Roon 1.8 Discussion

[ecwl]

I have to admit I really like the new version mostly because the iPad 11” now has a vertical option. And with vertical scrolling of the albums, it makes sense. Also I never liked how many times i have to keep swiping horizontally to get to my albums. Continuous scrolling makes a lot more sense to me. Maybe there was the option in Roon 1.7 but I never noticed it. Just like I just found out there is dark mode in Roon 1.8.

 

I frequently listen to music while reading off my iPad. So it’s is somewhat annoying to be reading a magazine or a book in portrait mode and then having to turn the iPad to landscape mode just to use Roon and then flip the iPad again.

[ecwl]

I’m still surprised by how much people didn’t like the Roon 1.8 update.

Yes, I can see how for some people who are used to horizontal scrolling, vertical scrolling is annoying. 

And color preferences are so personal, it feels weird not to have a little bit more control over the color scheme.

And definitely the way the credits are setup is so different from Roon 1.7, while I prefer the current setup where I can click on each individual and link to their work, I do wish there is an option just to show the credits in list format.

 

But for me, the improvements in classical music sorting and filing for Roon 1.8 simply outweighs all the supposed negatives. I think for the longest time, I’ve only used Roon as a music player, as if it’s JRiver or pretty much any other software out there to play my own music, except of course, I can also use Roon to listen to Tidal. I never understood the catalog/library feature which people rave about being able to go from one artist to another because of their association in the music. This is because those features are not as well implemented for classical music as compared to for non-classical music. But Roon 1.8 completely changed all of that. I found myself looking at all the different versions of Beethoven Symphony No. 5 on Tidal with much greater ease, and finding the same conductor’s performances with as much ease as most of you have been doing with your favorite artist for non-classical music.

 

To me, some of Roon 1.8 issues are purely UI related and we all have our preferences so it probably is not super hard for Roon to create an old UI option for users who prefer Roon 1.7 UI, e.g. horizontal scrolling. Other issues are more related to UI display issues like colours of the boxes and being an Apple/iOS user, I actually think that sometimes there can be too many options for too many people, which makes the codes harder to maintain over time. But slightly more options are obviously welcome.

 

I think all upgrades have teething problems but I suspect once the dust settles, people will grow to like Roon 1.8 (or maybe 1.8.2)