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My Experience With Roon

darth_elle

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May 5, 2021
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I tried Roon when it first launched. At the time I was a broke undergrad with only one endpoint and I found it to be incredibly buggy without much benefit. Not much has changed, I am a broke grad student with much debt (of course I never spent tuition money on audio gear!) :p.

After spending a month of fighting with a Raspberry Pi to do what I wanted it to do with Plex I threw up my hands and tried Roon. The radio feature and integration with my [small] library of 800 albums is brilliant. It's recommendations for my classical music tastes well outperform the repetitive recommendations from Spotify or Tidal (seriously? the same Lang Lang album 5 days in a row? I am looking at you Tidal!).

However, one of the things I was not expecting was the completely awful, terrible interface for managing tags. One of the features that is splattered all across their website is that they are a one stop source for all things metadata related. With Qobuz, yes the tags are [mostly] robust. Personal library identification is great for common things but more obscure classical or soundtrack scores, remasters, or limited releases get misidentified or Roon just plain gives up. Trying to fix those tags is a nightmare from hell with a clunky touch first approach that on smaller screens blocks 90% of the view with white space and on bigger screens grows frustrating to click arrow buttons over and over when I just want to click and drag. I can't imagine how people who have 5000 or more albums feel! Plex can be used for free and it identifies my collection almost perfectly.

I want to love Roon. I sure love its music recommendations and DSP features. Its seamless integration with literally every audio device in my house is bar none. However, for the incomplete metadata experience I do feel that its current asking price is just a bit too high. I shouldn't have to use a tagging software in addition to a software that costs $10/month or 2-3x the purchase price of a reasonably priced DAC.

After two weeks with the service I am sold. However, I am not uninstalling MP3Tag as I had previously planned which is just a bummer.

[Afterthought] I also am surprised with the amount of requests asking for remote streaming, combined with the price tag, that they have not yet offered such a thing. Yes, a VPN can make it work but again, for the price asked (*ahem*Plex*ahem), it should just work without technical setups that are beyond what I assume is a fairly decent proportion of their customer base.

Just my two cents. As a long time lurker I thought I should post and say hi. :)
 

AdamG

Proving your point makes it “Science”.
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I tried Roon when it first launched. At the time I was a broke undergrad with only one endpoint and I found it to be incredibly buggy without much benefit. Not much has changed, I am a broke grad student with much debt (of course I never spent tuition money on audio gear!) :p.

After spending a month of fighting with a Raspberry Pi to do what I wanted it to do with Plex I threw up my hands and tried Roon. The radio feature and integration with my [small] library of 800 albums is brilliant. It's recommendations for my classical music tastes well outperform the repetitive recommendations from Spotify or Tidal (seriously? the same Lang Lang album 5 days in a row? I am looking at you Tidal!).

However, one of the things I was not expecting was the completely awful, terrible interface for managing tags. One of the features that is splattered all across their website is that they are a one stop source for all things metadata related. With Qobuz, yes the tags are [mostly] robust. Personal library identification is great for common things but more obscure classical or soundtrack scores, remasters, or limited releases get misidentified or Roon just plain gives up. Trying to fix those tags is a nightmare from hell with a clunky touch first approach that on smaller screens blocks 90% of the view with white space and on bigger screens grows frustrating to click arrow buttons over and over when I just want to click and drag. I can't imagine how people who have 5000 or more albums feel! Plex can be used for free and it identifies my collection almost perfectly.

I want to love Roon. I sure love its music recommendations and DSP features. Its seamless integration with literally every audio device in my house is bar none. However, for the incomplete metadata experience I do feel that its current asking price is just a bit too high. I shouldn't have to use a tagging software in addition to a software that costs $10/month or 2-3x the purchase price of a reasonably priced DAC.

After two weeks with the service I am sold. However, I am not uninstalling MP3Tag as I had previously planned which is just a bummer.

[Afterthought] I also am surprised with the amount of requests asking for remote streaming, combined with the price tag, that they have not yet offered such a thing. Yes, a VPN can make it work but again, for the price asked (*ahem*Plex*ahem), it should just work without technical setups that are beyond what I assume is a fairly decent proportion of their customer base.

Just my two cents. As a long time lurker I thought I should post and say hi. :)
Welcome Aboard @darth_elle.
 

Spider

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Aug 22, 2020
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Roon s..ks try Audirvana Studio instead & you won't be disappointed, that is what I did after a year with Roon which cant even play image/cue files.
It is way overpriced IMHO.:facepalm:
 

Spider

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2020
Messages
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Location
Denmark
Hi, you mean one thing, until you mean something else, right?
What I am trying to say is that I have just purchased Roon(for my hi-res & ALAC files) monthly, just to try it out once more, & to see if anything has changed, if I have changed, I am so embarrassed to write this, anyway I have not committed for a whole year, & must admit I have missed it a little bit.:facepalm:
 
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