I have had it with Roon, their lack of support, their user forum, and it's users...

[AudioDoctor]

and I regret ever giving them money for mediocre sound quality that is only improved to listenable standards by adding HQPlayer.

 

I no longer recommend Roon to anyone.

[AudioDoctor]

If you want to be insulted, belittled, and treated like an idiot, go ask for support or make a feature request on their forum. Even better, make a request that you hope or believe will improve sound quality.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Well, then, I do not recommend Jriver to you.  (It's fine for me.)

 

I have tried it in the past and chose not to use it, but not for any of these reasons.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, R1200CL said:

So how can SQ be improvement ? Does anyone at Roon or you know ?

 

Fair, I made a request that background processing be disabled while music is playing. Last night while listening my music suddenly lost clarity and sounded, for lack of a better word, hazy. I SSHed into my server to see that Roon was using 145% of CPU resources to do something in the background. At the same time everything else was less than 1% except HQPlayer which was using 15%. I think its that processing that clouds Roon's sound.

 

2 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

You have probably asked for the same here 😂. You included all Roon users. 

 

I meant the Roon forum users to clarify. I don't get the same attitude here.

 

3 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Ever considered it can be your HW ?

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

Yes, so I shutdown RoonServer completely by issuing the proper command in the command line and used HQPlayer by itself and the sound quality dramatically increased.

 

4 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

Having a bad day ?

 

 

I wasn't...

 

4 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

So what’s your recommendation these days?

 

 

Euphony OS

[AudioDoctor]

7 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

BTW, I recommend Roon to everyone

 

It's perfect for my wife and kids because they are only casual listeners and like the easy interface.

[AudioDoctor]

The Roon forum is a religion and anyone disagreeing with them is a witch to be burned.

[AudioDoctor]

I've been suspended... for being "too combative" Yeah, that's what it looks like when one person gets jumped on by an entire forum.

[AudioDoctor]

7 minutes ago, coot said:

Get an Aurender or other streamer/player.

 

I actually have one, it lives at the cabin now

[AudioDoctor]

3 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Link to tread please 

 

I can't access the site. Also, in the very nasty email I received they said the thread was deleted and it was ALL MY FAULT for. being such a meanie to everyone but especially the guy that came into the thread near the end and did nothing but lob insults my way, I was extra mean to him.

 

and in case you think I am lying...

 

[AudioDoctor]

Huh, the date was July 18th before...  haha

[AudioDoctor]

43 minutes ago, JoeWhip said:

They must be reading you here!😁

 

I hope they are.

[AudioDoctor]

2 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

It seems that when a product is regarded as the best, those who want that greatness to be conferred upon themselves are attracted to it like moths to a lamp.  When one’s objective is to have the product say something about themselves, they don’t take too kindly to others suggesting that the product has areas for improvement.  That’s a lot of what’s at play on the Roon forums.   Some of the worst of these folks simply can’t allow a reality where Roon might not be the absolute best.  They will pounce on dissenters as a means to keep their imagined reality in tact.  They simply can’t allow it to be said that Roon might not have the best sound quality.  

 

The moderators on their forums make the situation worse.  The bullies on the forums know how to control what’s being said there.  Their goal is to cause dissenters to storm off angry.  In a normal/healthy community it’s the toxic participants who get sent off as they receive pushback against their bullying behavior.  The moderators allow the bullies to take their shots but anyone standing up to the bullies will have their posts removed, so there is never any pushback against the toxicity.

 

I think it speaks very poorly about Roon the company that they allow toxic individuals to control the dialog there.  I’m guessing leadership at Roon may actually be happy that the toxic individuals are chasing off any mention of Roon sound quality not measuring up.

 

I don't know why some of them do it, bit it happens exactly as you describe it. I received a very nasty email from one of the mods/admins there that I was unable to reply to as well.

[AudioDoctor]

My purpose for going over there and making a post is that I see a lot of potential in Roon and want to see it improve. I can't at the same time overlook it's shortcomings. I simply fail to see what's wrong about asking the devs to change the way Roon does whatever it needs to do in a way that would help with sound quality in a positive way. Roon normally uses between 3 and 6% of CPU when it is playing music. I don't see any reason it absolutely needed to do whatever it did at that exact moment that can't be done when music is not being played.

 

Apparently a great number of the Roon forum disagrees with me and thinks I am the worst kind of person for daring to suggest Roon needs improvement.

[AudioDoctor]

7 hours ago, March Audio said:

The only background process that I am aware of that can eat the CPU is the audio analysis.  However you can set that to whatever level you want, from all your cores, to throttled to completely off.  After the intial scan AFAIK it only kicks off when you add new material. Cant say I have found it causing any problems here.

 

 

I let that run overnight when I switched to this server and it has been done for ages. The truth of oil is that Roon is doing a lot of activity in the background most of the time. I don't know why it needs to do it during music playback or why it required 145% of CPU resources during music playback. But it did and it was audible as a loss of quality in the sound.

[AudioDoctor]

Every other server whether it is hardware or software, or a combination of the two, tries to minimize the processing during playback, even those that use a distributed playback model. Then comes Roon who says Fuck it, we're gonna do all the processing during playback and tell our customers/users to get lost when they ask for better sound quality and insist it's their network and/or they're not using the software correctly.

 

 

Well, the exact same hardware not running Roon doesn't exhibit that problem so... that pretty much narrows down the problem as there was only one change.

[AudioDoctor]

In my opinion, Roon needs to do two things.

 

1) start getting serious about support by acknowledging their software isn't the end all be all of perfection, and do something about it.

 

2) Get their forum under control

[AudioDoctor]

3 hours ago, kennyb123 said:

The processing might be a function of how many network folders you have Roon watching.  
 

Antipodes came up with a smart approach of having only a single watched folder.  This folder is essentially a single virtual volume with network folders mounted by Linux.  Antipodes claims that this cuts down on processing.  I can’t confirm or deny, but wonder if those who see all this processing have Roon watching a number of shared folders.

 

Thats probably a good guess however my watched folder is a single ZFS pool that's located on two mirrored 10TB drives inside the machine.

 

There are still things Roon is doing in the background, gathering metadata, getting data from Qobuz and Tidal, searching the net for whatever it searches for about your artists, etc... and probably stuff we don't know about as well like reporting back to Roon HQ.

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, seeteeyou said:

This one would be way too funny and I just couldn't resist since I'm also an Asian myself, my classmates and I were constantly making fun of our teachers back in our high school days

 

https://www.vox.com/videos/2019/3/26/18282192/asian-accent-l-and-r

 

Looney Tunes FTW.

 

I had a great professor in college who was an asian gentleman and he was infamous for pronouncing the word "focus" so that it sounded like "fuck us" We would ask questions in such a way to get him to say the word focus...

[AudioDoctor]

33 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Chris, did you make sure you stood apart, at a 45 degree angle, so you couldn't look them in the eye? I was always told that is how people in Minnesota have a conversation. 😁 And don't forget to use the phrase, 'Could Be Worse'

 

It can almost always be worse... Don't tempt the weather here.

[AudioDoctor]

13 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Nice this one. 
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-1-8-build-806-is-live/164798

 

I will link to this tread here, so we can discuss better SQ also 😀

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-1-8-build-806-feedback/164804

 

 

Thats all the stuff that is processing in the background while music is playing...

 

Is there any reason it can't be done at some other time?

 

edit: Perhaps I missed it someplace, but I didn't see a single person mention sound quality. Maybe it just doesn't matter to them.

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Roon backups won’t run if audio is playing. Seems like the logic is there, but not used during other operations. 

 

You're right, I have noticed that before when I was sucked into the music till the wee hours of the morning.

[AudioDoctor]

I thought I would check out the update... I still have a lifetime license after all...

 

and this happened. It crashes on start. I can still control it from my phone and iPad however.

[AudioDoctor]

5 minutes ago, March Audio said:

aaaahh, so you are using a MAC?

 

In that case any diagnostics/examination I try on my PC is going to be irrelevant.

 

Just as a control point, my server runs linux. The crash was due to the non standard theme. 

 

edit: My server has been up for 1 day and 5 hours, it is using 9.5GB of RAM in total and Roon is using 3GB by itself. However, RAM usage isn't the problem, it's the background processing that causes a loss of sound quality.

[AudioDoctor]

3 hours ago, R1200CL said:

The article is deleted, but I remember Michal Logva compared Sonictransporter vs a NUC, and he found sound differences. 
 

I would assume windows or Mac may have more processes ongoing than a clean installation like ROCK or the Sonictransporter. 
 

It could be interesting with some testing, if anyone is up to it.

Maybe something you could do Chris, using your Sonore endpoint ?

 

Optical transfer ought to secure that possible unwanted loops from the PC in use, will affect the results. An FMC like the opticalModule or EtherRegen should do. And use singel mode fiber. 

 

I have a Sonore Singnature Rendu as well...

 

It's probably related to a bug instead of general processing, but Roon has at times used the entire processor and crashed to the point music stopped and the server needed rebooting.

[AudioDoctor]

56 minutes ago, Foggie said:

I would sure like to read the OP's thread over there (maybe I missed the link).  I have seen a lot of requests for many things on that forum w/o "issue" and there are plenty of people that rip the product daily, maybe they too are all banned.  I mean it doesn't seem any different than most other forums in so far as a'holes, the noise makers etc..    There have been some epic threads here. 

 

Dunno, maybe I just don't spend a ton of time there and or keep scrolling through the noise

 

Again there are indiv that defend to ridiculous and childish lengths their choices, setups, products they use and claim none better and am right you are wrong, but that's pretty much every forum?  I suppose some have more than other forums.

 

I sympathize with the OP's predicament and when one gets into a situation when all of a sudden their audio setup/products are either not working, or producing sub optimal results, one would expect its only logical to seek assistance / provide feedback.  If that's met with difficulties and a'holes I would be pissed as well.  Frustrating for sure. 

 

I have tried so many times to get audirvanna (trial) to work, and have reached out in different forums and although did receive some things to try it still doesn't work.  I only mention this in the context of how frustrating it is to be sort of "stuck"

 

Letting random internet people offer your support is a pretty terrible way of conducting business because it ends up boiling down to whatever the prevailing groupthink is, and it shows the developers lack of consideration for their product. I have tried getting support there, jumped through all their hoops, offered all the requested information, only to have them blame my network and say that Roon "works differently from other programs" Which I guess is all of them because the only one having issues is Roon... I have no network issues that aren't caused by user error. It's robust and works perfectly and there isn't a single piece of software that doesn't work as intended on it. Except Roon because the official word is, it works differently... That's a them problem, not a me problem. I was once told that they would remote into my Roon and see what the problem was... that was ~6 months ago and I have not heard a peep back.

 

They deleted my thread and I received a nasty email from an admin. Apparently I am just supposed to bend over and take it when the group decides the software is perfect and I have the audacity to suggest there is room for improvement.

 

edit: The problem I was having that caused them to say they would remote into my system and log its activity to see what was going on, it has stopped happening. So... they probably saw the problem, fixed it, and decided to keep their mouths shut about it after blaming everything they could on my end.