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

[Pappy Boyington]

I think the main tension between Roon and its user base -- other than the fanboys -- is that Roon is very taxing on some system components, including being quite finnicky about networking, and potentially having resource leaks on some operating systems.  And they never have chased down some bugs that have existed for a long time.  They don't even seem to admit to many of them. 

 

So Roon support, and maybe the Roon team generally, instead of looking inward at their product to make it less demanding, look outward at user's systems and expect a whole lot of troubleshooting, reconfiguring of otherwise working gear/networks, and workarounds etc. to get Roon working smoothly.  Roon is the only software I've ever seen where a standard recommendation is to reconfigure your DNS to please the software.  

 

Roon does complex things.  It's natural there are hitches in doing so.  However, for the premium price of Roon, one would expect a more premium experience. At the very least, one would like to see more attention paid to stable functionality.  You know things are not going smoothly when it takes 6-8 weeks for a response from support...they must be busy!

 

(To put it out there, yes, I've had my problems with Roon stability albeit I am a heavy user and really do love the basic functions.  I have multiple houses, different Roon implementations, all have the same issues, and so it's unlikely those issues are specific to a given configuration.)

[Pappy Boyington]

18 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

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.

I've suspected this as well.  At least it was fixed...if Roon wants to be stealthy and fix things while rejecting blame at least that is better than denying the problem entirely.  

 

I think the issue is more nuanced.  And in Roon's defense there are a lot of users who don't really know what they're doing with digital audio and it's probably not unreasonable to want to validate that the software is being used "correctly." I also think that Roon's server-streamer model is sometimes drastically misunderstood by some users that want to use tweaks that make sense with other architecture but not Roon.  

 

BUT, it's also very clear that there are many power users who know plenty of about digital audio, networking, computers generally, etc.,  and want to use Roon to its full advertised functionality and cannot because of various nits and bugs, some of them pretty significant.  

 

I think a balanced view of Roon is critical.  They are trying to create something new, unique, and different relative to digital audio, and in many respects it is a fantastic and creative product.  If I had to live without it, I'd be bummed, and it would take a good chunk out of what I have been able to build in my man-cave.  But that doesn't let Roon off the hook for the clear bugginess of each release nor that they have ignored some issues for a good long time.  And some of their decisions are just real head scratchers - lack of folder access being one, and their choices on query logic for searching tags and genres being another.  They seem to want to prove to users that their way is better rather than giving users what they want...I can't say that is right or wrong as much as more extreme than most products I've used. 

 

In general, I have to be pro-Roon.  They've built something you can really enjoy.  But it's a mixed experience for sure, and I have already "signed off" on their forum for having Support (not the Moderators) edit my posts to remove references to issues with the software.  Being moderated for breaking forum rules is a fact of life on the Internet...having one's posts modified to mean something different is another thing entirely, and totally inappropriate IMHO.

[Pappy Boyington]

12 hours ago, lpost said:

 

I find my life is much happier avoiding the Roon forum. The leaders only want to do it their way and aren't open to suggestions. It's a small group and apparently they are succeeding in gaining more and more market share...and this seems to be the primary driver. It begins and ends with Eno and Danny.

Roon does many things very well.  They're just very opinionated and at times can come off as condescending or arrogant, but I don't think it is intentional as much as unvarnished.  It may be a deliberate decision to humanize the company and the product not to be too professional on their forum.

 

There was a burger joint (DMK Burgers I believe) that was renown for having the best burgers in the 'hood.  But I was told they only cook burgers one way.  Medium.  I don't like much pink in my beef and I like my burgers to push back on my bite just a little and so medium I do not enjoy.  So, never could go there.  Roon is a little like that - fit into their way or it's the highway.  That sentiment bleeds into the forum.

 

I've gotten the sense that Roon has made an internal decision to "take back" control of the forum somewhat.  Mostly that means creating a more positive impression around the product - suppressing and editing repeated references to problems and negative experiences unless Roon is of the mindset to admit to the issue.  The disappearing Daily Mixes  is a good example of when they have actually admitted to an issue -- how could they not, it was so prevalent -- and the sluggishness of Roon performance after it's been running a while is a good example of their denial.

 

I signed off the forum "forever" (but for support if needed) after having posts edited for reasons having nothing to do with forum rules.  I have to admit it's a little less stress in my day, but I do miss some of the posters and back-and-forth interactions that I had there.  

 

My main frustration with Roon is their constant blaming of "the network" rather than admitting that an application that is that demanding of a network is the outlier.  Roon wanted me to update all the drivers on a 2018 computer I built to be the Roon core when doing so could affect the stability of the machine - I've learned not to update all hardware drivers all the time if things are working -- and so instead I just built a brand new 8 core 10th generation 32GB screamer of a machine, all totally updated Windows and drivers, something Roon support could say nothing about.  You know what?  Roon does run faster but it still does what my 2017 core was doing - losing images and stalling out at the end of tracks.  This is on a 10GB network wired with Cat 7.  

 

It ain't me Roon.  It's you...

[Pappy Boyington]

16 hours ago, lpost said:

I haven't thought about Baa Baa Black Sheep in decades. I enjoyed that show and the Corsair(s).

I think the veterans didn't like the show because it cast them in a light of being involved in a bunch of hijinks when they were not, and it did not focus on how miserable an experience the Solomon Islands campaign was.  But I loved that show for the airplanes and you just have to let go of the idea that it will have any realism.  It wasn't meant for that.  

 

16 hours ago, miguelito said:

no feature requests of mine or any other I have seen on the Roon forums, have ever made it into Roon

To be fair and balanced about this, I actually had a call with Roon's product manager a few years back where they asked for details about my ideas for the RoonTag feature that they ultimately implemented.  They didn't really implement my ideas, and it took them forever to implement what they did do, but I think this idea did arise out of the forum and a few of the regulars posting back and forth about how to import custom metatags from FLAC files.  

 

That said it doesn't change my general impression that Roon has a pretty rigid picture of their product.  I don't think that in and of itself is so bad...it just so happens that my rigid picture of their product differs from theirs! 

[Pappy Boyington]

55 minutes ago, SimoneF said:

Still I will continue to use it since there isn't anything like Roon on the market, and I've tried pretty much all the "audiophile" players

This is really where the rubber hits the road.  There isn't anything like Roon in terms of RAAT and multizone management.  Integration with both local and streaming services is also still a killer feature.  This is probably one reason they seem a bit complacent about user issues.

 

I don't buy this whole thing that there are 100 users with issues and 200k happy users.  I think it's that there are 200 users that really push Roon to its capabilities and 50% of them have problems, and the other 199,800 users use one zone and one remote and stream Tidal and it works fine at that simple level.  

[Pappy Boyington]

I'm much more focused on some of the things that Roon does really well than some of the folks here.  But I do agree that showing ads in the player crosses a line.

 

So many folks on the Roon forum compare the lifetime sub cost to buying hardware.  Other than monitors with web browsers displayed, I don't have one piece of hardware that advertises to me.  

 

And while other businesses I buy from also send me ads, it's through controlled channels.  McDonald's doesn't put an ad right in their hamburger.  

 

Roon could add an "offers" page in their app and that would be OK with me. But don't pop it in an interstitial.  

[Pappy Boyington]

Notable that Roon chose to close and then hide the thread that was discussing ads in the app.  I wonder how many companies with discussion forums go to the level Roon does to censor and hide anything critical?  I mean moderating for compliance with forum rules is one thing, but hiding whole threads that are within the rules?  

[Pappy Boyington]

1 hour ago, One and a half said:

Jriver forum is much like that.

That’s what I’ve been wondering - if all the forums run by product companies do that.  If so, then it’s good for support questions only.  They own it...they can do what they want...I guess I’m just not that type of fanboy.

[Pappy Boyington]

Perhaps we're all mining bitcoin for Roon and don't even realize it!

[Pappy Boyington]

A lot of posters over at the Roon forum report that they don't have stability issues or usage spikes once running on a NUC with ROCK.  But to my understanding, ROCK only supports the NUC line of products; you cannot just install it on any old machine?  It's ironic that Windows is being recommended here because I've had a bunch of issues on my Windows-based Roon core,  It's a dedicated machine, does nothing else, is an i7 8-core 10th generation with 32GB RAM and while it's faster than my prior Roon core it still does the same flakey stuff, like lose album cover images and mysteriously pause music for no reason. Stops playing at the end of tracks for no reason.