Alternative to Roon....

[AudioStudies]

I am a big Plex fan, so much so for my local libraries -- that I quit the streaming service. I had been with Tidal and enjoyed it for a while, but I have so many ripped CDs and downloaded videos -- that I can keep myself fully entertained without the monthly fees of a streaming service. I download videos from YouTube and Facebook using RealPlayer. But then all my media, photos, videos and music, I manage with Plex. I use db Poweramp for CD ripping and WinX DVD ripper for DVD ripping. Once they are ripped, I access with Plex.

 

[Apesbrain]

feels a bit dated

See "Material Skin" plugin.

 

[dwkdnvr]

Looks like a lot of people recommend Roon. Have been trying it out for some time now. One issue I run in to however is that t he Roon Core is only available on Intel, and I have somehow managed to become a pure ARM house.

But roon would enable me to just get two high quality roon ready speakers for my office, and 2 cheaper one's for the kitchen, and having them in sync without needing to commit to a particular eco system. So I guess Roon will be it.

Are you talking Linux? Because I'm running Roon Core on my Mac Studio without any problems.

 

[Jaimo]

Looks like Roon just increased their lifetime subscription cost to $830. I was about to sign up but can’t justify at this price level. Too bad since I agree that there’s no good alternative.

I signed up for an Allmusic annual subscription and will see how this works out. I downgraded my Tidal subscription to their standard 16/44.1 service last year and turned off Roon auto renewal on my annual sub. I have a few more months to decide if Roon/Tidal can be justified.

 

[dtaylo1066]

$830 for a lifetime is not that much. About $41 per year if you live for 20 more years. In days of old you would need to pay that much a year just to buy new storage racks for vinyl or CDs, let along the albums. And just imagine the features that will continue to be added. Nothing at present compares to Roon. It is brilliant.

Not long ago before streaming we were paying $12-$20 for a CD. Buy 40 discs a year and you were out $600. And half the songs on the CDs one never listened to or thought were crap and therefore only played the few good hits.

Now you can choose to play a song or sequence of songs you want for $20 per month from Tidal. And you can manage Tidal and all other music you own with Roon for $15 per month. So $35 per month. Seems more like a bargain to me than a cost to ponder.

Audio equipment, software and services are at a higher level of performance and lower cost than ever. It is a good time to be into quality music listening.

 

[FrantzM]

Primephonic is coming to Apple Music.

Apple acquires classical music streaming service Primephonic

Apple has acquired Primephonic, the renowned classical music streaming service that offers an outstanding listening experience.

www.apple.com

Welcomed this news .. So far nothing has come off it...

 

[Jeromeof]

$830 for a lifetime is not that much. About $41 per year if you live for 20 more years. In days of old you would need to pay that much a year just to buy new storage racks for vinyl or CDs, let along the albums. And just imagine the features that will continue to be added. Nothing at present compares to Roon. It is brilliant.

Not long ago before streaming we were paying $12-$20 for a CD. Buy 40 discs a year and you were out $600. And half the songs on the CDs one never listened to or thought were crap and therefore only played the few good hits.

Now you can choose to play a song or sequence of songs you want for $20 per month from Tidal. And you can manage Tidal and all other music you own with Roon for $15 per month. So $35 per month. Seems more like a bargain to me than a cost to ponder.

Audio equipment, software and services are at a higher level of performance and lower cost than ever. It is a good time to be into quality music listening.

Except Roon may not last a lifetime - they have already changed and not necessarily for the better in recent years

 

[Berwhale]

$830 for a lifetime is not that much. About $41 per year if you live for 20 more years. In days of old you would need to pay that much a year just to buy new storage racks for vinyl or CDs, let along the albums. And just imagine the features that will continue to be added. Nothing at present compares to Roon. It is brilliant.

Not long ago before streaming we were paying $12-$20 for a CD. Buy 40 discs a year and you were out $600. And half the songs on the CDs one never listened to or thought were crap and therefore only played the few good hits.

Now you can choose to play a song or sequence of songs you want for $20 per month from Tidal. And you can manage Tidal and all other music you own with Roon for $15 per month. So $35 per month. Seems more like a bargain to me than a cost to ponder.

Audio equipment, software and services are at a higher level of performance and lower cost than ever. It is a good time to be into quality music listening.

I've spent $99.13 on Plex Pass at an average cost of $11.01 per year (after 9 years)

Admittedly the music part of Plex was rubbish back then, but it's very good now.

 

[dtaylo1066]

I've spent $99.13 on Plex Pass at an average cost of $11.01 per year (after 9 years)

View attachment 254290

Admittedly the music part of Plex was rubbish back then, but it's very good now.

I have not had the time to listen to much music in recent years, so I have run Volumio for 4 years on a Tinker Board and now pay the $69 per year for the Volumio premium version. It works just fine, but cannot compare to Roon in capabilities.

After building out a new audio system over the next year, I may gravitate to Roon.

 

[dtaylo1066]

Except Roon may not last a lifetime - they have already changed and not necessarily for the better in recent years

It is true that the category leader and innovator does not always maintain that position. They may need to expand upon their software and Nucleus and add crossover capabilities and other features to DSP and then amps and DACs to make a fully integrated hub to power speakers.

 

[terryforsythe]

Looks like Roon just increased their lifetime subscription cost to $830. I was about to sign up but can’t justify at this price level. Too bad since I agree that there’s no good alternative.

I signed up for an Allmusic annual subscription and will see how this works out. I downgraded my Tidal subscription to their standard 16/44.1 service last year and turned off Roon auto renewal on my annual sub. I have a few more months to decide if Roon/Tidal can be justified.

I'm using Logitech Media Server on my NAS. It's user interface is not as nice as Roon's, but functionally it serves the purpose, and it is open source. There is a thread I started a few months ago on this topic. Here is my post summarizing my impressions: https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...d-vs-roon-a-brief-overview.36815/post-1357989

 

[trl]

Looks like Roon just increased their lifetime subscription cost to $830. I was about to sign up but can’t justify at this price level.

I agre with you. I pay for Apple Music (lossless) + Tidal HiFi less than I should pay for a subscription to Roon. I see no reason why I should pay more for Roon than I already pay for two streaming services.

Although I'm checking their prices few times a year, just in case will get lower, so I could get a subscription myself too. I always see how their prices go up, although their no. of customers is increasing; I thought it should be vice-versa.

 

[Snoopy]

They didn't just increase the prices.. they announced that at least a couple of weeks ago to give everyone the chance to buy it at the old price

I'm still glad I got my lifetime subscription (at 700$) about a year ago. Didn't waste money on monthly or annual subscriptions to begin with.

 

[sloiseau]

There is one killer feature Roon that I liked a lot when I gave Roon a try for a few months.

Link Roon with Tidal, and you have a whole new way to access music that is very useful when you listen a lot to classical music. You can select a composer, a piece and then you get a list of all the different recordings available for that piece. You cannot do that directly on Tidal (not that I know).

Roon is not open source however. Is there an open source alternative that has this functionality? I guess it would need some free music database in order to function. Does this exist?

You might be interested in idagio https://www.idagio.com . It is not only an app but also a streaming platform; however you can use it for free with almost all features enabled. It is devoted to classical music, and it has the very feature you mentioned: identifying an opus and listing all its interpretations. For instance, searching for Eine Kleine Nachtmusik offers to select the composer (first choice), or the opus (second choice, with the icon of a G key), or a specific interpretation:

If you select the opus, you are offered a very well-curated list of interpretations with faceted browsing (by conductors, Ensemble: see below, but also (below on the page), by soloists, Instruments.

This is really wonderful. I use Qobuz because I don't want the music to be limited to classical but I do agree that the way of browsing into classical music collection could be different than the way of browsing amongst most other musical genres.

 

[Jaimo]

Roon uses data from https://www.allmusic.com/, they don't curate anything manually. What Roon brings extra to the table (which is obviously useful) is that they link this data to the music you are playing.

If you don't mind having an extra browser window open, then you can do searches on AllMusic for any artists or albums you're interested in, and you will have (roughly) the same data available.

Edit: pro tip, the ads on AllMusic are somewhat intrusive, you can browse the site ad-free with a yearly subscription of $12.

My yearly Roon subscription ends soon and I have decided not to renew or, go for the $800 lifetime membership.

I signed up instead on AllMusic and use my MacBook Air to control my MacMini streamer running Amazon Music. Switching between AllMusic and Amazon Music is pretty easy and while the convenience of just clicking on an artist, producer etc is not there, I am okay to forego the convenience and save the $25/month Roon plus Tidal subscription.

Call me cheap but between Netflix, Prime, Tidal, Roon, Eero Secure, TSN, Office 365, etc, etc. subscription services are getting quite out of hand.

 

[MrOtto]

Subscriptions services are definitely getting out of hand. They start to infest every aspects of your daily life. From computing to cars, they find new ways of stealing your money.

 

[Snoopy]

Subscriptions services are definitely getting out of hand. They start to infest every aspects of your daily life. From computing to cars, they find new ways of stealing your money.

That's why I got the lifetime license last year. One subscription less every month.

 

[ex audiophile]

Call me cheap but between Netflix, Prime, Tidal, Roon, Eero Secure, TSN, Office 365, etc, etc. subscription services are getting quite out of hand.

Amen to that..

 

[MarkHH]

A lover spurned or why I made the switch from roon to Plex ...

I've been in love with roon for some years. Loved the look & feel, loved the way roon enriches my music with content & meta tags & cross linking and loved the way roon let me discover pearls hiding deep, deep down in my music collection.

But with the release of roon 2.0 my love grew cold for these three reasons:

1. Total cost of ownership: With an annual subscription fee of US-$ 149,88 roon itself is not a bargain. Add to this the cost of upgrading your NAS or NUC or whatsoever every three years to satisfy roon's ever growing greed for ressources at another US-$ 200 per year and you end up with an annual bill of approx. US-$ 350 - money I prefer to spend on music.
   
   
2. Mandatory internet connection: Since roon 2.0 internet connectivity is mandatory to use roon, even if you do not use roon Arc, their software to listen to your music while being away from home. Yes, you read that right: With roon you need to be online to stream your very own music from your very own hard drives to your very own DAC.
   
   roon argues this decision was made to improve the search functionality - but roon isn't yet able to find "David Bovie" so I kind of mistrust this argument. My 50 cent: roon is about to upload their users' listening pattern into their cloud to improve their recommendation engine. Their company, their decision. But I'm either paying with money or with data, not with both - my money, my decision.
   
   
3. roon's handling of user feedback: roon users have been pretty upset about the forementioned decision. Some, because they have unstable connectivity, some due to privacy concerns. roon's replies summed up: "Well, take it or leave it."
   
   So I left.

With the availability of headless PlexAmp for the Raspberry Pi I decided to go for Plex. That way I did not have to change my overall set-up: A NAS storing and serving the audio files and a Raspberry Pi as endpoint to stream the audio data connected to an RME dac via USB.

Some very first impressions of my experience with Plex:

1. Installation: While installing the Plex server was easier than the roon installation on my Asustor NAS the installation of the PlexAmp endpoint on the Raspberry was a little adventure. As of now you need to be able to type a few Linux command lines. Most of them are "copy-and-paste" from documentations available on the web, but there's always the final 1% that make things a little difficult.
   
   
2. Sound quality: Not into talking about listening tests, promise. The PlexAmp is bit-perfect, though it's noteworthy that when running PlexAmp on a Windows device as endpoint it is - as of now - limited to 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
   
   
3. Look & feel: The PlexAmp iOS App as remote control for the Plex server / PlexAmp end point combination has it's flaws. Some functions are not where you would expect them to be, some functions are not obvious to the beginner and the documentation is pretty thin. But after almost two weeks I finally found my ways around the flaws and PlexAmp lets me do what I want it to do: enjoy my music.
   
   
4. "Music" mining: To me the most important part of a streamers' job is to help me find the music I want to listen to and to help me discover music that I forgot or didn't know about. Plex' enrichment of my audio files is by far not as exhaustive as roon's. Tagging is mostly happening on album- and not on track-level. Multiple album artists e.g. are not supported, neither is the composer tag which is pretty important to people who listen to classical music.
   
   On the plus side: PlexAmp offers more recommendation mechanisms than roon does, so I do enjoy various "discovery trips" with Plex.

Do I miss roon? Yes, a little. I miss the beauty and the flawlessness of the UI. And I miss the cornupia of content roon adds to my music.

Do I love Plex? Not yet. I like it, though. And I'm pretty sure PlexAmp will improve - a look at PlexAmp's release notes gives me the impressions that Plex is putting a lot of ressources into their dedicated music player.

My NAS btw., which was too old & too slow for running the roon server software since rel. 2.0 is idling along when I play my music with Plex. And the annual fee for the Plex Pass required to run PlexAmp is US-$ 39,99 - a fraction of roon's annual subscription fee.

 

[Jeromeof]

A lover spurned or why I made the switch from roon to Plex ...

I've been in love with roon for some years. Loved the look & feel, loved the way roon enriches my music with content & meta tags & cross linking and loved the way roon let me discover pearls hiding deep, deep down in my music collection.

But with the release of roon 2.0 my love grew cold for these three reasons:

1. Total cost of ownership: With an annual subscription fee of US-$ 149,88 roon itself is not a bargain. Add to this the cost of upgrading your NAS or NUC or whatsoever every three years to satisfy roon's ever growing greed for ressources at another US-$ 200 per year and you end up with an annual bill of approx. US-$ 350 - money I prefer to spend on music.
   
   
2. Mandatory internet connection: Since roon 2.0 internet connectivity is mandatory to use roon, even if you do not use roon Arc, their software to listen to your music while being away from home. Yes, you read that right: With roon you need to be online to stream your very own music from your very own hard drives to your very own DAC.
   
   roon argues this decision was made to improve the search functionality - but roon isn't yet able to find "David Bovie" so I kind of mistrust this argument. My 50 cent: roon is about to upload their users' listening pattern into their cloud to improve their recommendation engine. Their company, their decision. But I'm either paying with money or with data, not with both - my money, my decision.
   
   
3. roon's handling of user feedback: roon users have been pretty upset about the forementioned decision. Some, because they have unstable connectivity, some due to privacy concerns. roon's replies summed up: "Well, take it or leave it."
   
   So I left.

With the availability of headless PlexAmp for the Raspberry Pi I decided to go for Plex. That way I did not have to change my overall set-up: A NAS storing and serving the audio files and a Raspberry Pi as endpoint to stream the audio data connected to an RME dac via USB.

Some very first impressions of my experience with Plex:

1. Installation: While installing the Plex server was easier than the roon installation on my Asustor NAS the installation of the PlexAmp endpoint on the Raspberry was a little adventure. As of now you need to be able to type a few Linux command lines. Most of them are "copy-and-paste" from documentations available on the web, but there's always the final 1% that make things a little difficult.
   
   
2. Sound quality: Not into talking about listening tests, promise. The PlexAmp is bit-perfect, though it's noteworthy that when running PlexAmp on a Windows device as endpoint it is - as of now - limited to 44.1 kHz / 16 bit.
   
   
3. Look & feel: The PlexAmp iOS App as remote control for the Plex server / PlexAmp end point combination has it's flaws. Some functions are not where you would expect them to be, some functions are not obvious to the beginner and the documentation is pretty thin. But after almost two weeks I finally found my ways around the flaws and PlexAmp lets me do what I want it to do: enjoy my music.
   
   
4. "Music" mining: To me the most important part of a streamers' job is to help me find the music I want to listen to and to help me discover music that I forgot or didn't know about. Plex' enrichment of my audio files is by far not as exhaustive as roon's. Tagging is mostly happening on album- and not on track-level. Multiple album artists e.g. are not supported, neither is the composer tag which is pretty important to people who listen to classical music.
   
   On the plus side: PlexAmp offers more recommendation mechanisms than roon does, so I do enjoy various "discovery trips" with Plex.

Do I miss roon? Yes, a little. I miss the beauty and the flawlessness of the UI. And I miss the cornupia of content roon adds to my music.

Do I love Plex? Not yet. I like it, though. And I'm pretty sure PlexAmp will improve - a look at PlexAmp's release notes gives me the impressions that Plex is putting a lot of ressources into their dedicated music player.

My NAS btw., which was too old & too slow for running the roon server software since rel. 2.0 is idling along when I play my music with Plex. And the annual fee for the Plex Pass required to run PlexAmp is US-$ 39,99 - a fraction of roon's annual subscription fee.

If you have an old Intel PC / MacMini and run plex on that it actually does sonic analysis of the tracks and will suggesting similar albums and similar tracks to the ones you are playing and some of the suggested playlists are autogenerated from sonic similar tracks. The reason this isn't available when deploying the plex server on a RPI is they use some Intel GPU architecture (for transcoding movie content on the fly) and this sonic analysis tries to re-use the same GPU.

I have 2 Plex servers for this reason - one mainly for Movies / TV shows / LiveTV / Audiobooks (happily running on a RPI) and one dedicated to Music on a small intel linux PC.