulting. Would you prefer I simply said you were often obnoxious and treated customers badly in online forums, including your own? If your prefer that to the pejorative term “jerk”, I take the term “jerk” back. 

 

That is especially true when coming from someone who is a service industry and seems to think his slogan should be “the customer is always wrong” instead of the opposite. 

 

If you read through this thread, you’d see that several other customers of yours made similar, if somewhat less acerbic comments about your forum persona. So it’s not just me that thinks so. There are also similar comments about your forum persona at other forums where your customers are free to post their opinions, unlike the situation at your own forum. 

[firedog]

9 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

Obviously, you have an axe to grind, based on what exactly I do  not know.  JRiver is not perfect by any means, but I have used it happily for years.  I check their forums daily, I contribute some help to other users where I can, and I do not find any issues of which you speak.

 

But, if ticked off at them, fortunately there are other choices.  None of them would be nearly as capable of meeting my own specific needs.

 

No “axe to grind”. I was a customer of theirs until I decided I prefer Roon. I think their product is good; it just doesn’t fit my needs as well as Roon. For others the opposite is true and I have zero problem with that. Where did you read that I said the product isn’t good?

 

As far as my comments about the Jriver  forum persona being objectionable, I’m clearly not a minority of one, whether you see it or not. As noted, read back through this thread and see several other posters who also made negative comments about the JRiver online persona. Many similar comments have also been posted at other audio forums. 

 

I have my opinion, just as you do. Doesn’t mean I have an “axe to grind” any more than you do. Do you think I shouldn’t post my opinion just because it is negative? 

[firedog]

IME, the upsampling tools in Roon are very close to the quality of HQP. Not quite as good but very good. Roon also has sophisticated DSP tools of various types built in.

 

But if you are only interested in straight bit perfect playback and not in metadata, etc., not a lot of reasons to choose Roon over JRiver. I like the Roon interface a lot more, but that's just a matter of personal taste. 

[firedog]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

I wish both ROON and Audirvana would add a DSD compatible volume control, right now that is only available in HQPlayer... 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/64-bit-floating-point-volume-control-with-dsd/28810/13

they aren't big fans of the HQP solution

[firedog]

Barrows-

Roon is also about zone playback and simultaneous zone playback. HQP isn't. Different goals. Not in direct response to anything you said, but Roon also does DSP to DSD (including for volume levelling) without converting it to PCM, which is a really cool feature that you don't find too often. 

 

I think Roon understand many users have below optimum network setups. I think their POV on who their customer base is and what is most needed for them is simply very different from what you want to do.

 

At the high end of the audio hobby we all have specific likes and dislikes. I know of all sorts of HW and software I'd never buy b/c it doesn't have a specific attribute or feature I find necessary. Obviously whoever produced it decided that feature wasn't absolutely necessary. Doesn't mean it isn't a very good product, it just means it isn't the perfect match for me. 

 

But I use the HW volume control on my system only, so maybe I shouldn't comment on this one. I hate on screen volume controls. Can never get the precision I like with adjustments. 

[firedog]

22 minutes ago, Abarth said:

Volume control can't be done directly on DSD raw data. It has to be converted to PCM first, and then reconverted to DSD. Anyway, no matter how the wordlength in the digital domain is, volume control in software is a lossy thing. At the end your dac, will be feeded with data words that use only the first few bits at lower volumes in PCM. And for DSD in principle it's the same. For serious listening, software volume control is a no no (also if done in a DAC or network player).

But can't it be done if you convert it to mulitbit DSD (DSD wide)? This wouldn't involve using PCM decimation. To my way of looking at, that's still DSD.

[firedog]

1 minute ago, barrows said:

This is not entirely true, HQPlayer does it, and the ESS chips control DSD volume without conversion to PCM rates, that is the entire point here.  While some of this may be semantics, here is one way: say you have DSD 64 at 2.xxx MHz and one bit, then you modulate to 2.xxx MHz at 64 bits, then you control the volume.  This method is what is called "DSD wide" in the pro world and involves no decimation (no change in sample rate, which would create some artifacts, and is how you control DSD volume without degradation).  As long as your modulators are good, and the processing power is enough, this is a transparent process.

@Miska can explain (or not as he chooses) how HQPlayer does it, but it also does not convert to PCM to control volume.

Digital volume control in software is not lossy, if done right, and at 64 bits you have room for 40 bits (120 dB!) of attenuation with no loss, even at 32 bits there is room for 8 bits of attenuation with no loss of 24 bit files (24 dB) of attenuation.  And the fact is that your system, and mine, only really resolve 16 bits at most in room anyway.

The idea that digital volume control is a problem is a myth that needs to be debunked, analog volume controls are indeed lossy, but digital volume controls are transparent as long as one is not using too much attenuation.

okay, so you indirectly answered my post by confirming VC can be done in DSD wide.

So now the Roon thing is a little less understandable to me, as they do volume levelling and other DSP functions on DSD in just that way - without conversion to PCM.