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

[k6davis]

Roon lost me at version 1.8 when they deliberately changed from being (primarily) a desktop app (widescreen) for curating and exploring your own library to being (primarily) a mobile-first (portrait) app to use with streaming services. This was the ultimate example of how they just do whatever they feel like doing with little to no regard for how their customer base feels about it. If it had been up to me, I would have preferred that 1.8 be a mobile and tablet version and that they had mostly retained the 1.7 layout for widescreen devices. At a minimum, it should have been named 2.0 as the changes were anything but minor. I had to restore 1.7 from a cloned hard drive backup just to go back to the experience that I paid for. 

 

I realize that many people love the new Roon and that's great for them. But Roon's fanatical "we know best" attitude extends to areas such as the ridiculous search that gives you what it thinks you mean instead of what you asked for and goofy home screen options that you are forced to scroll past to get to anything of value. It goes on and on and these things have already been discussed ad infinitum.

 

I am a long time user and I remember the days when the only options to play music were to play a track or play an album - and stop & replace what was currently playing. The pull-down menu next to Play Now didn't used to exist. You literally could not Add to Queue, or Play Next (choose a track to play next without interrupting the current track), etc. As bad as that was, what was even crazier was that getting those features added was a battle. The Roon team was resistant to the users input and acting as though we were being too demanding to request functionality as basic as that!

 

There's just a pervasive, almost needy, attitude at Roon that their product is awesome no matter what they do (or don't do) and that if you're not happy then you're the problem. So I've completely checked out of the "community" (which is of course what they wanted) and will use 1.7 for as long as it works. It as shame because there is so much that it does well, but I too have had enough of trying to deal with them.

 

Any viable competitor to Roon will certainly have my attention. 

[k6davis]

1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

In my opinion, HQPlayer sounds best when Roon server is shutdown completely and the only thing running is HQPlayer.

 

I'm running Roon Server, HQPlayer Embedded on HQP OS and an NAA all on separate machines.

 

Would you (guys) expect that I'd get better results by removing Roon? Specifically, I mean running HQP Desktop to my NAA? Or should isolating Roon to its own server minimize or eliminate any negative SQ impact from Roon?

[k6davis]

1 hour ago, Foggie said:

That's how I run it:

1. roon core on Ubuntu server which is a small form factor i7-9700 with a NVMe for the DB and one large capacity HD for music (in Utility room)

2. HPQ on high end wkst on server 2019 (in Utility room)

3. OpticalRendu as naa > to DAC (fiber is run from network rack to listening room)

 

Not sure how much roon influences (HQP) in this type of config being everything is "separate".  Dunno.  I've been tempted to get a fiber nic and a PF or jcat XE usb card and install in the wkst (#2), move it to listening room and connect it to DAC.

 

A lot of options I'm evaluating at the moment.

 

My HQP server has Windows Server 2019 and HQP Desktop on its internal drive, but I always boot it from a USB drive running HQP OS. 

 

It will be simple enough for me to shut Roon down and play music by dragging and dropping it into HQP Desktop to see if I can hear any improvement that way. Of course, it's not a perfect comparison, given that there will be an entirely different OS, but it's always fun to experiment. 

[k6davis]

Are the benefits of Euphony OS & Stylus apparent when you're using an NAA? Or do you need to have the DAC directly connected to the Euphony OS server to hear the improvement it makes?

 

I ask because my understanding is that one of the primary benefits of using an HQP NAA is that it isolates the DAC from the HQP server.

[k6davis]

2 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

In my case, yes very much so. It's all running on the same hardware as Roon was and it works and sounds much better.

 

Your affirmative answer means that it's best to run Euphony OS direct to the DAC? Or that the benefits of Euphony OS are still apparent when using an NAA?

[k6davis]

58 minutes ago, routlaw said:

Wow, give this discussion which I read through most of it last night, think I will avoid Roon for now. Sounds like its way more trouble than it could be worth. Thanks for the info.

 

There's a reason that it's being discussed, though.

 

Roon is a weird combination of brilliant and seriously annoying. I put up with what's annoying because I haven't found a suitable replacement for the brilliance. And TBH, I don't have any technical issues with it as some do here. I use it in conjunction with HQPlayer so I have no issues with its sound. My dislike is with some of their design decisions (I remain on their previous major release, 1.7, which I greatly prefer) and the dismissive attitude of the developers and their lack of support. I stopped visiting their "community" altogether long ago.

 

My point is that I depend on Roon (version 1.7) and enjoy it very much. If there is a competitor that offers what Roon does without the downsides, I would happily switch. I don't know of such a product.

[k6davis]

5 hours ago, bobflood said:

No software is perfect but Roon for most users is the best that is out there. Just use it with HQPlayer and the sound quality will be excellent. As long as you are not trying to manage terabytes of music and you run Roon on a stable platform you will have a good overall experience. If you primarily stream vs a local library then Roon is really the best of what there is available right now. It is not in-expensive but all the metadata and functionality don't come cheap. Try to cut through all the noise here before you give up on what may suit you just fine. 

 

I have a 19TB local library (crazy, I know) and Roon manages it very well. And I run it on an old i7-3770S.

 

I don't use Roon's library (metadata) backup system. Instead, I just clone that server's entire OS drive periodically. But Roon's performance in finding and playing music and metadata in the massive library is not just good, but extremely fast.

 

Like I said earlier, what's good about Roon is great. Then there's the other things...