Roon 1.8 Discussion

[firedog]

2 hours ago, k6davis said:

 

I couldn't agree more. The white huge font (for things I don't need to read) combined with the white tiny font (for things I do need to read) on the (literally) black background along with smaller icons, waveform and the vast amount of empty space... I just can't. It hurts my mind. And that's just the look of it, let alone the changes to the way things work. 

 

It's like they asked me to tell them everything I liked about Roon and then said, "Great! Okay. We're gonna move or remove all of that. And then change the way nearly everything works, in ways that no one was asking for!"

 

I've already seen posts from the Roon team to the effect of: "Most people like it". Even worse (for me), that seems to actually be true. What's certain is that the Roon team likes it, or they wouldn't have done in the first place. 

 

Such is life. Things don't always go your way. But what I really learned from this is to be very careful when it comes to "software as a service". You pay for it, but you don't own it. They can do anything they want to with it at any time. I bought lifetime, and tomorrow, they could decide to make it have an orange strobe-light background and remove all of the "play" buttons and there wouldn't be a damned thing I could do about it.

I didn't like the colors and fonts. Changed what bugged me most. It's a simple hack that doesn't take long. Do it and you will be much happier.

[k6davis]

29 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Can you show me a picture of this so I’m 100% sure what we’re talking about. 
 

This one ?

 

 

Why not add a request for VU meters 😀
or vst plug-ins 

 

It looked like this in 1.7. The waveform stretched across the entire screen which looked cool and made it far easier to use. They also put the currently playing artist and title above the the waveform. That way there was room for long titles without them being truncated. 

 

The way things are now, both elements are compromised, IMO.

 

[firedog]

16 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

It looked like this in 1.7. The waveform stretched across the entire screen which looked cool and made it far easier to use. They also put the currently playing artist and title above the the waveform. That way there was room for long titles without them being truncated. 

 

The way things are now, both elements are compromised, IMO.

 

I agree that the layout of the bottom section was much more user friendly in 1.7. The new setup isn't terrible, but it's not a change for the better, IMO.

[k6davis]

 

41 minutes ago, firedog said:

I didn't like the colors and fonts. Changed what bugged me most. It's a simple hack that doesn't take long. Do it and you will be much happier.

 

8 hours ago, firedog said:

Here's the light theme. I again changed the purple for blue, and made the background a few shades less bright.

 

 

What you've done here is 1000% more appealing than the stock version. 

Can you also change the font sizes?

 

Even in your very nice enhancement: 

• The album title is needlessly big, and needlessly split on to two lines
• The upper right hand corner of the screen is a vast expanse of nothing
• You can't see even the first song without scrolling
• The font size for the song titles (if you could see them) is so small it's unpleasant for me to read, though it may be easier with a color scheme like this
• You can't see any album recommendations without scrolling 
• The waveform is small
• The artist name on the bottom left is ridiculously small
• Here, the Length/Rating/Format/Images are in a column off to the right, but I swear I've also seen them displayed in a row... Maybe that was a different view.

This has to be the most "first world problem" ever, and you're very kind to try to offer suggestions. But these things apparently bother me much more than they do most people. The thing about Roon 1.8 is that there's an accumulation of things that I don't like and don't see the benefit of that adds up to me strongly disliking it. And all of them were better in 1.7, IMO. 

 

I'm back on 1.7 and I'm very happy with that, for as long as it lasts. I'll keep an eye on changes they make to 1.8 and I will keep in mind that I can change the unpleasant colors and fonts, if a few other things I don't like move in my direction.

 

Thank you kindly for your post.

[R1200CL]

48 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

It looked like this in 1.7. The waveform stretched across the entire screen which looked cool and made it far easier to use. They also put the currently playing artist and title above the the waveform. That way there was room for long titles without them being truncated. 

 

The way things are now, both elements are compromised, IMO.

 

I can see some changes can be done 😀 You own this album, so you have it locally, but that shouldn’t matter. 
 

[R1200CL]

[R1200CL]

[k6davis]

Yeah, but they couldn't put the review beside the title, because most album titles are longer than "Day Trip". 

 

And the artist name in the second image is truncated. 

 

I really appreciate you guys, but I've made my feelings known on this. I don't want to hog the thread, being repetitive. I have 1.7 and I'm good. If that stops working, I'll have decisions to make.

 

[R1200CL]

1 hour ago, k6davis said:

They also put the currently playing artist and title above the the waveform. That way there was room for long titles without them being truncated. 

Not sure I agree. Maybe I misunderstood. There’s room for long titles. (Automatic line break). 
If your issue is only length of waveform, I get your point. 

So why you like the waveform so long ? Is it important?

[R1200CL]

Truncated. OK then. 

[firedog]

47 minutes ago, k6davis said:

 

 

 

What you've done here is 1000% more appealing than the stock version. 

Can you also change the font sizes?

 

Even in your very nice enhancement: 

• The album title is needlessly big, and needlessly split on to two lines
• The upper right hand corner of the screen is a vast expanse of nothing
• You can't see even the first song without scrolling
• The font size for the song titles (if you could see them) is so small it's unpleasant for me to read, though it may be easier with a color scheme like this
• You can't see any album recommendations without scrolling 
• The waveform is small
• The artist name on the bottom left is ridiculously small
• Here, the Length/Rating/Format/Images are in a column off to the right, but I swear I've also seen them displayed in a row... Maybe that was a different view.

This has to be the most "first world problem" ever, and you're very kind to try to offer suggestions. But these things apparently bother me much more than they do most people. The thing about Roon 1.8 is that there's an accumulation of things that I don't like and don't see the benefit of that adds up to me strongly disliking it. And all of them were better in 1.7, IMO. 

 

I'm back on 1.7 and I'm very happy with that, for as long as it lasts. I'll keep an eye on changes they make to 1.8 and I will keep in mind that I can change the unpleasant colors and fonts, if a few other things I don't like move in my direction.

 

Thank you kindly for your post.

You can't change the font size, apparently. 

The length of the wave form doesn't bother me that much, although I'd prefer that whole bottom band as in 1.7. The 5 buttons are too close together, so on a touch screen you have to be careful not to hit the wrong one. I do mostly agree that the look ad setup of 1.7 was better, although I'm getting used to the new one.

I guess it's possible that some of the design changes/space issues may have something to do with the fact that they made it possible to use the program in portrait mode also, which constrained them in what they could do. 

My impression is that the new version is faster, and I'm willing to accept that some of the "under the hood" stuff works better now. 

[k6davis]

1 hour ago, firedog said:

I guess it's possible that some of the design changes/space issues may have something to do with the fact that they made it possible to use the program in portrait mode also, which constrained them in what they could do. 

 

I think this is definitely the case. They should have just done that for the the mobile versions without  making so many alterations to the desktop versions. I really miss seeing Recommended Albums at the top of the page. 

 

1 hour ago, firedog said:

My impression is that the new version is faster, and I'm willing to accept that some of the "under the hood" stuff works better now.

 

I suspect that's true.

 

1 hour ago, R1200CL said:

 

In the above picture you posted, on the bottom left, the artist name is truncated/cut off due to lack of space. "Pat Metheny, Christian McBride, Antoni...". Plus the font is tiny. It's nice to be able read that, especially when you've moved the main page to an album that's not playing.

 

1 hour ago, R1200CL said:

So why you like the waveform so long ? Is it important?

 

Yeah, a lot of people don't care about this but I really liked the way it looked. At a glance, I could tell if an album was mixed loudly or softly. Depending on the song, I could see where dynamics changed in the song, which was nice, especially for music I wasn't familiar with. Plus, when I'm testing different settings out in HQP or some other part of my system, the waveform made it easier to put the cursor at the exact spot where I wanted it. 

 

And visually, I'm really into function and symmetry. And this app really lacks that.

 

Again, people in this world have real problems, I know. I was just very pleased with it before they changed so many things, with their "take it or leave it" stance.

[AudioDoctor]

It doesn't take care of all the problems, but I am not looking at the color purple anymore.

 

 

[skatbelt]

Thx @firedog. I'm very happy with my custom color scheme.

 

Didn't observe any remarks on differences in SQ between 1.7 and 1.8 on this forum. I think in my system and to my ears 1.8 sounds slightly better. I can't go back and forth so I know it's a weak statement. But it certainly doesn't sound worse!

[skatbelt]

Btw, it is possible to change fonts by replacing font files in the 'Resources' directory and keeping the original font names. For instance, I replaced GrifoS-Medium and GrifoM-Medium (the most defining ones) with .otf fonts more to my liking. I am on Mac OS.

[charlesphoto]

11 minutes ago, skatbelt said:

Btw, it is possible to change fonts by replacing font files in the 'Resources' directory and keeping the original font names. For instance, I replaced GrifoS-Medium and GrifoM-Medium (the most defining ones) with .otf fonts more to my liking. I am on Mac OS.

Correct, that is what we have done. Renaming and replacing so tricking it into thinking it's calling up a Grifo but it's whatever. I'm thinking about changing the whole thing to Helvitica and being done with it! Might be some sizing issues if you go to radical, but boy I sure would love something more readable for the block texts. As it is I go dizzy quick. Might be just me but I don't do that elsewhere in (much) software. Let us know what you come up with. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I can see it now. A Roon “app” store to purchase custom themes and extensions. 

[loop7]

5 hours ago, k6davis said:

The way things are now, both elements are compromised, IMO.

Okay, I'm definitely missing previous experience. 

 

I became frustrated finding a version of an album today. Sigh.

[R1200CL]

3 hours ago, k6davis said:

In the above picture you posted, on the bottom left, the artist name is truncated/cut off due to lack of space. "Pat Metheny, Christian McBride, Antoni...". Plus the font is tiny. It's nice to be able read that, especially when you've moved the main page to an album that's not playing.

Don’t disagree. But try click on it. Then swipe and left/right + scroll down. (On that big picture). That’s a huge step forward. 
 

 

And some may like to enable show track info. 
 

 

Also the menu on left can scroll 😀

 

[R1200CL]

We need to understand this:

 

[R1200CL]

Another nice feature I didn’t know about. You can extremely quickly scroll your albums by artist name  first letter. 

The function works in other views as well. 

 

[R1200CL]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I can see it now. A Roon “app” store to purchase custom themes and extensions. 

Joking aside

 

If Roon has open up API, the app TV:Remote would be even better as one example. 

Roon App Store should be purchasing music BTW. 😀

And Roon cloud storage of cause. (That’s how Roon mobile should interface everything). 

[Foggie]

4 hours ago, k6davis said:

Again, people in this world have real problems, I know. I was just very pleased with it before they changed so many things, with their "take it or leave it" stance.

Not sure I quite follow this, are the roon devs suppose to ask if you like the font over here or over there, is it the right size, what color etc..?  How is re-coding, re-developing an application that's pretty complex, a take it or leave it scenario?  Genuine question.

 

I'm reading all the comments here and at roons site and thinking, there is no way the devs could possibly implement the million different opinions, comments, use cases and the like.  They have to fit in "x" amount of time to develop, test and release it.  That pretty much applies to any app I would guess. 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, Foggie said:

Maybe the new interface sucks and everyone hates it and roon will go back to the drawing board, but I recall 1.7 having the same reception.  However, eventually "most" learned (would appear anyway) to really like it as evident with all the references to 1.7

Change is usually hard. Determining what’s not good versus what’s different can also be hard at first. 

[Foggie]

4 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Change is usually hard. Determining what’s not good versus what’s different can also be hard at first. 

Yep agreed.  Major revs are very difficult, but it usually goes in phases.  As time goes on things get tweaked, revamped etc.. 

 

I'm glad my upgrade went smoothly and I'm able to listen and enjoy music.