This does seem to be a massive elephant in the room on this one. I don’t know how far Roon’s testing goes, but if it goes beyond basically confirming functionality and they demand any kind of schematic or anything else it’s going to get very interesting.
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I wonder if one of the shorter term changes will be a relaxation of the policy around streaming company integrations to accommodate stuff like Spotify Connect. It would mean more of a two-tier approach without some of the metadata access they currently demand, but would probably open up market access to Roon.
Apparently a sizeable group of people are keen on being waterboarded due to their insistence on calling Harman, Harmon.
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The more I think about it, the more I think it has to be about buying yourself a basis from which to challenge BluOS. To do that, they would have to add other streaming services.
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Was going to post the same thing, Lenbrook did well with integrating BluOS, NAD and Bluesound. Suspect that Harman are probably going to try a similar thing but licence Roon to 3rd party hardware companies.
Hopefully they’ll get the bug out of the Roon teams arse about having a proprietary DB. Everyone else out there integrates with streaming services by doing API calls for metadata searches and playback streams etc, have never understand why Roon refused to go that route.
If they want Roon to become a mainstream product that will be integrated into things like Auralic, Lumin, Linn, Naim etc they need integration with Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Deezer etc.
…and hopefully get them to at least take a look at why so many people feel that Roon doesn’t;t sound as good as other systems.
Probably got their £10k switch incorrectly configured and sat on a ley line
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Difficult to hear inner microdynamics and subtle soundstaging over the frantic screaming of a CPU begging for mercy.
So funny that this is now the general feeling about roon, when I remember buying it because I wanted a better way to engage with my local music collection, and literally nothing like it existed.
It still gives me many benefits over other platforms in that it can stream to multiple different kinds of endpoints, roon, bluesound, Sonos, Google, Amazon and whatever you happen to have directly connected to the core. No other product lets you do that and as a result I’ve always stuck to roon.
The rich metadata service, while not perfect has created so many links between parts of my library that I didn’t even know about. Not to mention roon radio which has been a constantly supply of new music discoveries for me.
IMHO roon pays for itself over and over in my system, and I really enjoy using it. There’s nothing that provides anywhere near the same kind of interface, control, information, immersion, not by a long shot.
I hope Harman don’t fuck it up!
Glad you enjoy it and it works for you.
Not the case for everyone if you read through this thread.
I dumped Roon years ago, the benefits (library management etc) didn’t outweigh the technical ball ache of trying to use it without paying through the nose and buying a ‘core’. What do I want that for when my music is on a NAS and backed up already?
Their help desk were patronising morons and asked me to send all sorts of logs then didn’t look at them.
In my case it turned out that a driver on a video card on my laptop stopped Roon from running.
Flakey as fuck.
With what they want to charge they need to provide a system that works for everyone, not just those locked in to their weird ways of operating.
I hope Harman sort it out because the library management and artist information is the best bit.
I thought that was actually pretty good to use, but appallingly unstable, and almost wilfully wasteful of resources.
After the third complete meltdown I gave up and threw it out.
Others here seem to get on with it just fine.
For me Roon went catastrophically downhill after 1.8, if I could have stayed on 1.8 I would have been happy.
- Use of openGL, come on these days just WTF
- Shitty database that corrupts if a worm farts within a mile of it.
- Forcing backup validation without realising that a massive number of users have corrupt backups and lost their DB
- ARC, yeah I want to open my network to the outside world
- Doesn’t work without an internet connection, so I have to be connected to listen to my own local files
- Getting users to update the artwork (and allowing use of copyright stuff)
- Networking - well just endless amounts of shite with this and the stupid way it is designed
- Utter lack of support and expecting forum to fix 90% of problems
- Complete disregard for feedback and the totally arrogant attitude of Roon staff
- Endless issues with Sonos endpoints failing to stream or vanishing that have never been fixed
Not any more, it now only plays stuff from my library and has been become very stupid, again it was fantastic in 1.8 but seems to be royally fucked since then.
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Never had a problem with Roon Radio. One of the better experiences I’ve had.
ARC is a frozen javelin of piss and search, the most basic requirement of a library management system is catastrofucked currently.
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Roon Radio used to be fantastic, for me it was the strongest part of the product.
I don’t have much local music, probably around 250x albums. Ever since 2.0 the radio has been predominantly playing stuff from my library and just ends up using the same album but different tracks all the time.
It used to play stuff that I’d never even heard of and opened up so much new stuff, that has long gone and I haven’t used it for probably a year now.
hat pretty much mirrors my experience.
- Roon radio was initially excellent but went significantly downhill, to the extent that I could predict which artists it would choose, and in which order. LMS uses last.fm to generate its lists and does a very much better job.
- The Valance stuff (user provided metadata) was really not thought through at all, launched with a huge fanfare and seems to have sunk without a trace.
- The attitude of the support team, and some of the user members on their board they encourage, is appalling.
- I still maintain it sounds a bit squashed and lifeless compared to others but accept others may have different experience.
Yeah I’m convinced their RAAT streaming still applies some DSP despite what they say.
The SB Touch into the Auralic DAC sounds way better than Roon RAAT to the Auralic
I have Roon it’s majorly flawed. Jplay is quite good.
Haven’t had a single one of these problems. I installed the custom Linux core kit (ROCK) onto a little PC I had. It sits minding its own business and has been rock solid for months.
Roon radio works smoothly, from Qobuz and I don’t have any issues managing my library from day to day.
I guess I must be one of the fortunate ones.
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Exactly my experience
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