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Roon Music Player and Library Management Software Review

Soniclife

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If you have spare HDD space I'd create a new position and install something like roon rock on it and see if that's stable. That should rule out software.
 

stunta

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4 Gigabytes is pretty lean

I am running 64-bit Win10 on mine with 4 GB. Roon runs with with 5-band parametric EQ + convolution filter.

As for internet access, pinging ISP is not sufficient. You need to see how good your link to Tidal CDN is

+1. It could be that your ISP is throttling streaming.
 

DDF

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Appreciate the suggestions. 3 other PCs, 2 tablets and 3 phones all stream Tidal and Spotify with zero difficulty so it's not ISP or home/external network related. Speedtests have my connections at 200 mbps and streaming BW tests (using my Nvidia shield or another android set top box) show >80mbps media streams.

Since machine is running 32 bit win7, no point in adding > 4 GB RAM, which should be more than enough for a machine effectively running nothing but windows (heavily neutered) + Tidal.

Spent a few more hours today disabling Windows telemetry and most any non essential windows task in the scheduler and the seat of the pants (explorer) performance ratcheted up. TBD if its pop free but I'm still seeing DPC spikes now and again but only to 2 ms and 100's of hard page faults from windows search only, which is my next step to disable. Windows is a virus to real time audio and some machines are just susceptible it seems. Its ridiculous that 40+ hrs of manual optimization may be required to stream music for fully functioning HW.

Apologies for the grumpiness, but also recently spent 20 hrs to find a cure for Spotify killing my android tablet battery (continuously communicates to my chromecasts with comms running non stop (check it out, its not uncommon) and blocks android from sleeping) and I haven't even had time to figure out why the last Tidal update refuses to play a whole album to anything bluetooth; and this is all blocking time I need to swap the motherboard on my 1.5 yr old $1.5k dac/integrated amp that no longer wants to decode 44.1kHz sample rates correctly.

And we audio nerds wonder why people just buy Bose or a Mac and be done with it? Its no surprise that Amir finds so much of this stuff is designed like junk.
 
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rwortman

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I've been running a music server of some sort in the background of my all purpose PC(usually a decently spec'ed gaming rig) since the early days of Squeezebox with no PC related real issues. The damn Squeezeboxes used to act up, not wanting to see the network, needing to be reset and logged back in once in a while. JRiver on DLNA, still no PC related problems but my brand new Synology router refused to play nice with DLNA, devices popping up an dropping off randomly. They were still visible on the network, just not as DLNA devices. Moved it to an access point role and put my old Linksys back in as the main router and no more problems. After I did this to prove to the Synology guys that their router was the problem, they wanted me to put it back and and try stuff to troubleshoot it. Nope. They should have done it in the months I was trying myself to figure out what was going on and they weren't responding. Running Roon for the last week and my only problem is high rez files making pops and clicks on my Rpi player unless I downsample to 16/44. Pretty much sounds the same that way anyway. Gonna try a SPDIF hat just for fun.
 

shawndo

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This review totally sold me on Roon. I am loving it. Just finished setting up a Nuc/Rock connected to a synology and a wireless RoPieee connected to a benchmarc dac3. Finally going to be able to retire my old macmini/audirvana setup. luv it.
 

stunta

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And they just now added support Amazon Fire tablets. I am thinking of getting one dedicated for Roon. so I don't have to carry my iPad around the house.

Not sure which model to get though. Anyone have any recos?
 

Jaimo

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I switched to Roon from Audirvana after reading Amir's review. Have to say that Roon + Tidal Hi-Fi on a beefed-up 2012 Mac Mini connected to a SMSL SU8 has been running flawlessly for over three months already. This is by far the best computer based setup I've owned - purely in terms of stability, ease of browsing and overall User Experience. I can go both Headless (Old iPhone 6) or via my 50inch TV and Logitec K400+ keyboard and both instances work wonderfully well.

As an avid music collector / music fan, I won't be exaggerating if I said that this has been a life changing improvement...

Interestingly, Audirvana has just launched their V3.5 and already, folks are claiming sound improvements over the older version. @amirm - any chance that you could run a test on Roon vs Audirvana into say the RME DAC and hopefully put to bed all the claims that these players sound different?
 

Jaimo

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And they just now added support Amazon Fire tablets. I am thinking of getting one dedicated for Roon. so I don't have to carry my iPad around the house.

Not sure which model to get though. Anyone have any recos?

Good to know - I have a Fire HD10 which need better utilization...
 
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amirm

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Interestingly, Audirvana has just launched their V3.5 and already, folks are claiming sound improvements over the older version. @amirm - any chance that you could run a test on Roon vs Audirvana into say the RME DAC and hopefully put to bed all the claims that these players sound different?
Sure. But since it would be a trial download, I need to make sure I have time to test it before it expires.
 

Soniclife

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Interestingly, Audirvana has just launched their V3.5 and already, folks are claiming sound improvements over the older version
It's the claim that the same bits sound better from the new version, or that some sort of enhanced bits come out of the new one?
 

shawndo

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I think the only glaring fault is the absence of any kind of offline caching/download for the mobile apps. Lots of discussion and roadmap talk on their forum, but seems strange not having this in 2019. Also, having trouble getting this to work via vpn and looks like I need to switch to l2tp or some other non-openVPN solution. I wish I could optionally set the IP of the core from the mobile app instead of hoping for it to receive the broadcast.
 
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amirm

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They are not a content owner so can't get permission for local caching and such as service providers like Tidal, Amazon can (they have negotiated such rights in their licensing with the labels). They would risk getting sued for copyright infringement if they make copies of music.

Likewise their contract with service providers like Tidal force them to have proximity control (likely using TTL field in packets), to make sure you are not broadcasting content to the world from one subscription. These usually break VPNs unless the TTL field is spoofed somehow (and they are not using timing to back this up).
 

shawndo

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Wow, never would have occurred to me that drm is behind both of my complaints. Darn other-people’s rights!
 

Jaimo

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Sure. But since it would be a trial download, I need to make sure I have time to test it before it expires.

Version 3.5 is available on a 30 day trial basis - will 30 days be enough to run the tests? I suppose we could also ask the Audivarna guy for an extended trial license but I’m not sure he will work with us since there’s something of a cult of audiophiles that claim that AV is superior.
 
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amirm

amirm

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Version 3.5 is available on a 30 day trial basis - will 30 days be enough to run the tests? I suppose we could also ask the Audivarna guy for an extended trial license but I’m not sure he will work with us since there’s something of a cult of audiophiles that claim that AV is superior.
The test is quick. Getting to the test (i.e. having enough time) is the hard part. :)
 

leftside

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Have to say that Roon + Tidal Hi-Fi on a beefed-up 2012 Mac Mini connected to a SMSL SU8 has been running flawlessly for over three months already. This is by far the best computer based setup I've owned - purely in terms of stability, ease of browsing and overall User Experience. I can go both Headless (Old iPhone 6) or via my 50inch TV and Logitec K400+ keyboard and both instances work wonderfully well.

As an avid music collector / music fan, I won't be exaggerating if I said that this has been a life changing improvement...
Yes Roon + Tidal HiFi is a total game changer. Since the Tidal/Roon Radio integration I've discovered more music in the last year than the previous ten years.

I currently connect my laptop to my DAC, with the main Roon server in another room. If I'm using the laptop, for example to browse the web at the same time as playing music, this can cause the laptop to sometimes stutter and interrupt the music. Having read through this forum today, I see there are some very cheap solutions to my "problem" :)
 

mitchco

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I really enjoy Roon with Qobuz integration. I feel like a kid in a candy store! I have it running on a headless miniPC using the convolution engine for a 3 way digital tri-amped system. - rock solid performance with nary a dropout. The Convolver is transparent, efficient, and the single file zip upload makes it user friendly. Automatically switching convolution filters based on source sample rate is a nice feature.

I would love to see a loudness control added. Also the ability to use VST plugins, but my understanding this is not possible in the existing software architecture.
 

adc

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Soooo ... I'm intrigued by the idea of what Roon does, but I have reservations. Specifically, I have a severe allergy to business models that include behavioral data collection.

I realize, and could potentially accept, that Roon would need to, at least once and when new material is added, transmit knowledge of my entire collection to [ insert god-only-knows-what-parties here ]. However, I will not accept transmission of real time listening habits or usage. Does anyone know whether Roon does a one-time (or periodic) download of metadata for an entire collection, or does it have to phone home to the mother ship every time I interact with it, to retrieve metadata (and thus record what I'm listening to and when)?

And don't bother asking me why I care who knows what music I listen to and when. It's a fundamental philosophical question and a matter of principle to me. This is of particular importance given the shadowy nature of Roon's ownership. (I have learned, from skulking about, that they are sort-of kind-of NY-based, but that's a little thin for a level-of-trust evaluation for a new piece of software.)

I'm perfectly happy with MPD, but the richer feature set of Roon would be worth paying for, if it doesn't include looping in a realtime spy network.

To clarify: I'm interested in capabilities, not necessarily default behavior. Obviously, for integration with streaming services, always-on connectivity is required. I won't be doing that. For me to be interested in it, it would need to operate usefully without being able to "dial out" (I can, and do, enforce that with border network egress controls). I'm just wondering whether anyone already knows whether its architecture allows for fully isolated (from the internet) operation while still providing its most useful features.
 
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