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

[Mike Rubin]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

I had the same experience in the Roon forums as you, @AudioDoctor, and left in disgust. Life's too short for that nonsense.

 

All one has to do is to listen to alternatives, like Stylus on Euphony OS, or HQPlayer 4 Desktop playing files directly, and the case is made.

 

I had a simple request to the Roon team. "Conduct listening tests on your competition." But one can't just go to them directly and ask them. No, you have to post on their forum, and then endure  the taunts and insults of the peanut gallery.

 

I accept my lifetime subscription is a sunk cost, but I do use Roon for noncritical listening and music discovery on Qobuz. Their UI and UX are excellent. Pity about the SQ.

I think that I am the only person alive who subscribed to Roon because he or she likes the sound quality more than the alternatives'.  I also like having the ability to broadcast on my network at DSD256, which makes my streamers and DACs sing (I don't connect my NUC to anything via USB) and the ability to create smartlists by record label(which I can't do elsewhere without adding a shit ton of extra metadata).
 

Unfortunately, however, that's it for me.  As someone with only a local library, who has lots of non-US and independent label classical and jazz, and who tags his classical music in an apparently non-standard way, I have come to despise almost every other thing about it.  It's not only not worth $120 a year to me, it's not worth anything.  As my annual subscription ends tomorrow, I have been uninstalling it from my devices the last day or so in anticipation of renewing my interest in Audirvana and JRiver.  
 

The former has promising SQ and the latter, which now can stream DSD64 over DLNA, always will be my library organization and metadata editing tool.  I can buy them both annually for a bit less than the cost of Roon alone. 
 

I too have been ignored by Roon when requesting help of any sort, with one exception:  Danny Dulai actually proved quite helpful when I had some issues with my NUC running ROCK. Otherwise, it's like talking to a wall at that forum, except when you dare voice disagreement with management's approach to anything whatsoever, in which case the Fanboy Brown Shirts jump down your throat, no matter how polite or even subserviently apologetic your post might be.  I remember my first "suggestion"'post there; I was way too stupid to realize it should have been my last.  (The only less pleasant audio community on the net is at ASR, which I actually wish I could like, but that one works way hard to drive dissent off the boards.)

 

If you stream a lot of Tidal or Qobuz, your collection is filled with the Eagles and Diana Krall, and you aren't the sort who cares about raising grievances to management, I imagine you can do okay with Roon, warts and all.  However, I know most of the influencers in the mainstream press, e.g., Stereophile and Absolute Sound, who have become almost shills for Roon, have local collections that require more sophisticated metadata than Roon can offer, have thoughts on how software should work, and have better playback equipment than I do.  

 

Man, I just don't get the unallayed love out there. 

[Mike Rubin]

51 minutes ago, miguelito said:

I don't think this is true at all. But to support your point, no feature requests of mine or any other I have seen on the Roon forums, have ever made it into Roon. Ever. And my requests are both quite popular and relatively easy to implement.

My subscription just lapsed and, of course, Roon wanted to know why, saying they make a point of listening to the customers.  Normally, I would take that bait and provide my reasoning, but I won't in this case.   Room hasn't listened before and, in fact, responded with, "no thanks," when I have made several suggestions, including a couple that would be insanely uncontroversial and easy to accommodate.

 

Roon calls itself opinionated about how to design and implement software. It is successful and beloved these days, so those instincts are good. For every guy like me who thinks the interface and metadata are garbage, there are a few hundred thousand who think it is underpriced. So, while I have opinions myself, Roon doesn't need another opportunity to ignore them.

[Mike Rubin]

2 hours ago, beetlemania said:

Still loving Roon here. Easily the best user experience I know of and the SQ is as good as any I’ve tried. yes, I’ve tried HQPlayer albeit a few years ago. My room, my gear, my ears. IME, computer-side changes make little difference in SQ (but not zero difference).

 

 I did recently have an issue where Roon would crash streaming 24-bit Qobuz files. It took several weeks waiting but the latest version solved the problem.

As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, the only complaint about Roon that I did not have was SQ. In fact, that was the only reason I subscribed.  I  haven't tried HQP, and only listened to Roon with upsampling enabled, but I always found the sound full-bodied and engaging.

[Mike Rubin]

1 hour ago, miguelito said:

This is quite interesting.

 

If I were Roon, other than looking for a sugar daddy, I would create a slimmed down version of the app that can rely on a slimmed down version of the db and would do this bit with 7digital. You could offer the "cheap" service or buy into the "big" version.

Don't suggest this at the Roon forum.  I made a similar suggestion for "Roon Lite" and you would have thought I'd shot the mothers of the literal dozens of Roon customers who felt compelled to pile on and reiterate what a dumbfizzuck I was for presuming that I knew better than Roon itself what Roon customers want.

[Mike Rubin]

16 minutes 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.

Like Jud, my setup streams to a Rendu device over ethernet.  It's the Rendu, not my NUC, that is connected to the DAC. 

 

I gave up my Roon subscription and now am using both JRiver and Audirvana Studio as control applications.

 

This might be a dumb question, but to synthesize what's above in this thread, do I need HQP to use Euphony as a source with NAA?  I assume so, and that, if I don't want to use HQP, I need a server that runs on Linux like MinimServer or Bubble Server.

 

Is that a proper understanding of what's been said previously in this thread?

[Mike Rubin]

5 hours ago, hopkins said:

 

SQ can be improved simply by using a better DAC 🙂

That's not what they are saying over there at aufiosciencereview.com.  $200 or so should get you all the fidelity humans are capable of hearing. 😛😜😝

 

Sorry, couldn't resist that.

[Mike Rubin]

1 hour ago, rn701 said:

Latest roon forum drama:

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/censorship-about-off-topic-things/173158

 

 

 

I gave this the "funny" response, but this site needs to add a "wow!" emoji, as that was my actual reaction.

 

Three months since letting my Roon subscription lapse.  I haven't missed the interface more than once or twice.  I do miss its SQ more often as I found it streams DSD better than JRiver and that DSP upscaling on Roon is more stable than with HQ Player Desktop, my current evaluation experiment.  (An i7 NUC over NAA is never going to let me enjoy HQPD to its full potential, as the higher quality modulators and filters make the NUC stutter sooner or later, if it plays at all.) 

 

I continue to pop over to the forum when I get the periodic email reminding me of what I am missing, but, after five or so minutes there, I find myself wanting to injure people.

[Mike Rubin]

10 minutes ago, rn701 said:

 

Yes, absurd. Disclaimer: I'm the one that got banned for "trying to damage the forum." Sad that the COO has time to spend on the social media potential for their "community" instead of fixing bugs.

We learned in this new forum thread that Danny id a knife enthusiast and that he has learned a great deal about coffee from the coffee thread in the “off-topic” forum.  Priorities, m701!

[Mike Rubin]

1 minute ago, Miska said:

 

I would claim that the modulators in HQPlayer that you don't count in as "higher quality modulators" are still better quality than most other modulators you can find out there... For example ASDM5 and ASDM7 are already very good ones and don't take horribly lot of CPU power either. Although still heavier than some simpler ones out there.

 

Agreed. Which is why I almost certainly will buy a license once I find an ideal setting that sounds great but without dropouts.

 

The problem for me is psychological: I can hear differences with the EC modulators that make me ask myself, “Do I really want to buy yet another computer just for this application?”  Because, until I do that, I will always be aware that my system isn’t sounding as good as I already have heard it sound with the EC modulators. 😢

[Mike Rubin]

15 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I wonder where this “expert help before and after you buy” is going to come from

 

https://store.roonlabs.com

 

 

Essentially one Bluetooth speaker line that doesn’t play native DDS and two hyperexpensive speaker lines that disabuse no one of the idea that Roon is more a “lifestyle”and less of either a music lover’s or audiophile’s product.

 

not that there’s anything wrong with lifestyle products, but my bet is that not too many visitors to this particular forum are the target demographic forum that store.

[Mike Rubin]

57 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

I don't think Roon endeavors to be anything more than a lifestyle software, so that's not surprising to me.

My reference was intended to be to DSD and “for that store.”  Clearly, autocorrection hates me.

[Mike Rubin]

8 hours ago, R1200CL said:

Well, the search has changed a lot since then. So your criticism isn’t correct. 

After 6 months away, I decided to try Roon again on the Black Friday special.  At least 50% of my classical music and non-US or independent label jazz remains misidentified or unidentified by Roon.  I can't see that anything has changed recently in that department.  So your criticism isn't correct. 

[Mike Rubin]

I have that update and imported some material last night.  Not much of it has useful additions from Roon’s database.

 

That said, it is true that none of my other software does what Roon purports to do.  It doesn’t claim to do what Roon purports to do.  Mostly, that other software does merely what it purports to do and it does it well.  That is what I expect from any software:  do well what it purports to do.  I don’t fault it for not doing what it doesn’t purport to do.  In the case of my other music software, I don’t care that it doesn’t provide data because it doesn’t make providing data its business model.

 

Roon has a thankless task because it relies on a mediocre third-party database as its main selling point.  In truth, there isn’t much useful information about the stuff I own in the few databases that are out there, so I have learned not to expect much with digital downloads of material that is obscure.  That said, Roon isn’t good at doing the one thing it claims to be good at doing.

 

Roon has some virtues: ROCK is solid, its connectivity is unparalleled in my experience, it manages large collections without stumbling on them, and its sound quality is at least acceptable on my system.  I am just getting sick and tired of being made out to be the asshole when I point out that it has very little information value-add for people who are not primarily into popular forms of music.  If, seemingly like most well-preserved Roon customers, one is stuck on the Eagles, Diana Krall, and Journey, it’s probably pretty good - I often am surprised how decent it can be with indie and other alternative rock, as well - but it hasn’t come $120-a-year close to the challenge of being useful to jazz and classical collectors.  It has said ten times that it has made improvements to the database, but, beyond stealing artwork from its users, it hasn’t shown me what it has done.

 

Mind you, I hoard more music than I ever am going to ever listen to in my lifetime, so I don’t use Roon to expose me to music I might never hear.  I don’t use streaming services and, frankly, I know more about the music genres I like than Roon does.  For other people, maybe most, there no doubt is a use case for Roon.  It would be a better world, though, if Roon fanbois simply allowed that there is a large group of music listeners for whom Roon is not a good recommendation.  When Roon and its cult get that, just as others understand that Roon has virtues for many if not themselves, it will be a better world.

 

 

[Mike Rubin]

2 minutes ago, One and a half said:

Yet, even in closing the subscription, they want to know how to improve.... well, if you don't want to listen, how to improve? 

 

Usually, I respond to these kinds of communications in the spirit of constructive criticism or just to provide a reason if my departure shouldn't be taken as a reflection on the vendor or its product. 

I made an exception for Roon.  After a year and three months of earnestly trying to get them to listen to anything that I said, I figured my time is better spent than in talking to a wall. 

[Mike Rubin]

5 hours ago, jvvita said:

Hello, a bit off-topic here. I would love to get to know performances and recordings "off Broadway". Is there any place where you share your main findings, especially in jazz?

I haven't published to the world anything other than a couple of JRiver Cloudplay and Spotify "beginner" playlists for younger friends just getting into jazz, but, if you wish to private message me, I can give you some targeted recommendations. 

 

[Mike Rubin]

40 minutes ago, Mauidj7 said:

Suggestions for a robust and great sounding replacement please.

The usual suspects:  HQPlayer Desktop or Embedded sound great. Not nuts about the library management clients and they can be finicky and fiddly as hell, but sound quality definitely is the thing with them. 
 

JRiver is robust as can be (except when playing into HQPlayer Embedded, which may be the cause of the problem), and I like its sound, especially without DSP.  
 

Audirvāna Studio also sounds pretty amazing, but the interface is…. eccentric.  It is the Citroen or Peugeot of music players.   I haven’t had the reliability issues that others have, but it’s often annoying to use nonetheless.

 

If you use a dedicated server, Volumio is really solid.  It’s reliable, although it is slow to do a library scan, and it sounds lovely, but it isn’t really positioned as a DSP platform, if that is important to you.

 

Logitech Media Server is OG, but I keep it around as a backstop for when my network isn’t playing nicely with the more modern apps.  There are many times when it’s the only software that can get my network to play music after power failures or device software upgrades that require reboots.  I also am happy with its sound quality, although it also isn’t really sold as a DSP platform.

 

Of course, none of these provides the integrated allmusic.com experience and dubious copyright status photo experience that Roon does, but those only are useful to people whose music is covered by allmusic.com and that Roon actually can identify accurately. 

[Mike Rubin]

54 minutes ago, steveoat said:

Some of the forum members are silly and uninformed, and have little understanding of high end audio.  I recently posted about the Taiko Audio music server, which I don't own.  I asked about a claim that Taiko makes that they have made improvements to Roon and plan on releasing even more.  When I asked about what these improvements consist of and what other improvements members have made to improve sound quality on Roon (outside of HQ Player) I received a lot of silly answers regarding drinking alcohol before listening to music as well as jokes about the cost of the Taiko.  For many cases, Roon is the best I have found (though its support for box sets is atrocious and its sound needs improvement), but there are many new forum members who don't seem to take these issues seriously.  A shame.

Every so often, Roon incents me to come back for a few months to experience the "many improvements."  Including an annual membership and a couple of these trials, I have amassed more than a couple of years of user time, so think I know what is worthwhile about the product and where it needs improvement.  I currently am on another trial.  With what I currently see, I won't be signing on again for an annual plan, especially with the price update. 

 

I apparently am one of the few people alive who thinks that Roon sounds pretty damned good with its DSP capabilities engaged, but my grievance is with the so-called curation. Even with the claimed improvements, Roon still can't even identify more than 50% of my heavily jazz- and classical-oriented collection and, often, even when it identifies it properly, it has zero value add because allmusic.com has nothing to say about it.

 

As I have posted earlier in this thread, with classical music, I bring this on myself because I retag a lot of the inane or nonstandard metadata that comes with classical music downloads or CD rips, but I don't mess too much with the jazz stuff and Roon still simply doesn't recognize it. On top of that, even with the less esoteric indie pop and rock that I have often, Roon lags new releases by weeks or months and, even when it updates, doesn't seem to backfill.  Further, Roon often gets tracks misnumbered and its renumbering function was designed by a preschooler. 

 

I bring this up again because I have been watching the forums to see how the brownshirts are treating these days those who dare complain that Roon doesn't do very well what it claims is its best selling point.  If anything, the forums are worse than I remembered them. Now, if you complain that the track renumbering function is a kluge or that the database knows very little about non-US jazz, or say that Roon isn't for you because you dare change "French Party Classics, Track 3" to "Satie - Parade," you find yourself under a dogpile of holier-than-thou's who assert that Roon isn't at fault but, instead, you are a big doodoo head because your metadata must be a mess. Well, yeah, mine by Roon standards is a mess for classical (though, despite my editing, it is meticulously, even anally curated), but the Roon database simply isn't up to the rest of the job. Why pin that on me instead of just admitting that Roon isn't for people who have offbeat collections? 

 

As I keep saying, if you like the Beatles and the Eagles, Roon is your software.  I suspect both that users' enthusiasm is in inverse relationship with the breadth of their musical tastes and that the fanboiz aren't exactly exploring musical frontiers. 

[Mike Rubin]

5 minutes ago, steveoat said:

How did you set up HQ Player embedded?  Is it on a dedicated machine?  Did you use HQP embedded OS?  The reason I am asking this is that I am building a new computer whose main purpose is to run HQ Player and am looking for an easy way to install HQ Player embedded.

You may not need to install HQPlayer Embedded at all. I have gone back to running HQPlayer Embedded OS off a USB stick on a NUC. Simple, no installation required, and the pc's main nvme ssd retains a Windows installation if I need to have access to one. 

[Mike Rubin]

1 hour ago, steveoat said:

And all of the functionality is usable?  (Wrong quote-- I am referring to Mike Rubin's quote regarding HQ Player embedded).

Everything that I use, anyway. I haven't tried Desktop with CUDA on a NUC, but I can't imagine that Intel graphics would accommodate code intended for NVIDIA hardware.  If that is important, add Embedded to a standard Linux install and get an NVIDIA card into your build.