Roon 1.8 Discussion

[Mike48]

14 hours ago, katools said:

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.

Perhaps it's time for you to try some other software and see if it suits you better. As well as Roon, I use JRiver. It is very capable, but using their support forum is an education into hostile customer service. Maybe I just need more experience with Roon.

 

Software has become very complex. With Roon's being multi-platform, and every one of those platforms changing constantly, the maintenance burden must be immense. No way they are going to afford personalized support and attention at their prices.

 

I do have a good deal of empathy for your position. There have been many times when demonstrable faults in big software (Lotus, in its heyday) weren't fixed, despite my sending clear information. Sometimes, what a particular user wants fixed just isn't on the list for a software vendor. It hurts.

[PunkRockDoc]

On 5/12/2021 at 10:44 AM, katools said:

 

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.

Yup I remember this, and many more incidents like this.  Have you noticed that most of the "regulars" have left the forums?  

It is also very unfortunate that your list of bugs and missing basic features is 100% accurate.  It is even worse that Roon is still the best option.  I loved 1.7 but when 1.8 came out I started re-evaluating other options.  Something better will come along soon, it always does

[Jsmith]

On 5/12/2021 at 2:08 PM, bobflood said:

My guess is that 90+% of Roon users are happy warts and all. There are other options for the rest.

 

 

I would like to offer a different perspective.  I work for a large multinational software company and my job is managing customer accounts post sales which includes defect resolution, feature requests, release readiness and rollout, as well as organizing user group events, customer innovation days, and many other ongoing customer adoption interactions.

 

One of my biggest challenges is working with customer and developers to prioritize what actually makes it into the product from both a fix and feature perspective.  We can host the same customer feedback event in different areas across the globe, and what they want in the U.S. is completely different than Germany, and then completely different from Japan.  This does not even get into within the U.S. what different industries like consumer goods, retails, oil & gas and high tech all want.  

 

It is impossible to develop software that can be everything to everyone, especially with a mass product like Roon that is not completely custom to the user.  This is why I quoted @bobflood because I suspect he is right and they are happy targeting that 90%.   

 

 

 

  

[Account Closed]

40 minutes ago, Jsmith said:

 

 

I would like to offer a different perspective.  I work for a large multinational software company and my job is managing customer accounts post sales which includes defect resolution, feature requests, release readiness and rollout, as well as organizing user group events, customer innovation days, and many other ongoing customer adoption interactions.

 

One of my biggest challenges is working with customer and developers to prioritize what actually makes it into the product from both a fix and feature perspective.  We can host the same customer feedback event in different areas across the globe, and what they want in the U.S. is completely different than Germany, and then completely different from Japan.  This does not even get into within the U.S. what different industries like consumer goods, retails, oil & gas and high tech all want.  

 

It is impossible to develop software that can be everything to everyone, especially with a mass product like Roon that is not completely custom to the user.  This is why I quoted @bobflood because I suspect he is right and they are happy targeting that 90%.   

 

 

 

  

Thanks for your perspective. If Roon was a product that people expected to pay a lot more for then I am pretty sure that they would be able to ramp up to service more of the things people say they want. But, alas we are not that kind of market. Price is a very sensitive issue  in this hobby, especially for software. Just look at the thread where another provider just instituted a subscription based model. 

 

I have been with Roon from the beginning and I deliberately chose to pay annually instead of doing the lifetime payment. I wanted them to have the revenue needed to grow the business and improve the product over time which they continue to do.

 

I agree that that there is still room for improvement but for the people who use Roon in a more or less straight forward manner, my guess is that as I said 90+% are pretty happy.

 

Roon has got a lot going for it. I doesn't look like a 90s Power Point presentation tied to a spreadsheet. Streaming integration and the ability to link effortlessly to HQPlayer are the things that I value most.  Search could still be better but the metadata is good.

 

I am certain that it will only continue to improve.

[AudioDoctor]

This might be a crazy idea, but I think Roon should stop making a complete app for 2 different operating systems, leave the server part of the duo to Linux while making only the remote app cross platform. I may be in a minority, but in my experience Roon Server runs best on Linux.

[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.

[austinpop]

Interesting discussion on Roon. I am a Lifetime subscriber, and will say up front that the Roon UI is a thing of beauty. More than the UI, it's the UX (user experience) that is really transformative. They took something that was clunky and fiddly in the past (UPnP, LMS, etc) and made it elegant and attractive. I give them a lot of kudos for that. 

 

The areas where I have issues with Roon the product, and Roon the company are:

• Roon has fallen further and further behind on absolute SQ, compared to the best players out there. Granted, this may be a don't care for some fraction (whether 80%, 90% or something else) of the user base, but for those who care about ultimate SQ, it is a reality.
• This in itself isn't as bad as the fact that Roon does not seem to acknowledge this as an issue. Attempts to bring this to their attention -- believe me, I've tried -- have fallen on deaf ears.
• When even the most talented system builders like Emile Bok of Taiko, who tried very hard to make Roon perform at the highest SQ on the Extreme server, throw up their hands, privately declare Roon as unworkable, and invest considerable funds to develop their own solution, it just reinforces the point that Roon are unwilling to focus on SQ as a priority.
• Which brings me to the most egregious issue I have with Roon -- their forum. There is simply no way to engage with them directly to raise issues like the above, provide evidence, etc. No, you have to post on their forum. And then endure the insults and brickbats of the peanut gallery. I have done this before, tried to encourage Roon to try their competition, and hear it for themselves. But to do this, I got all kinds of abuse on their forum. I left in disgust.

The fact of the matter is that Roon does have a complex architecture. Due to their ability to support multiple endpoints from one Core, with the ability to group them, this leads to complex synchronization concerns, which make SQ optimizations like caching and/or pre-buffering a challenge. I get that.

 

But these are not insurmountable problems. For example, they could explore a "high performance" mode that implements SQ optimizations as long as the user accepts that only one endpoint can be active, and grouping is disabled in this mode.

 

I'm not saying this is the answer, but the point is we never get to these conversations, because well before that point, the "mob" on their forum has swarmed over and smothered the request.

 

At this point, I've moved on. I have better options for extremely high SQ players. I still have my lifetime subscription to Roon, and I use it for noncritical listening, to discover new interesting music.

[AudioDoctor]

41 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Interesting discussion on Roon. I am a Lifetime subscriber, and will say up front that the Roon UI is a thing of beauty. More than the UI, it's the UX (user experience) that is really transformative. They took something that was clunky and fiddly in the past (UPnP, LMS, etc) and made it elegant and attractive. I give them a lot of kudos for that. 

 

The areas where I have issues with Roon the product, and Roon the company are:

• Roon has fallen further and further behind on absolute SQ, compared to the best players out there. Granted, this may be a don't care for some fraction (whether 80%, 90% or something else) of the user base, but for those who care about ultimate SQ, it is a reality.
• This in itself isn't as bad as the fact that Roon does not seem to acknowledge this as an issue. Attempts to bring this to their attention -- believe me, I've tried -- have fallen on deaf ears.
• When even the most talented system builders like Emile Bok of Taiko, who tried very hard to make Roon perform at the highest SQ on the Extreme server, throw up their hands, privately declare Roon as unworkable, and invest considerable funds to develop their own solution, it just reinforces the point that Roon are unwilling to focus on SQ as a priority.
• Which brings me to the most egregious issue I have with Roon -- their forum. There is simply no way to engage with them directly to raise issues like the above, provide evidence, etc. No, you have to post on their forum. And then endure the insults and brickbats of the peanut gallery. I have done this before, tried to encourage Roon to try their competition, and hear it for themselves. But to do this, I got all kinds of abuse on their forum. I left in disgust.

The fact of the matter is that Roon does have a complex architecture. Due to their ability to support multiple endpoints from one Core, with the ability to group them, this leads to complex synchronization concerns, which make SQ optimizations like caching and/or pre-buffering a challenge. I get that.

 

But these are not insurmountable problems. For example, they could explore a "high performance" mode that implements SQ optimizations as long as the user accepts that only one endpoint can be active, and grouping is disabled in this mode.

 

I'm not saying this is the answer, but the point is we never get to these conversations, because well before that point, the "mob" on their forum has swarmed over and smothered the request.

 

At this point, I've moved on. I have better options for extremely high SQ players. I still have my lifetime subscription to Roon, and I use it for noncritical listening, to discover new interesting music.

 

I have to agree on all points here. I have all but given up on their forum.

 

 

edit: However, In Roon's defense, I do think that an overwhelming amount of people on their forum are causing their own problems or are just very new to using technology in any manner and think Roon is the greatest thing ever.

[happybob]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

Interesting discussion on Roon. I am a Lifetime subscriber, and will say up front that the Roon UI is a thing of beauty. More than the UI, it's the UX (user experience) that is really transformative. They took something that was clunky and fiddly in the past (UPnP, LMS, etc) and made it elegant and attractive. I give them a lot of kudos for that. 

 

The areas where I have issues with Roon the product, and Roon the company are:

• Roon has fallen further and further behind on absolute SQ, compared to the best players out there. Granted, this may be a don't care for some fraction (whether 80%, 90% or something else) of the user base, but for those who care about ultimate SQ, it is a reality.
• This in itself isn't as bad as the fact that Roon does not seem to acknowledge this as an issue. Attempts to bring this to their attention -- believe me, I've tried -- have fallen on deaf ears.
• When even the most talented system builders like Emile Bok of Taiko, who tried very hard to make Roon perform at the highest SQ on the Extreme server, throw up their hands, privately declare Roon as unworkable, and invest considerable funds to develop their own solution, it just reinforces the point that Roon are unwilling to focus on SQ as a priority.
• Which brings me to the most egregious issue I have with Roon -- their forum. There is simply no way to engage with them directly to raise issues like the above, provide evidence, etc. No, you have to post on their forum. And then endure the insults and brickbats of the peanut gallery. I have done this before, tried to encourage Roon to try their competition, and hear it for themselves. But to do this, I got all kinds of abuse on their forum. I left in disgust.

The fact of the matter is that Roon does have a complex architecture. Due to their ability to support multiple endpoints from one Core, with the ability to group them, this leads to complex synchronization concerns, which make SQ optimizations like caching and/or pre-buffering a challenge. I get that.

 

But these are not insurmountable problems. For example, they could explore a "high performance" mode that implements SQ optimizations as long as the user accepts that only one endpoint can be active, and grouping is disabled in this mode.

 

I'm not saying this is the answer, but the point is we never get to these conversations, because well before that point, the "mob" on their forum has swarmed over and smothered the request.

 

At this point, I've moved on. I have better options for extremely high SQ players. I still have my lifetime subscription to Roon, and I use it for noncritical listening, to discover new interesting music.

I do hold out some hope that the coming major upgrade to v2.0 might address some of these SQ issues. Maybe not high probability, but still a possibility.

[austinpop]

9 minutes ago, happybob said:

I do hold out some hope that the coming major upgrade to v2.0 might address some of these SQ issues. Maybe not high probability, but still a possibility.

I would welcome that. Do we any indications that they recognize SQ is an issue, and are actively working to address? I have not seen anything.

[happybob]

4 minutes ago, austinpop said:

I would welcome that. Do we any indications that they recognize SQ is an issue, and are actively working to address? I have not seen anything.

I haven’t seen any indications of SQ improvements but the Roon folks do have a history of not always telegraphing various future version changes. They are certainly aware of the SQ issue, hopefully they do implement something (like the “one zone only” HQ mode). Another reason I’m hopeful is that Roon has indicated 2.0 will be a major upgrade in many respects.

[firedog]

4 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

This might be a crazy idea, but I think Roon should stop making a complete app for 2 different operating systems, leave the server part of the duo to Linux while making only the remote app cross platform. I may be in a minority, but in my experience Roon Server runs best on Linux.

I think they would be committing financial suicide if they did that. The Linux server users are a tiny subset of the people who use Roon (not talking about Roon endpoints, just servers). Roon won't survive without being available for Windows and MAC users.

[Jsmith]

11 hours ago, katools said:

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.

 

I actually think Roon will still hold a specific corner in the market.  Given how Apple historically doesn't like to play well with things that are not purchased from their library, I see them more as an alternate service to Tidal as a content provider vs. a consolidated platform.  Sonos seems closer to the platform concept with the ability to bring all your sources and media together but too tied to their own speakers.  Roon provides a hardware agnostic (I understand the certification for compatibility) platform that allows you to consolidate multiple services and sources in high resolution.  Also it is pretty plug & play with a nice UI and mobile app.  

 

 

[Mike48]

14 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

This might be a crazy idea, but I think Roon should stop making a complete app for 2 different operating systems, leave the server part of the duo to Linux while making only the remote app cross platform. I may be in a minority, but in my experience Roon Server runs best on Linux.

 

The value of having it run on various OS is that the potential customer can try it on a PC or Mac or laptop before committing. Since Linux, capable as it is, isn't as popular, moving exclusively to Lunux would prevent most from trying it.

 

P.S. Somehow I missed @firedog's post saying the same thing.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Anyone else noticing this strange behavior when restarting Roon? It pegs my processor at 100% while scanning the library and it takes forever. This is a new development. 

 

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Anyone else noticing this strange behavior when restarting Roon? It pegs my processor at 100% while scanning the library and it takes forever. This is a new development. 

 

 

 

Yep, every single time.

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

 

Yep, every single time.

Seems to be knew, right?

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Seems to be knew, right?

 

I knew about it for a while now...  ;-)

 

I think it's been doing it since 1.8, but perhaps I wasn't paying attention before.

[Mike48]

8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Anyone else noticing this strange behavior when restarting Roon? It pegs my processor at 100% while scanning the library and it takes forever. This is a new development. 

 

It does not happen on my 10 yr old i7 system running Roon under Windows 10. My physical file library hasn't grown in a while, if that's relevant.

[firedog]

12 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

 

Yep, every single time.

 

13 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Anyone else noticing this strange behavior when restarting Roon? It pegs my processor at 100% while scanning the library and it takes forever. This is a new development. 

 

 

Not happening at my house. Sorry, sounds like you have to find a system specific issue.  Windows 10 64 bit.

[steveoat]

On 5/13/2021 at 11:14 PM, austinpop said:

Interesting discussion on Roon. I am a Lifetime subscriber, and will say up front that the Roon UI is a thing of beauty. More than the UI, it's the UX (user experience) that is really transformative. They took something that was clunky and fiddly in the past (UPnP, LMS, etc) and made it elegant and attractive. I give them a lot of kudos for that. 

 

The areas where I have issues with Roon the product, and Roon the company are:

• Roon has fallen further and further behind on absolute SQ, compared to the best players out there. Granted, this may be a don't care for some fraction (whether 80%, 90% or something else) of the user base, but for those who care about ultimate SQ, it is a reality.
• This in itself isn't as bad as the fact that Roon does not seem to acknowledge this as an issue. Attempts to bring this to their attention -- believe me, I've tried -- have fallen on deaf ears.
• When even the most talented system builders like Emile Bok of Taiko, who tried very hard to make Roon perform at the highest SQ on the Extreme server, throw up their hands, privately declare Roon as unworkable, and invest considerable funds to develop their own solution, it just reinforces the point that Roon are unwilling to focus on SQ as a priority.
• Which brings me to the most egregious issue I have with Roon -- their forum. There is simply no way to engage with them directly to raise issues like the above, provide evidence, etc. No, you have to post on their forum. And then endure the insults and brickbats of the peanut gallery. I have done this before, tried to encourage Roon to try their competition, and hear it for themselves. But to do this, I got all kinds of abuse on their forum. I left in disgust.

The fact of the matter is that Roon does have a complex architecture. Due to their ability to support multiple endpoints from one Core, with the ability to group them, this leads to complex synchronization concerns, which make SQ optimizations like caching and/or pre-buffering a challenge. I get that.

 

But these are not insurmountable problems. For example, they could explore a "high performance" mode that implements SQ optimizations as long as the user accepts that only one endpoint can be active, and grouping is disabled in this mode.

 

I'm not saying this is the answer, but the point is we never get to these conversations, because well before that point, the "mob" on their forum has swarmed over and smothered the request.

 

At this point, I've moved on. I have better options for extremely high SQ players. I still have my lifetime subscription to Roon, and I use it for noncritical listening, to discover new interesting music.

"At this point, I've moved on. I have better options for extremely high SQ players. I still have my lifetime subscription to Roon, and I use it for noncritical listening, to discover new interesting music."

 

What are you now using software wise that you feel has higher SQ than Roon, which I agree needs more work on its SQ.

[Foggie]

The recent discussion of software(s) is a lot like cable discussions it seems.  As to 1.8, people have these huge bullet list of "things", some valid bugs but a lot of specific use cases that are expected to be fixed......immediately.  I'm in no way a fan boy and have no prob finding another solution when times comes and usually, I just keep scrolling for the most part.  1.8 was a major rev release and with it came some issues out of the gate, naturally.  Fixes were implemented pretty quick, but WAY over the top bitchng within 5 seconds of its release, just sophomoric on many levels and out of context.

I updated and had no issues.  I could play music.  There were GUI changes that removed some functions and or moved things around but I could still play music.  However, it was the end of the world for some which then seems to get the headlines.  Standard issue in this day and age.  Again, context.

 

I never install the latest rev of anything - if I do, I'm prepared for potential consequences and have a plan.  Now, being I had little to no problems with the upgrade doesn't invalidate someone who may have run into issues which would be frustrating for sure, but it’s how some conduct themselves.  Seriously, grown adults carrying on and on giving ultimatums and just down right caustic environment.  There is a balance of what needs to work at a basic level and all the other stuff.  Regressions/ bugs are all part of software and there isn't a program out there that doesn't deal with this. 

 

Comments about policing the forum and should spend more time developing?  What does that even mean?  Is that to infer that developers are moderating the forums and not developing?  Is there a secret metric on how much time is being developed as opposed to forum moderation?   Again, context.

 

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.  Sorry I don't see it and this is coming from a non-streamer person, well......until as of late I have started to dabble with qobuz in roon.  The streaming model isn’t going away and these application devs have to adapt as well as users.  I know I have to accept this at some point.

 

I see roon chiming in on the forum defending their product and what they have built > from what (little) I pay attention to, it usually seems that it’s in response to inaccurate comments/accusations and constant noise/juvenile behavior adding to forum degradation.  Certainly, if roon’s comments are inaccurate and juvenile, then their just as guilty.  It seems after a certain amount of mudslinging, they step in, dunno.    Again, context and this is just what I see, YMMV

 

At the end of the day, its all about the music and experience and if I have that, I’m cool.  All the ranting and creating a stressful environment, I have no interest in.  Some thrive on it I suppose.

[AudioDoctor]

11 hours ago, firedog said:

 

 

Not happening at my house. Sorry, sounds like you have to find a system specific issue.  Windows 10 64 bit.

 

Well, Chris and I run the same hardware, with a different OS which is even weirder because I can't think of something that would make this a hardware issue.

 

My only guess is that my library has been growing quite a lot lately as I download and rip more than I was before.

[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.