Article: Roon 1.7 With Valence Is Released

[One and a half]

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.

 

 

[rn701]

Agree about RAAT. 

 

Otherwise (with apologies to Churchill), roon is the worst music playback software except for all the rest.

 

Haha, just kidding. But that's sort of where I'm at.

 

To me, 1.7 and Valencia or whatever branding seemed like a rush job to reassure all the folks on their forum wondering if/when there will ever be a new release or if roon is even still in business.

 

Their notion of crowdsourcing personalized recommendations based on AI applied to their users' likes and dislikes sounds great on paper, but it only goes so far with 100,000 or so weirdos like me liking and disliking v. say, Spotify's 100 million.  

 

Anyway, even with all their annoyances and attitude, roon is pretty slick and robust software for what it is. Here's hoping 1.8 or 2.0 Velociraptor or whatever knocks it out of the park.

 

If not, I'll be looking around again. And inevitably coming back to roon. Again.

 

 

[DarwinOSX]

On 11/21/2019 at 3:16 AM, senior.god said:

In my humble opinion: In relation to the prices for Amazon HD or the new Qobuz pricing the yearly Roon price is much too high.....😭

 

 

$119??  That's a bargain for what it does.

[DarwinOSX]

On 11/23/2019 at 1:21 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.

 

 

You use Roon extensively and think it's just album sorting software?  Seriously?

I have no idea how someone who is an audiophile thinks $119 a year for what you get with Roon is too much money.  It's a bargain.

[Ran]

For me, it's not about what you get, it's about what you do not.

[james45974]

I have demoed Roon twice and have decided that I am not in its marketing demographic.  This is because of my poor, metered internet connection and the fact that I don't stream because of this.  Therefore, in my case Roon has offered nothing different than what I can get many other places for far less money.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, DarwinOSX said:

 

 

You use Roon extensively and think it's just album sorting software?  Seriously?

I have no idea how someone who is an audiophile thinks $119 a year for what you get with Roon is too much money.  It's a bargain.

With all due respect, your last several posts have been fairly abrasive. Can you tone it down a bit?

[firedog]

I use all the various functions of Roon extensively: DSP, convolution, volume levelling, EQ, display to monitor, etc. It also has the best UI integration of streaming services there is. It does all that in one interface  and playback to multiroom, and gives me almost no problems - unlike many other SW packages that I have to mess with quite a bit to get them to do what I want and they are less convenient and don't have as useful a UI. 

 

I have zero issues with the price. You get what you pay for. 

 

If you don't need most of it's functions, then maybe it isn't for you. 

[bobbmd]

Even at 500$ for lifetime subscription is cheap/bargain as I did some years ago it has already paid for itself for the rest of my life is now ROON free with all the great features 

[ssh]

Roon's lifetime subscription at $500 was one of my best investments ever.

[DancingSea]

On 5/11/2020 at 6:21 AM, DarwinOSX said:

 

 

You use Roon extensively and think it's just album sorting software?  Seriously?

I have no idea how someone who is an audiophile thinks $119 a year for what you get with Roon is too much money.  It's a bargain.

 

I do think Roon is drastically overpriced.  I also own a lifetime Roon membership, which I also think is overpriced.  And I exclusively listen to music via Roon/ HQP4, and I think HQP4 is overpriced as well.  It's possible to think something is overpriced and yet still own, use and respect it.  Price is one thing, performance is another.  How one correlates the two is entirely individual, there is no right or wrong.

[AudioDoctor]

On 5/11/2020 at 4:16 PM, bobbmd said:

Even at 500$ for lifetime subscription is cheap/bargain as I did some years ago it has already paid for itself for the rest of my life is now ROON free with all the great features 

 

I agree with this 100%. It is even a bigger bargain when you realize that Roon has mentioned that at some point the lifetime license will be going away and everyone who did not buy one will be paying a yearly subscription fee. At the new price it takes 5.8 years for yearly subscription fees to cost as much as a lifetime license.

[firedog]

6 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

I do think Roon is drastically overpriced.  I also own a lifetime Roon membership, which I also think is overpriced.  And I exclusively listen to music via Roon/ HQP4, and I think HQP4 is overpriced as well.  It's possible to think something is overpriced and yet still own, use and respect it.  Price is one thing, performance is another.  How one correlates the two is entirely individual, there is no right or wrong.

You are obviously free to think things are overpriced, but your opinion isn't really based on anything other than your personal idea of money and value. 

Roon has stated that the lifetime subscription will stop being offered in the not distant future as it is not a viable economic propostion. Miska will tell you that he's not getting rich off of HQP, and has other work that he does to support himself.  

If your idea of fair pricing was applied, apparently both products would cease to exist. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I pay Adobe $56.98 every month so I can do a few things here and there in Illustrator and Premiere. Talk about overpriced. If I used them daily to make money the price would be fine. 

[dsnyder]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I pay Adobe $56.98 every month so I can do a few things here and there in Illustrator and Premiere. Talk about overpriced. If I used them daily to make money the price would be fine. 

 

Same here. 

[AudioDoctor]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I pay Adobe $56.98 every month so I can do a few things here and there in Illustrator and Premiere. Talk about overpriced. If I used them daily to make money the price would be fine. 

 

But the enjoyment and value I get out fo Roon on a daily basis is worth so much more to me than $119 a year, or in my case a lifetime license cost.

[The Computer Audiophile]

18 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

But the enjoyment and value I get out fo Roon on a daily basis is worth so much more to me than $119 a year, or in my case a lifetime license cost.

Agree. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 hours ago, dsnyder said:

 

Same here. 

Funny thing happened between then and now :~)

 

I just canceled Adobe Creative Cloud and purchased some apps from Affinity for $24.99 each, one time fee. They will work for me.

 

Roon on the other hand, I just renewed my yearly subscription yesterday. 

[ShawnC]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Funny thing happened between then and now :~)

 

I just canceled Adobe Creative Cloud and purchased some apps from Affinity for $24.99 each, one time fee. They will work for me.

 

Roon on the other hand, I just renewed my yearly subscription yesterday. 

You, of all people didn't buy a lifetime subscription.  Please rationalize this one to me. 

[k-man]

55 minutes ago, ShawnC said:

You, of all people didn't buy a lifetime subscription.  Please rationalize this one to me.

He had loads of those 60 days free coupons to use up.

[DancingSea]

On 5/13/2020 at 12:29 AM, firedog said:

You are obviously free to think things are overpriced, but your opinion isn't really based on anything other than your personal idea of money and value. 

Roon has stated that the lifetime subscription will stop being offered in the not distant future as it is not a viable economic propostion. Miska will tell you that he's not getting rich off of HQP, and has other work that he does to support himself.  

If your idea of fair pricing was applied, apparently both products would cease to exist. 

 

The whole thing is a matter of personal opinion when it comes to matters of value.  There is no right, or wrong answer.  Only your own 😉 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

The whole thing is a matter of personal opinion when it comes to matters of value.  There is no right, or wrong answer.  Only your own 😉 

Agree. This place would be pretty boring if it was any other way :~)