Is Roon player getting too bloated and buggy too???

[amirm]

In the last few months I have noticed Roon getting a bit more fragile, requiring a few restarts to get things going again. One of the best praise I used to have for Roon was its lightening speed, and lack of baggage as opposed to JRiver for example. Software engineers know that complexity is enemy of reliability and sometimes performance.

The worst happened today though. An hour ago it asked me if I want to upgrade to version 1.7. I said yes as the upgrade is usually so painless. It did its thing but to my shock, it no longer recognizes any local audio devices on my client machine! No amount of restarting the player, refreshing makes it recognize anything but the "system device." Playing music into system device goes some place but clearly not to the default output device as set in Windows:

Windows clearly shows my DX3 Pro selected as default:

I was actually playing music with Roon before it upgraded and decided none of the output devices are there. I have no trouble playing music with other apps from Foobar to Tidal so nothing wrong with the system.

Looking at the Audio Setting, it seems that they completely revamped that section and no doubt broke something:

There isn't even a section that shows local devices (as opposed to core). So no wonder there are no devices to select.

Seeing how they modified this subsystem, it reasons that they have some serious regression here.

I post a note on their forum. Meanwhile, the app is completely non-functional.

I guess they were bound to bet bigger and lose touch with what made them excellent in the past.

Sad....

 

[ernestcarl]

At times like these it helps to have a handy backup player on hand lest be stuck in silence for next few hours... or even days possibly?

P.S. I have two versions of JRiver on my main PC and Foobar2000. Same exact music library and directories for all.

 

[PierreV]

I did not renew my roon subscription a few weeks ago. One of the reasons was that I was going more mobile and roon isn't very convenient in that scenario, the other reason was frequent bugs in the network/device detection code, especially on networks a bit more complex than average. I don't really blame them, in the sense that their market is probably the guy with a single router in his apartment. One issue that annoyed me greatly was sending full tcpdumps demonstrating what I thought was a clear bug only to receive utterly dumb suggestions in return (such as restart your router, connect your device directly to your router), be put in "debug" mode then forgotten in that mode... OFC, the bug was solved in a subsequent release, but I would have preferred something like "oh, looks like a bug, we'll release a fix" rather than making me go through hoops while at the same time displaying basic networking ignorance.

Still, a very good program on the whole and I will probably come back to it at some point.

 

[doctorjuggles]

And for this upgrade they have also “upgraded” the lifetime membership price by 40%.
I like Roon but this sort of thing seems to become inevitable as software matures in many cases

 

[amirm]

Fixed the issue. Turns out to be the same problem as the last upgrade. The LAN setting needs to be Private, not public. My new PC by default was setting the type to public. This was causing the core to not see the client devices somehow. Strange dependency and one that is not documented.

 

[amirm]

And for this upgrade they have also “upgraded” the lifetime membership price by 40%.

Wow, really?

 

[RayDunzl]

 

[FrantzM]

I have been having some issues with Roon too lately. It takes along time to "settle" on my PC. Used to be lightning fast .. Now after opening the app it takes some time to do anything ... Changed PC same thing... Oh! Well! It was nice while It lasted..

 

[astr0b0y]

Fixed the issue. Turns out to be the same problem as the last upgrade. The LAN setting needs to be Private, not public. My new PC by default was setting the type to public. This was causing the core to not see the client devices somehow. Strange dependency and one that is not documented.

I feel like this is by design in an effort to stop sharing of the core outside of the license holder.

 

[digicidal]

I have been having some issues with Roon too lately. It takes along time to "settle" on my PC. Used to be lightning fast .. Now after opening the app it takes some time to do anything ... Changed PC same thing... Oh! Well! It was nice while It lasted..

Possibly metadata house-cleaning going on? Is it running on an SSD (on the core)? I haven't noticed any of those problems but I have a fairly "pedestrian" collection (~1K albums) so on a 4GHz quad core with 8GB of RAM and an SSD... I would certainly hope not to.

@RayDunzl Yikes! Hopefully they don't completely destroy the it in the next few years. I really do prefer it to the alternatives... but I considered the $499 I paid to be the absolute most I'd ever be willing to pay. If I hadn't already, I'd just be walking away now.

 

[amirm]

I feel like this is by design in an effort to stop sharing of the core outside of the license holder.

Must be in which case it should provide a notice or something.

 

[PierreV]

I feel like this is by design in an effort to stop sharing of the core outside of the license holder.

Discovery services/ have different behaviors depending on the profile selected (private/public). It's a mix of services not started, and/or started but not accessible in one direction or both, depending on the firewall profiles (which are also different by default between private/public). Given that the low-level behavior/profiles aren't that consistent between Windows releases and users or programs may have added exceptions, this is generally a mess. But in this case, given the reliance of some devices on discovery protocols plus the need for Roon to handle devices that are not "discoverable" one can hardly blame them.

But as Amir pointed out, those basic requirements should be clearly outlined and documented.

That's in line with the issue I described above: even when everything else but roon works, they tend to blame your router, cables, config, etc
Their troubleshooting guide worries about network cables going bad but doesn't outline their basic networking requirements.
Send them a dump showing a disconnect between the core and a device, which doesn't need the router in any way, the blame goes to the router regardless. In a way, I can understand that again, given the number of noisy interactions the core has with its home base...

 

[Wombat]

We'll all be rooned said Hanrahan.

Too expensive too start with. Ridiculous now. They didn't say "introductory price"? Oops.

The new VW Polo is the size of the earlier Golf models. Bloat. The old bigger is better marketing routine.

 

[Ceburaska]

I went on roonlabs community and noticed an offer from Danny Dulai to allow recent trialers and annual members to upgrade to lifetime at the old rate. I’ve emailed them to do so, hopefully it will be honoured.
See this thread
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/lifetime-price-increased-499-699/84083/22
Screenshot of the offer

 

[RayDunzl]

I feel OK about it.

Having already saved $499, my savings are now upped to $699.

 

[Purité Audio]

Just updated everything wet smoothly ,literally hundreds of radio stations added worldwide.
No podcasts though.
Keith

 

[pwjazz]

And for this upgrade they have also “upgraded” the lifetime membership price by 40%.
I like Roon but this sort of thing seems to become inevitable as software matures in many cases

Wow, that's going in the wrong direction. I wonder if their metadata provider jacked up their price or something.

 

[March Audio]

In the last few months I have noticed Roon getting a bit more fragile, requiring a few restarts to get things going again. One of the best praise I used to have for Roon was its lightening speed, and lack of baggage as opposed to JRiver for example. Software engineers know that complexity is enemy of reliability and sometimes performance.

The worst happened today though. An hour ago it asked me if I want to upgrade to version 1.7. I said yes as the upgrade is usually so painless. It did its thing but to my shock, it no longer recognizes any local audio devices on my client machine! No amount of restarting the player, refreshing makes it recognize anything but the "system device." Playing music into system device goes some place but clearly not to the default output device as set in Windows:

View attachment 39658

Windows clearly shows my DX3 Pro selected as default:
View attachment 39659

I was actually playing music with Roon before it upgraded and decided none of the output devices are there. I have no trouble playing music with other apps from Foobar to Tidal so nothing wrong with the system.

Looking at the Audio Setting, it seems that they completely revamped that section and no doubt broke something:

View attachment 39660

There isn't even a section that shows local devices (as opposed to core). So no wonder there are no devices to select.

Seeing how they modified this subsystem, it reasons that they have some serious regression here.

I post a note on their forum. Meanwhile, the app is completely non-functional.

I guess they were bound to bet bigger and lose touch with what made them excellent in the past.

Sad....

Just upgraded here and its gone OK, no problems yet.

 

[BDWoody]

And for this upgrade they have also “upgraded” the lifetime membership price by 40%.
I like Roon but this sort of thing seems to become inevitable as software matures in many cases

Wow...

I followed a hunch and bought myself and a good friend lifetime subscriptions last week...

I actually expected them to discontinue it sooner, as these subscription models don't make sense beyond some point.

 

[ramzi]

Regarding the price increase, It's explained in this thread, specifically this post:
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/lifetime-price-increased-499-699/84083/93

Basically, the annual subscription is what they're aiming for which does make sense from a longterm sustainability point.