Roon 2.0 Launched Today - Adds Mobile Listening

[HCT-5808]

Roon updated to 2.0 today. Roon 2.0

It adds a killer feature for me, the ability to listen to all my music out of the home on a cell network. You'll need the new Roon ARC app to use this feature. Some quick testing shows it works just fine. I had to bump the bit rate down to balanced (about 256kbps) to stream due to my poor upload speed. Hopefully, fiber in my future will fix that for me. You are able to download albums for offline listening.

I no longer have to upload my music to Google's locker service to stream my library outside of the house. Time to think about what streaming services I'm going to keep going forward.

 

[TulseLuper]

Huge. This was a big downside for me before. I hope it works well.

 

[djgras]

https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/getting-started-with-arc#Overview

 

[Jeromeof]

A good move forward - probably needs CarPlay support for me to jump onto Roon.

And in my opinion, Roon still too expensive - I will stick with Plex / PlexAmp (which is almost as nice too look at - though only a basic EQ, missing PEQ DSP support).

 

[Purité Audio]

All working here, you can only download albums from stored music though not from a streaming service at the moment at least.
Keith

 

[Berwhale]

A good move forward - probably needs CarPlay support for me to jump onto Roon.

And in my opinion, Roon still too expensive - I will stick with Plex / PlexAmp (which is almost as nice too look at - though only a basic EQ, missing PEQ DSP support).

PlexAmp was working well with Wavelet PEQ on my Android phone last night (via Bt connection to my Topping D50s/A50s & HD660s). Obviously PEQ would be nice within PlexAmp itself, but I can't see it being a priority feature for Plex.

 

[Dj7675]

I didn’t see any EQ options available in the new Roon Arc app. Hopefully they will be able to add that in the ARC app.

 

[Dennis_FL]

A good move forward - probably needs CarPlay support for me to jump onto Roon.

And in my opinion, Roon still too expensive - I will stick with Plex / PlexAmp (which is almost as nice too look at - though only a basic EQ, missing PEQ DSP support).

Both my cars have Carplay and Roon would be a welcome APP for sure. I rented a car this year that had the newer wireless carplay and it was great. I kept my phone in my pocket and everything worked. I may have to buy new cars.

I really wish we had the ability to tailor Roon Radio. It keeps playing opera. Drives me crazy.

 

[Madjalapeno]

Downloaded today, but not had a chance to try. Needs CarPlay to be a single source of my media when driving. Very frustrating having Roon Play lists and Qobuz playlists.

I have been able to use Roon remotely for a while though, you just need to set up a ZeroTier VPN and it all works.

 

[jhwalker]

It works quite well - I had early access and used it driving over 250 miles this weekend, from 5G to 4G to 3G (and probably some scarier spots than that) - not a bobble.

 

[theREALdotnet]

It adds a killer feature for me, the ability to listen to all my music out of the home on a cell network.

Some of us have had that feature since 2011, with iTunes Match

Granted, you have pay extra for that and it only provides AAC256 quality content, but honestly, this is more than enough for me on the go or in the car. The benefit is that you don’t need an inbound connection to your home network, or sufficient upload speed at home, since the content streams from the cloud.

 

[euge_lee]

I didn’t see any EQ options available in the new Roon Arc app. Hopefully they will be able to add that in the ARC app.

Roon confirmed DSP is coming to ARC endpoints at some later date... looking forward to measuring my car's audio system in REW and doing some correction in it and having convolution filters playing through Roon ARC. LOL.

 

[Music1969]

Security issues?

Needs UPnP and port forwarding enabled on router? Not thanks...

First thing I do with routers is check UPnP is off lol

 

[Bernd]

Does this replace or bypass the internal Android audio engine such as USB audio player pro? If not then it is a no go for me. Because I'm really happy with Universal Audio Player Pro and the sound it provides (especially with the DSP plugin). It also connects to Qubuz and Tidal.

 

[AudioJester]

Was an early adopter of Roon, still use and love it. Most of the time now, I stream new music or use internet radio in the car. Still will try the new Roon app.
Qobuz and Tidal has rendered a lot of my stored music unnecessary. I have about 1TB of classical and jazz, but now prefer the better quality of modern recordings.

 

[Phorize]

Security issues?

Needs UPnP and port forwarding enabled on router? Not thanks...

First thing I do with routers is check UPnP is off lol

To be fair roon are between a rock and a hard place on this. Consumers expect everything to just work, which for automatic firewall configuration means using the the frankly horrible industry standard solution. It can be done manually of course, but the risk of human error is still there. The only way for roon to circumnavigate these issues would be to start hosting services, which would be a non starter really.

 

[Music1969]

The only way for roon to circumnavigation these issues would be to start hosting services, which would be a non starter really.

Actually Roon boss asked the question about hosting backups. Obviously it would be extra cost but it seemed there was interest.

Maybe they've thought about more types of hosting, not just backups.

I think the ultimate goal is actually to have it all in the cloud so I wouldn't say never.

As long as there's always the option to have a Roon Core in the house for those happy with that, i can't see any issue with them pushing for hosting services for people that want to pay for it.

An extra source of money for Roon.

Is there any interest in a music files backup solution?

While discussing Roon OS 2.0, @Xekomi suggested a feature: We’ve thought about this before, but it’s been unclear if there is interest in this. Is it interesting to anyone to have a monthly/yearly add-on fee for online backup storage of your music files? If so, what would do you think would...

community.roonlabs.com

 

[Phorize]

Actually Roon boss asked the question about hosting backups. Obviously it would be extra cost but it seemed there was interest.

Maybe they've thought about more types of hosting, not just backups.

I think the ultimate goal is actually to have it all in the cloud so I wouldn't say never.

As long as there's always the option to have a Roon Core in the house for those happy with that, i can't see any issue with them pushing for hosting services for people that want to pay for it.

An extra source of money for Roon.

Is there any interest in a music files backup solution?

While discussing Roon OS 2.0, @Xekomi suggested a feature: We’ve thought about this before, but it’s been unclear if there is interest in this. Is it interesting to anyone to have a monthly/yearly add-on fee for online backup storage of your music files? If so, what would do you think would...

community.roonlabs.com

I think a hosted solution with a locally hosted client doing the DSP etc would be the best solution if home and mobile use is the goal. On security grounds it's a no brainer, usability wise it would be transparent to the end user assuming they have sufficient bandwidth to handle normal streaming, environmentally it likely would be better to. I hope they get there, the security implications of running upnp on any wan interface are grim both technically and in terms of what state actors and organised crime do once they own your network. Shudder.

 

[Bow_Wazoo]

Roon will only be interesting for me,
when I only need the smartphone.

 

[theREALdotnet]

Security issues?

Needs UPnP and port forwarding enabled on router? Not thanks...

First thing I do with routers is check UPnP is off lol

You don’t need to enable UPnP, but could instead set up forwarding for that one port and one internal IP address manually. But yeah, I’m not interested in this kind of thing either.

For me, the blockbuster feature of 2.0 is Apple Silicon support.