Audiophile music player for Windows/Mac and your opinion...

[Count Arthur]

So for me Roon is simply too expensive for the way i consume music.

I've never really understood why Roon is so expensive. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, Roon does not come with any access to an on-line library, like Spotify, Tidal, etc., but simply organises and catalogues both local and on-line libraries.

I believe it also provides notes and information about artists, etc., but as someone that that rarely read the sleeve notes on CDs and LPs, this is of very little interest. I probably have hundreds of CDs and I couldn't name the members of the bands, nor would I recognize them if I passed them in the street.

I actually sat talking to a member of Morcheeba in a bar a few weeks back. It was only after he'd left that my friend told me who he was. Although, I would have realised if it was Skye Edwards.

 

[Sal1950]

So for me Roon is simply too expensive for the way i consume music.

Same here. Roon doesn't offer me anything I can't do with any number of free players.

 

[Keith_W]

Even if Roon was the same price as JRiver, I wouldn't use it, because it lacks a few important features:

- no WDM driver - can't be used to pipe audio from another app through Roon's convolution engine (e.g. Youtube, other streaming services not supported by Roon, etc).
- no VST support
- no ISO226 volume control
- no ability to browse by folders
- utterly useless if it doesn't like the metadata, so you better get your collection in order, or hope that the streaming services got it right otherwise you will never be able to find your recording
- returns irrelevant results when doing a search, e.g. search for "Bach St John Passion" and your search gets cluttered by "St Matthew's Passion", which doubles the number of albums you have to flick through

 

[dartinbout]

Even if Roon was the same price as JRiver, I wouldn't use it, because it lacks a few important features:

- no WDM driver - can't be used to pipe audio from another app through Roon's convolution engine (e.g. Youtube, other streaming services not supported by Roon, etc).
- no VST support
- no ISO226 volume control
- no ability to browse by folders
- utterly useless if it doesn't like the metadata, so you better get your collection in order, or hope that the streaming services got it right otherwise you will never be able to find your recording
- returns irrelevant results when doing a search, e.g. search for "Bach St John Passion" and your search gets cluttered by "St Matthew's Passion", which doubles the number of albums you have to flick through

I wouldn't use "Ruin" even if it was free. It's terrible at organizing and playing local music files. It's (and many of the other windows\mac playback applications are increasingly focused on primarily streaming contents. With 150k of tracks (I've been ripping CD's to flac more than a decade), the only "streaming" I do, with any regularity, is in the middle of the night, but that is due to old age. Streaming music started 15 years ago (I think). It started out sounding terrible, I've been told it's gotten better but I can't be bothered.

 

[sethr]

Another player to consider - Sound Player uLillith (newer version of Lillith), a very simple playlist player. I think it sounds great, the only issue I've found is that it depends on directshow filters for certain codecs. I couldn't get aac in m4a containers to play until I installed the K Lite Codec Pack (held my breath when doing so - I think I came out unscathed).