Roon 1.8 Discussion

[katools]

New here, but long time Roon lifetime licensee.  I find myself increasingly disinterested in Roon because it's buggy and lacking in some basic features.  Added to that, based on its history the developers/owners have no interest in addressing feature requests, often dismissing them and dismissing bugs as a problem on the user's side.

 

Things that have been missing forever:

• user ratings for tracks
• decent playlist management & generation
• track based genres
• useable user ratings for albums differentiated from editorial ratings
• ability to add artist biographies and album reviews where there are none
• ability to annotate an album or track or both
• per user library, interface & settings based on profiles
• party mode where users cannot change settings, override queue or delete your music
• proper library management workflows to deal with missing or incorrect content and unidentified files
• undocumented/incomplete tag support
• native input to enable playback of any audio stream through server / endpoint interface
• proper handling of box sets
• inability to browse classical music by period or instrumentation
• full boolean logic to filter content
• support for wavpack and DSD .ISO

Bugs:

• persistent memory leak -- denied
•  random lags in browsing the library, particularly entering an album view -- often a restart sorts this
• random lags in starting playback
• unidentified album tracks shown out of order when identifying albums
• returning to top of lists when browsing
• persistent misallocation of albums to artist namesake even when existing albums have been corrected and incorrect namesake had no associated content
• Roon sometimes applies new settings when adding music, exactly like it does if you change library import settings
•  

Annoyances:

• inability to customise content by switching order in which elements of the UI are presented or to turn off content you've no interest in
• Valence everywhere you look.  It's no longer about browsing your music in a magazine, it's like browsing an ad-sponsored website or spam littered inbox.
• poorly formatted artist images 
• many, many artists without images and no attempt by Roon to do better
• No viable workflow to deal with unidentified albums
• user experience impacted by Roon's cloud whether local or streamed content.

Technically Roon is a great product under the hood, but how it all comes together through the UI has become a bothersome mess I prefer to limit my exposure to, so rather than explore music I love, Roon has been relegated to a DJ I use to play background music when I'm doing other things.

 

In hindsight, if I were not a lifetime member I'd have abandoned it completely by now.

[katools]

12 hours ago, bobflood said:

Nothing is perfect.

and Roon isn't even close, just the best among an otherwise mediocre pool.

[katools]

On 5/4/2021 at 10:35 AM, Mike48 said:

Roon adds a lot of fun to my music listening, which is why I keep paying for it. When I'm searching for a specific sort of work and want to know what's in my library, I get the most precise results with my OpenHome setup (MinimServer and BubbleUPnP), not Roon.

If they spent more time fixing issues rather than policing their forum trying to silence criticism it might add some fun.  Instead it adds frustration.

[katools]

5 hours ago, firedog said:

They've allowed a thread on the forum that's about how much 1.8 sucks. I don't see that as silencing criticism.

You have clearly not seen their moderation thread where the coo is spending time judging customers and told one he'd rather they left. Lots of time and energy to waste on inane issues rather than addressing issues in the software - and a few minutes of browsing makes it clear these issues are not about wants and needs, but rather about problems that are left unresolved.  If they spent more time on the product and less time trying to police their customers there may well be fewer issues.

[katools]

15 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

+1 for the beauty of independent forums like this :~)

 

Yes. A few months back he's mouthing off labelling customers that don't stream "dinosaurs" then just recently he goes on to call someone a bigot because they made an off-color post in what was simply a misguided attempt at some light hearted humor. Pot, kettle, black, except he meant no humor when characterising his customers dinosaurs. They're technically gifted, but they're incredibly arrogant.  Believing you're the smartest chap in the room is rarely a recipe for sustained success.

[katools]

39 minutes ago, bobflood said:

I am certain that it will only continue to improve

No doubt they will continue to add features, whether they will constitute improvements or not is debatable.  They don't enjoy a good track record addressing bugs or enhancements once something is released...unless of course they encounter a lot of resistance, as they did with 1.8 on initial release.

 

What will be interesting is to see how many customers they retain once Spotify and Apple launch lossless streaming and Roon have no ability to integrate as they do with Qobuz & Tidal.

[katools]

5 hours ago, Foggie said:

 

As always, here is the context of the dinosaur comment.  I don't really see any issue with it in the context of how it was written or at least how someone quoted this as "mouthing off" and putting it in some horrible context. 

And going on to label someone lazy because they don't stream and it's thus assumed they don't explore new music is ok.  It's got absolutely nothing to do with them what people listen to and whether or not they listen to the same stuff over and over.  It does not mean they are dinosaurs nor that they're lazy.  Imagine calling your customers lazy dinosaurs, what a monumental cheek.

[katools]

  

19 hours ago, LarryMagoo said:

Your statements about Roon is almost 100% Bull$hit....what do you know....are you are subscriber?

 

Let me share just how wonderful the Roon experience is at delivering: "Immerse yourself in photos, bios, reviews, credits, lyrics, tour dates, and more…"

 

There's no reason most of this 8.5% should be unidentified and unless I go in and manually identify them one by one this is how they'll remain, meaning they don't have any of the relatable metadata because Roon isn't handling these in the same way it handles albums it's identified.  Before you go there, they're not unidentified because the folders or files aren't named according to Roon's requirements or because box sets aren't named 1-01, 2-01 or CD1, CD2 etc.

 

 

14% of my albums won't show up in genre related browsing and filtering, won't get picked by Roon Radio or will be picked completely out of context.

 

 

Roon knows these albums, hasn't/can't assign genres. Won't get picked by Roon Radio or will be picked completely out of context.

 

 

42% of albums have no review.  Can't add one from public domain, can't add my own, can't annotate.

 

 

12% of albums assigned Pop/Rock only - a meaningless genre assignment on its own.

 

There a quick way of making or undoing this selection?  Nope!

 

Great,  40% of the time I'm staring at two letters instead of a picture of the artist.  50% of the time that there is a picture it's chinless, a forehead, the wrong face in a band pic rather than the artist in question.

 

11% of the artists in my library won't make any appearance in a genre filter, or genre browse.  They're unlikely to be picked for Roon Radio and won't be picked for any genre based shuffle.

 

37% of the artists in my library have no bio.  They're not obscure.  Can't add a bio either, can't annotate.

 

14% of artists are assigned Pop/Rock only - a meaningless genre assignment on its own.

 

 

There a quick way of making or undoing this selection?  Nope!

 

 

So yes, whilst Roon's under the hood architecture for getting music from A to B, C, D, E, F etc. is great (and it's not a standout in this dept.) its front-end is nowhere near as great as the marketing would have you believe.

 

[katools]

9 minutes ago, firedog said:

In short, you haven't set up your collection the way Roon recommends.

With all due respect you have no idea what you're talking about and you're just putting ignorance on display.

 

Apart from adding album covers where I have none on file and adding unidentified albums to Musicbrainz, which of the matters I've pointed out is within the gift of a user to able to resolve?

[katools]

1 minute ago, firedog said:

you wrote that you don't have your albums/folders setup the way Roon says you need to for it to read them properly.

Re-read, I wrote the opposite.

[katools]

31 minutes ago, firedog said:

But again, I've added all sorts of pictures and also material stored as pdfs to my album folders.

And how does that address the matters I raised?  Sure I can go add 1000's of artist images and a few hundred album covers... one by one... but most apps do a better job at a fraction of the cost or even  free.

 

That also does nothing do deal with missing genres - adding your own is pointless because Roon Radio ignores them and you cannot add genres to artists.

[katools]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

have you tried the genre mapping function?

I'm relying on Roon to assign genres to albums it recognises. Genre mapping enables you to map file based genres to Roon's genre schema.  Problem is their own metadata lacks the genre assigments.

[katools]

37 minutes ago, Mike48 said:

to identify albums with no genre. I mean, to identify those without having to "-" every genre listed

Focus: Inspector: Has Genres, then negate it