Roon Discussion

Discussion in 'Computer Audiophile: Software, Configs, Tools' started by AllanMarcus, Jul 3, 2016.

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  1. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Frankly, Roon could be a massive benefit to you.

    First, you will have to verify with threads like this https://community.volumio.org/t/roonbridge-plugin/9032 (this one might not be current - similar threads over at the Roon community) to see if you are willing and able to get Volumio configured as a Roon end point. RopieeXL is the easy set it and forget it distro for Pi2AES and Roon however...maybe you could try it.

    Second, Roon is a great interface to Tidal and Qobuz - better than the desktop apps UI and technically. Spotify does not play with Roon however. That said Roon has its own philosophy, and you are definitely buying into an "ecosystem" that takes some learning and getting used to when switching from native desktop apps, JRiver, and the like.

    Third, and here is were Roon could be huge for you, Roon takes much of the upfront organizational/tagging work away when used as an interface for your CD rips. It's sort of an "intelligent" front end to your rips. The downside is that if you don't do this work then "dumb" front ends like JRiver can't make much sense of your library.

    Why not try it? Hook it up to Qobuz, rip a handful of CD's, and see if you like how Roon integrates everything with art/credits/musician background while giving you great DSP and "bit perfect" digital pathways. If you don't like it ditch it...

    Eh, why? No reason I can see for this excepting if your core is a Pentium level product from 20 years ago. As long as @Metro has a modern laptop it should work fine as a core streaming to his Pi2AES as long as he is not doing extreme DSP (DSD > PCM conversions and the like).
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
  2. bixby

    bixby Friend

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    Not sarcastic at all.

    If you read his post carefully, he is not intending to rip his cd collection. So what is the BENEFIT of ANY music player if as the other part of his post describes he is listening to Qobuz, Tidal, and Spotify. As someone pointed out Spotify is not supported, Tidal has a Radio service that rivals Roon, and Qobuz supposedly has decent sound quality.

    So why would anyone with those criteria need Roon? One could argue maybe for the library function, but if he is happy with his streaming services who cares about Roons library function or GUI.

    And then there is the price. I worked Roon hard for 60 days and liked it for what it was. In the end I did not HEAR a benefit and I could care less about the pretty artwork display or the mounds of data served up to read while listening. I don't need that and certainly not for the price they charge to do so.

    That doesn't mean other folks don't value what it offers, I am cool with that. But as to the point: Benefit to @Metro and his normal use case, nope!
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
  3. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Agree, I run the Roon server on fanless Surface Pro 6 without any problems. I think the Roon team made the recommendation assuming that heavy CPU and graphics use by Roon db and UI may affect the playback on the same systema. And with Pi2AES used as an endpoint this is not even relevant.
     
    Last edited: Dec 1, 2021
  4. rlow

    rlow A happy woofer

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    WTF is this debate even about?? It’s $1 for 3 months! What exactly is the harm in trying it? What’s the risk? Even just to curb curiosity I say try it. Don’t like it, don’t continue it. You lose a buck, or you found a great new player. More potential upside than down if you ask me.
     
  5. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Except for all the other things. Maybe he will get sucked into the recommendations, artwork, background, and other little niceties. Perhaps he will just like how it is a different Qobuz front end to him, or how it makes DSP easy. But beyond this, perhaps it is what he needs to finally begin ripping his CD library as Roon is the only thing that does the whole "library integration" thing in anyway beyond a 1st grade level.

    In the end he like you might end up not wanting to spend the money, but how will he know unless he tries it...
     
  6. captkirk

    captkirk Khan's BFF

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    This. I’m so lazy when it comes to music discovery, but I like venturing out and hearing new tracks from new artists. This feature alone nearly justifies the expense IMO. The difference is made up in the slick interface.
     
  7. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    One of my favorite features is Zone Transfers. Playing one album on my PI2AES then I have to play it ony Eitr > RDAC? First I pause, then I do the Zone Transfer feature and boom I start where I left off on my PI.
     
  8. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    I've been a Roon user since 2016. First, just managing my own CD rip and digital download library, more recently supplemented by Qobuz streaming. Roon's main value for me is having a single, unified entry point for the music I want to listen to on multiple systems (speaker and headphones), with good (not perfect) handling of metadata that allows me to revisit music I had not listened to in a long while. With streaming integration, Roon suggests new music that broadly matches my interests, and with Roon Radio I can get myself lost in a sequence of tracks around a seed track and learn about artists and albums I did not know. I can be listening to something on my headphones while working, and zone transfer it to the speaker system to share with my wife over dinner. I could not imagine going back to messing around with any other digital audio setup.

    Since September, I've been switching between two locations with different audio systems. I carry a fanless PC (Zotac CI662 nano) with a 4TB SSD running Ubuntu Server and Roon between the two. I arrive, I plug it into the network and boot it up. My whole music universe is there, including the library links to Qobuz.

    I have a lifetime membership that I got early on, but I'd easily pay a yearly membership for the consistency across sources, systems, and locations.
     
  9. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and sign up and see how it suits me. Thanks for everybody's input!
     
  10. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    That's my only regret with Roon that I did not get lifetime membership early
     
  11. Inoculator

    Inoculator Friend

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    Same. It was a tough decision to not immediately go lifetime after my 30-day trial, but I decided I would at least try a year first before making that investment (even if it then costs me a bit more in the long run). Additionally, I wanted to see what improvements they bring in their next major update, as there are some nagging issues I hope they sort out. More on that below.

    While we are all waxing poetic about Roon, I will say that it is not hyperbole in my case to say Roon completely revolutionized my approach to music listening. Before Roon, I was using MusicBee/Qobuz official app to listen to my music. Honestly, worked and sounded fine plugging my laptop into Unison USB. I started my audiophile journey though due to being a vinyl collector who wanted more from his setup. That has carried through, and I would say that before Roon, probably about 80% of my listening was vinyl, 20% digital. Since adopting Roon, that ratio has completely flipped, and I spin much less vinyl than I ever have. Ultimately I found Roon scratches the itch I have to commit to an album via vinyl, and sound quality and convenience has trumped a lot of things. \

    Pi2AES to Gungnir Multibit is frankly incredible and beats out all but my best AAA vinyl pressings. Heck, I have quite a few chromecast audios I am using as endpoints for more casual setups around the house, and even just using the built-in DACs in those sounds better than ever before. Before setting up Roon I would easily buy 1-2 records a week on average, and that has plummeted to just a couple a month. I really now just prioritize AAA pressing or albums where I really want to support the artist. Before Roon I basically never bought digital music, I just would keep a collection of CD I ripped and downloads that came with vinyl. But with Roon I find myself just opting to snag digital copies of things from Bandcamp rather than always committing to a vinyl purchase.

    What is so great about Roon? For me it would be the following:
    • Qobuz and my personal collection in one place. I honestly hated having to switch back and forth between MusicBee exclusive and Qobuz exclusive when I only had some albums on one platform or the other. Integrating it all in Roon is awesome, and once you sort out making sure all your albums are nested together, it is easy to pick which version (qobuz or yours) you want the primary version to be based on quality preferences. Qobuz and Roon honestly seem to be made for each other, they both fill in the deficiencies of the other. Qobuz's data management is frankly kind of a mess, Roons is fantastic. If I were a decision-maker at either company I would be trying to make a partnership happen ASAP offering bundled services.
    • DSP/EQ options...and I hate EQ. I am honestly way too much of a headcase for EQ, but I have already found it to be handy in a pinch and look forward to diving deeper into the options here. I was listening to Nancy Sinatra's debut album the other day via headphones, and the old 60's hard stereo panning was honestly unlistenable. I just clicked the default crossfeed DSP switch and like a miracle, things sounded great and I was able to go back to listening.
    • Browsing interface is next tier and makes decided what to listen to a very low-stress affair. My least favorite data management experience in keeping a music collection is deciding genre, and roon makes that no longer necessary. Every artist has a wide variety of applicable genres applied, and then it is as simple as clicking on one of those genres to bring up a focused search of your collection of all the music with a similar genre. The "Focus" feature that lets you choose such a wide variety of qualifiers like this (genre, year, etc) and then only browse that stuff in your collection is fantastic. Then you can always use the discover feature if you don't know what you are feeling. Normally on the first page of discover I come across something I had not considered that sounds good, hit play and I am no longer worrying about it, back to what I was doing.
    • Roon Radio. This is honestly a complete game-changer. As good or better than spotifys radio feature. It is nice as a busy parent of a toddler to be able to throw on an album I am in the mood for, and then I don't have to fuss again until my mood changes. The album ends, and I just let Roon take the wheel and play similar music because I know it will do a good job 99% of the time. Now occasionally it comes across something that it is not super familiar with and you will get some odd selections, or you accidentally get a track that is not as laid-back for example. I would like to see the addition of something that Microsoft Groove actually had before they shut down their streaming, where you could choose like "mellow", "energetic" etc when creating a radio station and it would try to commit to that mood. I also did notice that radio can be a bit formulaic and I would love to see it be more random. Like if you choose a track and then let radio play for a few tracks, then go back and play that same track again and let radio restart, it will sometimes choose the exact same artists for those first few tracks, so clearly it is following not the most varied algorithm.
    • True whole-home experience. This has been touched on by others, but being able to transfer between zones seamlessly and quickly and easily setup multizone synced playback is great. No complaints here, it just works. And with so many different endpoint options out there, it is great when using a lot of different gear and setups.
    • Sound quality. Ok, I can't really quantify what differences I hear, and maybe I was just looking for it to be "better", but I did feel a noticeable increase in digital sound quality when switching to Roon. Like I said before, even my chromecast audios seem to sound better than when I was streaming straight from Qobuz before. At the very least, I have the peace of mind that I am getting a bit-perfect stream because Roon has a handy guide that lets you know if you are getting lossless/bit-perfect quality via a handy little color-coded guide that is easy to notice on the interface.
    • I love the visuals and UI, and I really love that you can associate a display with an audio device. It is great to be able to say that every time you stream to X device that it should boot up a visual interface on your chromecast on your TV for example.

    What could be improved for Roon?
    • Playlist management is kind of terrible. I keep playlists synced between Spotify and Qobuz (even though I have ditched spotify premium because...f**k spotify), and I hate that Roon will not let you manage Qobuz playlists. I am not really a playlist guy, I typically just maintain "Best of the year" playlists and stuff like that, and it really sucks that I cannot add to the Qobuz version of a playlist while I am listening in Roon, and that I cannot then sync Roon playlists via something like soundiiz. Plus, Spotify is still king at curated playlists, and no other platform really even seems to be close, so having to export spotify playlists to qobuz, and then see them in Roon but not be able to adjust or change them is cumbersome. Playlists just seem like a complete afterthought in Roon, which is a shame. Would love to see them using some of the predictive features from Roon Radio/Discover to AI generate playlists.
    • Portable experience needs a complete overhaul. I have an LG phone with Quad DAC that is a reliable performer, but Roon has not figured out how to bypass android audio like USB Audio Player Pro has, so there is no way to get around the android audio layer when using Roon. Gross. This got me considering getting a Roon Ready DAP, but it does not seem like much is out there. I guess the Chord Mojo+Poly is the only major Roon ready portable amp/dac/streamer...but no thanks. Something I could carry to any room in my house with my ZMFs and listen would be so killer. In addition, you cannot use Roon when you are not on your home internet. This needs to change. I want to listen to my library in Roon wherever I go. I have 1gig fiber at home and a dedicated PC I built to be my Roon server, I feel with an appropriate internet connection at work for example I should be able to stream to Roon on my phone. At the very least they should let you stream your Qobuz/Tidal tracks when on the go. Lastly, the android Roon app is kind of crap, takes a long time to connect to core on boot up, and just a less pleasant interface.
    • Discover feature could be even better. I mentioned earlier that I like the discover feature, but there are some major changes I would like to see. First-off rarely does it seem to dig THAT deep into my collection to help me rediscover something. It seems to really focus on your more recent listening habits. It also seems to really like to repeat certain suggestions. For example, it suggests certain composers or featured musicians, which is awesome because then you get to discover like "hey, this baritone sax player played on all this different stuff in my collection, that is so cool!", but for whatever reason, my discover really likes to do "Paul McCartney" and "John Lennon" as suggestions so like every other time I boot up discover I have Beatles tracks being recommended. Guess what Roon, I didn't forget the Beatles exists. I do like the varied categories you get in discover though such as sub-genres and different record labels.
    I think that is it for now. Overall I just love it and plan on buying a lifetime subscription when my current sub is up. It is a setup that once going has a high WAP, I set up an old surface pro next to my vintage living room setup that gets constant use, and it is just so easy for my wife or I to quickly walk over, pick something to listen to, and go back to what we were doing.
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2020
  12. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    According to Roon management (as stated on the Roon forums - would hunt it down link it if I was not lazy), more thorough playlists integration and the like are held back by the API's that Tidal & Qobuz present to Roon, and Roon's design commitments. In other words you have the usual "don't cross the streams" interoperability issues because both "sides" are have their philosophy and design commitments and there is only so far that either can work with the other.

    So unless/until something like a merge of Qobuz and Roon happens at the corporate level like you talk about - not in the cards at all as far as I am aware - we are probably not going to see these sorts of desires fullfilled...
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2020
  13. Inoculator

    Inoculator Friend

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    That is a bummer. I need to start following the Roon forums to stay up on these things. As I said, I am not a playlist guy anyway so it is not a huge deal, just would be nice to see them sort out in the future, or at least integrated deeper with something like soundiiz (that I also subscribe to) to keep libraries/playlists synced.

    I also forgot to mention the absolute best aspect of Roon Radio, MUSIC DISCOVERY. Holy crap I have listened to so much new music since adopting Roon. For example, I was just listening to the new The War on Drugs Live album, it wrapped up and started playing this absolutely mesmerizing track (below) and now I am listening to Keaton Henson's album "Monument", something I had never heard of but now adore. Spotify radio lacks this approach, as I found it really focuses on music it KNOWS you are going to love because it is the same stuff you always listen to. I used to spend a lot of time staying on top of new music, but life with a toddler has made that time practically non-existent, so I really appreciate Roon helping me out.

     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2020
  14. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    I know I've dropped hints in profile posts about how smitten I've been with Roon Radio, but it really changed the way I listen to music in a positive way. There've been entire 8-hour workdays where I've just let Roon Radio run off a single album to start with and unless the starting album is a bit obscure, it really opens up whole new territories of artists. As kind of an aside, the whole working from home has completely changed my new music intake. I feel like I've discovered more new (to me) music in the last 6 months or so than in the last 2 years, at least.
     
  15. beemerphile

    beemerphile Friend

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    For years I have thought that poor old stepchild Pandora had the best discovery capability with what they called their "music genome database". Several folks who play geneticist in Real Life have enjoyed explaining how it really has no gene nature in what it does, but it worked well for finding other stuff I liked. Pandora used 450 different distinct musical characteristics to provide the data from which to predict which other pieces of music might appeal to the same listener. Unfortunately, it is attached to a background quality music service. I am a lifetime Roon subscriber and have enjoyed seeing Roon come up-to-speed in this capability.
     
  16. Metro

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    I signed up for Roon (3 month trial for $1, Black Friday deal available through 11/30).
    Here is my initial experience...

    My primary music source is streaming (Qobuz, Tidal and Spotify).

    I've been satisfied with the Qobuz/Tidal/Spotify desktop apps when playing music on my laptop to USB output. UI interface and music discovery in the apps have worked well for me. I found that Roon improves on the interface and it is nice to access Qobuz and Tidal libraries combined, but for this scenario Roon wouldn't give me enough of a advantage to justify a subscription.

    However, I've been listening to music mostly through Pi2AES / Volumio. For Spotify, I can use Spotify Connect, but for Qobuz and Tidal I've been using Volumio's primitive UI interface that has very limited functionality. From reading about other Pi players, none of the others have a good interface either. They are all limited by the data they can retrieve from the streaming service.

    Volumio has a Roon Bridge plug-in. I installed it and Roon found my Pi2AES right away.
    roon pi2aes.png
    Now I have found something genuinely useful to me — ability to play Qobuz and Tidal on Pi2AES with a good user interface. I have lots more to explore on Roon but this has been a good start.
     
  17. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Use Android because you hate the Apple tax?

    Wanna stop/play/back/forward in Roon on your phone lock screen or Android drop down menus without going into the actual Roon app?

    Here you go. I use method 2 to install and easy to keep it running. Follow the instructions.
     
  18. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    No, I just like having an adblocker on my phone, and also a good browser, and also no, but I'll keep that in mind though!

    Bookmarked.

    That is come convoluted shit though, having to run a whole node server just for that!
     
  19. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    I guess due to how Roon does their Extensions I believe the developer didn't have a choice. I just do Method 2 and run a simple .exe since it does all the work for me. Then I just put on the Extension in Roon and download the apps on my Android stuff and I'm golden.
     
  20. Inoculator

    Inoculator Friend

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    Roon REALLY needs to sort out how to get new/surprise releases from Qobuz on the platform sooner. Sitting here listening to the new Kid Cudi and Taylor Swift albums via my phone/porta pros with all my fancy gear and brand new Auteurs sitting next to me all because they are not available on Roon yet. It is just such a bummer every week on Thursday nights/Friday mornings to not have new music I want to check out available to use in Roon.
     

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