Roon 2.0 Launched Today - Adds Mobile Listening

[dadregga]

Like Tidal? Or

Currently just support (as far as I know) for offline syncing of your local files (as in, local to your Roon server).

I've got a home server running Roon, and a network share with music files that Roon streams. In Roon ARC on my phone, I can offline those files and listen even if I'm away from home with my phone, and don't have network access. That's offline syncing from one source (your self-hosted files).

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Massive price increase from 2023:

 

[muslhead]

Massive price increase from 2023:
View attachment 245918

This was the icing on the cake.
Before joining roon i NEVER thought i would see a company that has as horrible support as jriver. Joining roon has put that into perspective and makes me long for the good ole days. Back to jriver for me. Does everything i need .... just not as slick

 

[Dennis_FL]

This was the icing on the cake.
Before joining roon i NEVER thought i would see a company that has as horrible support as jriver. Joining roon has put that into perspective and makes me long for the good ole days. Back to jriver for me. Does everything i need .... just not as slick

I was just thinking the same thing. I never left JRiver but haven't used it since my year on Roon. I spent about an hour trying to navigate JRiver help on moving a music library from a Mac to Raspi Linux. If you ever spent much time with JRiver help, you may start looking elsewhere.

I am also unsure if JRiver works with some of the endpoints (Ropieee, Allo Digione, etc)

 

[JoachimStrobel]

Roon Arc is so nice. I can quickly listen to new music at home, mark nice albums and listen to them in the car now. And the interface is so much more music orientated compared to Quobus or Tidal which really sucks were it not for Atmos. Full bandwidth streaming uses quite some bytes from by allocation, but medium quality is fine for the car. I had to manually configure my Fritz box for this port forwarding, but now it is fine. An emergency reboot option for the home server would be a nice feature, just in case..

 

[evert]

Roon Arc is so nice. I can quickly listen to new music at home, mark nice albums and listen to them in the car now. And the interface is so much more music orientated compared to Quobus or Tidal which really sucks were it not for Atmos. Full bandwidth streaming uses quite some bytes from by allocation, but medium quality is fine for the car. I had to manually configure my Fritz box for this port forwarding, but now it is fine. An emergency reboot option for the home server would be a nice feature, just in case..

How do you get Roon Arc to play in the car? Android Auto? Or BT streaming?

 

[JoachimStrobel]

How do you get Roon Arc to play in the car? Android Auto? Or BT streaming?

I use BT. Hope that Tesla catches up one day and offers native Roon support.

 

[RVG]

Roon Arc - the best thing to happen to streaming in 2022. Even better with CarPlay support, no hands on the phone while driving - ever.
I never liked the Qobuz interface.

Qo + Roon / Roon Arc finally busted the high hurdle for home and mobile listening - access to my NAS stored music files and streaming service in one app*. With a rather secure and robust manner of connecting to my server remotely. After manually fixing a few tags on my NAS drive my streaming service favorites, playlists and files on NAS are organized as well as I believe possible. I can use my playlists with content from both Qo and my NAS in them while on the road.

Huge improvements Roon is making, the folks at Qo and Tidal ought to be thankful.
If there's a business relationship there I'm unaware.

*any other services / server applications that facilitate mobile access to a home file server and merge it with a streaming service as coherently as Arc, i..e. is there an equivalent I'm missing? Thanks

 

[Phorize]

Roon Arc - the best thing to happen to streaming in 2022. Even better with CarPlay support, no hands on the phone while driving - ever.
I never liked the Qobuz interface.

Qo + Roon / Roon Arc finally busted the high hurdle for home and mobile listening - access to my NAS stored music files and streaming service in one app*. With a rather secure and robust manner of connecting to my server remotely. After manually fixing a few tags on my NAS drive my streaming service favorites, playlists and files on NAS are organized as well as I believe possible. I can use my playlists with content from both Qo and my NAS in them while on the road.

Huge improvements Roon is making, the folks at Qo and Tidal ought to be thankful.
If there's a business relationship there I'm unaware.

*any other services / server applications that facilitate mobile access to a home file server and merge it with a streaming service as coherently as Arc, i..e. is there an equivalent I'm missing? Thanks

You could set up a vpn to log directly into your home network and use software such as mconnect, VLC etc to access what you had served at home. Otherwise others may know of more music specific client/server software.

 

[Phorize]

I personally don’t use arc as the benefit of having my stored music without eq or other added value doesn’t justify the hassle of opening up ports on my firewall, especially seeing that my phone has 128 gb of storage. Now if it could achieve the same consolidation of streaming sources with eq I’d be intrigued.

 

[theREALdotnet]

You could set up a vpn to log directly into your home network and use software such as mconnect, VLC etc to access what you had served at home. Otherwise others may know of more music specific client/server software.

Yes, NASes such as Synology have this functionality built in.

 

[dweekie]

Roon Arc - the best thing to happen to streaming in 2022. Even better with CarPlay support, no hands on the phone while driving - ever.
I never liked the Qobuz interface.

Qo + Roon / Roon Arc finally busted the high hurdle for home and mobile listening - access to my NAS stored music files and streaming service in one app*. With a rather secure and robust manner of connecting to my server remotely. After manually fixing a few tags on my NAS drive my streaming service favorites, playlists and files on NAS are organized as well as I believe possible. I can use my playlists with content from both Qo and my NAS in them while on the road.

Huge improvements Roon is making, the folks at Qo and Tidal ought to be thankful.
If there's a business relationship there I'm unaware.

*any other services / server applications that facilitate mobile access to a home file server and merge it with a streaming service as coherently as Arc, i..e. is there an equivalent I'm missing? Thanks

Tailscale and Zerotier very easily facilitate remote access to home networks. They do a lot of the work for you to create and manage mesh networks, which is good or bad depending on how much you lean towards independent self-hosting. Being a user of Roon, I imagine you probably won't be as strict.

 

[Dennis_FL]

Tailscale and Zerotier very easily facilitate remote access to home networks. They do a lot of the work for you to create and manage mesh networks, which is good or bad depending on how much you lean towards independent self-hosting. Being a user of Roon, I imagine you probably won't be as strict.

I can watch my home TV and cable with the App “Channels” and Tailscale…it works great.

 

[dadregga]

Yes, NASes such as Synology have this functionality built in.

Yep, and setting up a Wireguard server is possible everywhere you have a server that can run Roon - in fact I did this before Arc and still use it for other things - but as has been pointed out this is moot.

Like Plex, Roon isn't doing anything technically novel - it just does that in a way that requires no setup, no self-managed config, and no port forwarding (unless you have UPnP disabled), and supports dynamic transcoding based on connection quality.

You can get 80% of the way there with a hand rolled home VPN solution, and that might be Good Enough, but people have always and will always pay for the convenience of not having to handroll an 80% solution that's Good Enough.

That's why streaming services took off in a world where technically anyone could torrent any move - "possible" != "convenient" for everyone.

 

[muslhead]

I was just thinking the same thing. I never left JRiver but haven't used it since my year on Roon. I spent about an hour trying to navigate JRiver help on moving a music library from a Mac to Raspi Linux. If you ever spent much time with JRiver help, you may start looking elsewhere.

I am also unsure if JRiver works with some of the endpoints (Ropieee, Allo Digione, etc)

i can confirm it works perfectly with ropieee.

 

[Dennis_FL]

i can confirm it works perfectly with ropieee.

Yes.....I have since figured it out. I now use Ropiee as a DLNA endpoint and streaming JRiver.

 

[Rja4000]

Warning: The following is a useless rant.

Every now and then, I think I should get a Roon lifetime license.
And every time, I find it too expensive.
Then I make up my mind and come back to it, eventually willing to jump the step...
To discover that the price increased ridiculously.

I like Roon idea, but hate you need a dedicated server running 24/7 for it.

I also hate subscription fee-based licenses.

I'd be ready to invest in Roon at $500 for a lifetime license. Maybe $600.
But then it became $700.
But now it's $830.

No way.

And since that will lead me nowhere, I'll stop my subscription.

 

[jhwalker]

Warning: The following is a useless rant.

Every now and then, I think I should get a Roon lifetime license.
And every time, I find it too expensive.
Then I make up my mind and come back to it, eventually willing to jump the step...
To discover that the price increased ridiculously.

I like Roon idea, but hate you need a dedicated server running 24/7 for it.

I also hate subscription fee-based licenses.

I'd be ready to invest in Roon at $500 for a lifetime license. Maybe $600.
But now it's $830.

No way.

And since that will lead me nowhere, I'll stop my subscription.

I feel for you. I decided to jump in both feet the day it was released and got an "early bird" deal on lifetime subscription (I think it was $399 or something like that). So I've never regretted it.

But if I were coming at it NOW, and the entry bar was $800+ ... not sure I'd make the same decision.

 

[khensu]

Warning: The following is a useless rant.

Every now and then, I think I should get a Roon lifetime license.
And every time, I find it too expensive.
Then I make up my mind and come back to it, eventually willing to jump the step...
To discover that the price increased ridiculously.

I like Roon idea, but hate you need a dedicated server running 24/7 for it.

I also hate subscription fee-based licenses.

I'd be ready to invest in Roon at $500 for a lifetime license. Maybe $600.
But now it's $830.

No way.

And since that will lead me nowhere, I'll stop my subscription.

Totally understandable. In my case, I already had a NUC running 24/7 anyway, so that wasn’t an issue. I had started a subscription after the initial trial ended. Shortly after it started is when they announced the price increase. I already had a USB drive with over 1TB of music on it, and Roon had me hooked.

I agree with you on subscription pricing for software. It kinda rubs me the wrong way, too. So, on the eve of the price increase (I was still in the first 30 days of my subscription), after arguing with myself briefly, I pulled the trigger and upgraded to the lifetime by convincing myself I was already in for the first year, so it was almost like a percent off coupon to buy the lifetime. Oh, the things we do to justify our purchases even to ourselves.

I don’t regret my decision at all, but it definitely doesn’t make sense for everyone. Maybe I’d feel different if I‘d had one of the support experiences I’ve read about here, but so far, any issues I have had were easily resolvable with a bit of searching.

 

[Jeromeof]

I could never justify the license cost - as an alternative I ended up with a Plex lifetime subscription and together with Plexamp I find it a great service.

I was using Plex anyway for streaming video around my house and for my kids remotely - very handy for holidays also as most smart tvs include a Plex app but I also bring either a firestick or AppleTV to be sure) and since that needed a box in the house ( a raspberry pi is good enough ) it made sense for me to just add my 2tb of music and let Plex index it and pull in lots of useful metadata like albums reviews and similar albums / artists - Plexamp then adds lots of extras also like lyrics, visualisations, sonically similar albums and now has ChatGPT playlists and while sadly not a peq it does have a 10 band EQ, chrome cast etc