Harman acquires Roon

[Matt_Holland]

When you come up with the numbers for that "tiny minority" you wrote of earlier, I'll provide mine.

Type of consumers that Roon would potentially appeal to? Does the type of people I mentioned eariler not count? No? Why not? Because we're not interested Diana Krell, or whatever her name is, and Classical?

We subscribe to streaming services, too.

Someone else already pointed out ageism in one of your previous post. I'll guess we'll add elitism to the list of prejudices exhibited here as well...

It was me that pointed out ageism
I think the elitist claim is unfair. I’m simply saying that I think the number of people who have stored music files is small compared to the mass market that Samsung/Harman will be interested in if they plan to develop and scale Roon.

I’ve thought for a long time that a Lite version of Roon that aggregates multiple streaming services, has multi-room, maintains the brilliant GUI and AI and doesn’t require a hardware core would be the logical evolution to scale it up.

 

[Liya]

And there I was thinking just recently of getting in to Roon....

I did. Coming from semi-working Audirvana, Roon is a relief. So far no maintenance on my end, while Audirvana needs a lot of attention and care, from the end user, to work properly.
I have used 3$ per 3 months offer. Will see at the end of 3 months extended trial whether I'll keep it or not.

 

[Galliardist]

It was me that pointed out ageism
I think the elitist claim is unfair. I’m simply saying that I think the number of people who have stored music files is small compared to the mass market that Samsung/Harman will be interested in if they plan to develop and scale Roon.

I’ve thought for a long time that a Lite version of Roon that aggregates multiple streaming services, has multi-room, maintains the brilliant GUI and AI and doesn’t require a hardware core would be the logical evolution to scale it up.

I think you're wrong. The numbers of people who bought music from iTunes numbers in the tens of millions alone, and there are dozens of programs that exist for the purpose of playing back music files from local and/or network storage, apart from those already built into operating systems.
Apart from @BillG and others in the underground scene, there are people like me with ripped private release classical music files - a couple of hundred discs collected over twenty years, with a few recently making it to streaming over time, purchased at concerts, as well. My partner has folk CDs bought at markets and from buskers. I know the same sort of thing happens with local jazz musicians, and that such things happen everywhere. Most of those CD sales (and sometimes flash drives of music as well) happen outside of the normal music market, aren't counted in sales figures, and may even carry CD sales back over LP sales if ever counted. And many, many people rip those to computer storage for playback, because that is the only way they have to access that music.

That doesn't mean that a "Lite version of Roon" would not be a better mass market bet. However, if it was, then the streaming services would be competing on their interfaces. Let's be honest, are they? The best I saw for purpose was Primephonic, and that's gone. Sure, there are half baked attempts to emulate features of Roon in other products, but the music suppliers have given up, as can be seen on the credits tags in Tidal. Years ago, they all contained lists of all the musicians playing on the albums. That is incredibly rare for albums added in the last couple of years.

 

[Dennis_FL]

WiiM Pro.

And it's "Roon Ready" !!!!

 

[Galliardist]

I did. Coming from semi-working Audirvana, Roon is a relief. So far no maintenance on my end, while Audirvana needs a lot of attention and care, from the end user, to work properly.
I have used 3$ per 3 months offer. Will see at the end of 3 months extended trial whether I'll keep it or not.

I also have the three months offer. I'm just having issue after issue with the Windows version: ages to find all the versions of apps I had to allow through the firewall to get Remote to work, Remote then drops every time music starts streaming, adding a couple of dozen albums led to 100% use for hours followed by a crash that meant I had to reinstall, stuttering during playback whether from Qobuz, NAS or local files.

I'd be inclined to stick at it and switch to Linux to try and improve things, but having tried to find sources of information to fix issues, I find it all extremely frustrating. And as for Roon's own forum, pretty much all of the existing requests for the help I'm trying to find are closed with no help whatsoever. On top of that, I feel stung by the offer as I now see it as just a marketing exercise rather than a genuine attempt to gain new users - the timing is pretty obvious. I'm not a novice computer user, either. My entire "career" has been spent making crappy, recalcitrant software work. Roon's not the worst I've seen: however, it does feel like the core tech is written by experts but they got a bunch of amateurs in to deal with "documentation", support and setup issues.

I guess that there are a lot of annoyed and angry current and ex-Roon users, to say nothing of those who have bought the lifetime product, invested maybe days of their time to set things up as they want, and are now concerned about what happens to the product.

I'm glad that you are having a better experience than me. But Harman have that three months to convince me that this application is going anywhere. I may not even last that long.

 

[Soniclife]

I’m simply saying that I think the number of people who have stored music files is small compared to the mass market that Samsung/Harman will be interested in if they plan to develop and scale Roon.

I don't see roon as a mass market product, it exists to serve a niche within a niche. There is no functionality or ease of use you could add to it to make the mass market pay for it, they are going to continue to use the big streaming service apps, that's what they will pay for. If roon functionality was given away free in Harman or Samsung hardware, with the server in the cloud, I still expect most would ignore it.

 

[Liya]

I also have the three months offer. I'm just having issue after issue with the Windows version: ages to find all the versions of apps I had to allow through the firewall to get Remote to work, Remote then drops every time music starts streaming, adding a couple of dozen albums led to 100% use for hours followed by a crash that meant I had to reinstall, stuttering during playback whether from Qobuz, NAS or local files.

I'd be inclined to stick at it and switch to Linux to try and improve things, but having tried to find sources of information to fix issues, I find it all extremely frustrating. And as for Roon's own forum, pretty much all of the existing requests for the help I'm trying to find are closed with no help whatsoever. On top of that, I feel stung by the offer as I now see it as just a marketing exercise rather than a genuine attempt to gain new users - the timing is pretty obvious. I'm not a novice computer user, either. My entire "career" has been spent making crappy, recalcitrant software work. Roon's not the worst I've seen: however, it does feel like the core tech is written by experts but they got a bunch of amateurs in to deal with "documentation", support and setup issues.

I guess that there are a lot of annoyed and angry current and ex-Roon users, to say nothing of those who have bought the lifetime product, invested maybe days of their time to set things up as they want, and are now concerned about what happens to the product.

I'm glad that you are having a better experience than me. But Harman have that three months to convince me that this application is going anywhere. I may not even last that long.

I'm on a Mac.
If I'll have issues with Roon I'll just stop using it.

 

[theREALdotnet]

So far no maintenance on my end, while Audirvana needs a lot of attention and care, from the end user, to work properly.

Interesting, what maintenance tasks do you feel need to be performed in Audirvana? Mine updates itself occasionally when there is a new version, other than that, it’s set and forget.

I’ve been alternating between Roon and Audirvana for a couple of years (yay! to monthly subscriptions) and have settled on Audirvana for the past 12 months.

 

[SSS]

I also have the three months offer. I'm just having issue after issue with the Windows version: ages to find all the versions of apps I had to allow through the firewall to get Remote to work, Remote then drops every time music starts streaming, adding a couple of dozen albums led to 100% use for hours followed by a crash that meant I had to reinstall, stuttering during playback whether from Qobuz, NAS or local files.

I'd be inclined to stick at it and switch to Linux to try and improve things, but having tried to find sources of information to fix issues, I find it all extremely frustrating. And as for Roon's own forum, pretty much all of the existing requests for the help I'm trying to find are closed with no help whatsoever. On top of that, I feel stung by the offer as I now see it as just a marketing exercise rather than a genuine attempt to gain new users - the timing is pretty obvious. I'm not a novice computer user, either. My entire "career" has been spent making crappy, recalcitrant software work. Roon's not the worst I've seen: however, it does feel like the core tech is written by experts but they got a bunch of amateurs in to deal with "documentation", support and setup issues.

I guess that there are a lot of annoyed and angry current and ex-Roon users, to say nothing of those who have bought the lifetime product, invested maybe days of their time to set things up as they want, and are now concerned about what happens to the product.

I'm glad that you are having a better experience than me. But Harman have that three months to convince me that this application is going anywhere. I may not even last that long.

Using the original 3.5.51 (not the newer subscription) Audirvana on Win10 Pro with local stored music files works fine without problems. Since I don't use Qobuz or Tidal networking is not necessary but only is for Audirvana at start-up. Maybe there are difficulties when accessing networks beyond the firewall or a router.

 

[Soniclife]

I also have the three months offer. I'm just having issue after issue with the Windows version: ages to find all the versions of apps I had to allow through the firewall to get Remote to work, Remote then drops every time music starts streaming, adding a couple of dozen albums led to 100% use for hours followed by a crash that meant I had to reinstall, stuttering during playback whether from Qobuz, NAS or local files.

I've not experienced any of that on Windows. Have you locked down or hardened your devices / network?

This sounds like the problems you have in large organisations where entire departments exist to make new things almost impossible to do without their help. Those departments exist for good reasons, but often don't understand what they blocked.

 

[Liya]

Interesting, what maintenance tasks do you feel need to be performed in Audirvana?

Metadata is a big one.
Let's look at one of many examples:
Isabelle Faust. She is a violinist. I have most (if not all of her recordings). I also download music. For me, streaming services are only there to check before downloading. I could do without paid streaming services.
All of the downloads comes with artwork (some with booklets). Artwork not always load so I need to do it manually. If I type 'Isabelle Faust' in Audirvana search I do not
get all the albums I own in the search results. So I have to go into matadata and correct it, so the next time I want Faust I'll get all of her albums I own. She performes with various orchestras and soloists. These won't show either. So I need to look into metadata again. Now it's my second nature to get the metadata right after each upload. But it was a pain when I uploaded for the first time over 5000 albums into Audirvana. I couldn't see half of my music.
Oh, and I should never add new music to the folders watched by the software as I end up with duplicates and messed up library which can result in extended sync time (up to 4 hrs) so the only solution is to fresh install and do all the metadata again.
Audirvana behaves like a free software, but it isn't free.

ps. I would probably be easier to burn all these downloads to a cds, get a cd transport, and forget about streaming business.

 

[Galliardist]

I've not experienced any of that on Windows. Have you locked down or hardened your devices / network?

This sounds like the problems you have in large organisations where entire departments exist to make new things almost impossible to do without their help. Those departments exist for good reasons, but often don't understand what they blocked.

No. This is on a clean install of Windows 10.

The remote app was blocked by the standard Eindoes firewall, hardly a special lockdown measure. It’s a regular complaint, and one where the installer should ask for permission to add those applications to the firewall rules. The Tidal and Qobuz apps can do that, after all.

The odds are that the high processor issue is due to a driver issue somewhere and I can try different types of storage locations to work around it. I’ve yet to investigate the stuttering. If it’s a tbe SSD where the database is stored, I expect there will be a way to move that as well. I may be missing an updated driver of course.

I just suspect that they expect people to run Roon on a Linux base and that is what users are in fact doing.

 

[Open Mind Audio]

I don't see roon as a mass market product, it exists to serve a niche within a niche. There is no functionality or ease of use you could add to it to make the mass market pay for it, they are going to continue to use the big streaming service apps, that's what they will pay for. If roon functionality was given away free in Harman or Samsung hardware, with the server in the cloud, I still expect most would ignore it.

Very true. Hopefully enough of a market persists to keep it alive and flourishing for those of us who appreciate it. I've tried pretty much every digital music interface and service around, and Roon is leagues beyond them all.

 

[Soniclife]

I just suspect that they expect people to run Roon on a Linux base and that is what users are in fact doing.

I really don't think they expect people to use Linux, it wasn't even available for Linux for quite a while after launch. I expect the intersection between people who want what roon can do, and who are prepared to pay for it, and Linux users is small. I got the impression it was only ported to Linux because the developers wanted it, not mass customer demand.

 

[jhwalker]

Very true. Hopefully enough of a market persists to keep it alive and flourishing for those of us who appreciate it. I've tried pretty much every digital music interface and service around, and Roon is leagues beyond them all.

The only one I've found that is as capable as Roon is JRiver Media Center, which is largely unusable (for me, at least) due to the complexity of the interface and the terminology, etc. By comparison, Roon is child's play.

 

[Galliardist]

I really don't think they expect people to use Linux, it wasn't even available for Linux for quite a while after launch. I expect the intersection between people who want what roon can do, and who are prepared to pay for it, and Linux users is small. I got the impression it was only ported to Linux because the developers wanted it, not mass customer demand.

My guess is that the developers in more recent times have concentrated more on testing for the Rock software and the devices they sell to run the core (and other companies' audio devices that can host the core) than on the Windows and Mac versions. The Windows installer appears to still be 32 bit, for example, and does not add basic settings for the software to run. To me that indicates a lack of attention.

 

[Soniclife]

The Windows installer appears to still be 32 bit

Nope, it's 64 bit, it even says so in the about page.

 

[Galliardist]

Nope, it's 64 bit, it even says so in the about page.

I'll say it again for you. The installer is still 32 bit. The application is 64 bit.

 

[KD6AR]

Very bad news. Generally means top management is taking the money and heading for the door. In the biz we call this a liquidly event.

 

[suttondesign]

I began collecting cd’s in 1983, with the sony cdp-101. i digitized beginning in 1999, finished the main collection in 2000, then kept up as I bought new discs. Began with the iTunes playback interface, used that for many years with a succession of iMacs in closets or basements, and sent digital out to dacs. I still have the original rips after multiple migrations, but the metadata is kind of shit at this point.

at about the 1300-cd mark, maybe 5 years ago? 7? dunno. at all events, I quit buying cd’s except for a handful of hard-to-find classical recordings. I couldn’t afford too many cd’s for many years, then when I could, the streaming services started up.

I committed to tidal early, then roon. I hardly ever listen to the hard drive files now, but I am glad to have them. the drive is a tiny little thing now, instead of big bulky aluminum boxes that get hot and die every few years. the discs are in storage, and have been for a long time, untouched, in paper sleeves.

the value of tidal is unbelievable, and the ability to explore endlessly a dream come true for a working-class kid who could barely afford lp’s. I don’t think I had more than 30 or 40 before cd’s came around, and then cd’s were pricey too.

tidal + roon is a bargain compared to the old days. long live streaming!