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Roon Music Player and Library Management Software Review

daftcombo

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Is there a possibility to correct the reponse by convolution ? (like in Foobar2000, JRiver...)

Is there any audible difference between Roon and Foobar2000 as players ? (also with JRiver, etc.)
 

rwortman

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Hmm. $120 a year seems a lot compared to JRMC which I currently use. However, I just installed a trial of Roon and I have to say it is way more capable and setting it up to stream to just about everything I own was cake. My Aventage AVR has Airplay built in and Roon found and streams to that with no issues. It even is using the shairport built in to my IdPi JRMC streamer although if I decide to keep Roon I will switch the RPi over to a Roon ready OS.
 
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amirm

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astr0b0y

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So far I don't know one of the UI changes they made. Used to be in the play bar you could hit a heart symbol to select a favorite song. That is gone now. Problem is that when Roon switches to radio mode or off screen tracks, there is no way to find the same indicator on the track list to do the same.
You now have to go into the album itself to ‘favourite’ a track. So if you are in Radio mode you have to navigate to the now playing window, click on the album name and find the track. I think Roon have indicated they will return the heart to the playback bar - there’s been a fair bit of feedback on it on their forums.
 
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amirm

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You now have to go into the album itself to ‘favourite’ a track. So if you are in Radio mode you have to navigate to the now playing window, click on the album name and find the track. I think Roon have indicated they will return the heart to the playback bar - there’s been a fair bit of feedback on it on their forums.
I am glad. I was tempted to go there and complain. It is not like them to miss such UI design issues.
 

rwortman

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Oooh, I just found out as a veteran I get 40% off of Tidal fees. Roon + $11.99 for hi-fi tidal. Browsing around feels like I stole a giant record collection. I guess we'll see how I feel in a few weeks or months. If I cancel my XM in my car, which I don't use that many hours, it almost pays it.
 

stunta

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Is there a possibility to correct the reponse by convolution ? (like in Foobar2000, JRiver...)

I've used it. It takes a .wav or a zip file (containing several .wav files) produced by REW which is convenient.
 

Dominique-T

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I have downloaded and installed Roon. Library is currently building up but... I cannot do too much because my SMSL DP3 is not recognised while it is seen by Jriver and Audirvana. Any idea why this DLNA device is not recognised?

Thank you!
 

stunta

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DLNA is based on UPnP and Roon invented their own protocol called RAAT to get around UPnP's limitations. More here: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/whats-wrong-with-upnp/2101


Not sure I agree with this from Brian:
his is why you are having to deal with “computers” right now. We all hate computers too. If you want no-compromise high quality audio, you need top-end electrically isolated devices. General purpose computers are solving a totally different problem. RAAT aims to solve that by working with every hardware manufacturer, as well as providing multiple DIY solutions ranging from turnkey Android/iOS app to a bit more involved RaspberryPi builds.

Not everyone wants or can afford a "Roon ready" device. I don't see whats wrong with a fanless PC hooked up to a USB DAC that is implemented well.
 

Soniclife

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Not everyone wants or can afford a "Roon ready" device. I don't see whats wrong with a fanless PC hooked up to a USB DAC that is implemented well.
If you can afford roon I don't think a pi will be a stretch :).
I wish they would be a little more "your DAC should fix this for you", it often reads to me that's that what they really think.
Not having a PC in the listening room is a good thing for most people, so I think the client server model is a good option.
 

DDF

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Not everyone wants or can afford a "Roon ready" device. I don't see whats wrong with a fanless PC hooked up to a USB DAC that is implemented well.

Pc audio is a bit of Russian roullette. I estimate I've spent 40 hrs trying to make my laptop drop out free, with 4 different dacs. I could write a very long diatribe of things that can and do go wrong with pc audio. I've had the luck to experience seemingly them all from ground loops over the usb cable causing bit slips (fixed by a doubly insulated ungrounded pc supply) to massive amounts of pc optimization: power options so usb or NIC never go "green" and cpu never drops below 75%, driver roll backs, disabling numerous services, uninstalling any sw that auto updates, disabling wifi drivers and hard wiring to Lan....., just to get dpc latency under control and page faults into a usable range. This is with a reasonable i5.

I'm not saying my experience is ubiquitous, but its not uncommon and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it or way to predict if you'll have that nightmare combo of pc + windows that hates real time music.

Its why I'm reading this thread, dedicated hw and sw without the nightmare of windows telemetry cutting out my audio sounds like a very attractive option right now.
 

stunta

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Pc audio is a bit of Russian roullette. I estimate I've spent 40 hrs trying to make my laptop drop out free, with 4 different dacs. I could write a very long diatribe of things that can and do go wrong with pc audio. I've had the luck to experience seemingly them all from ground loops over the usb cable causing bit slips (fixed by a doubly insulated ungrounded pc supply) to massive amounts of pc optimization: power options so usb or NIC never go "green" and cpu never drops below 75%, driver roll backs, disabling numerous services, uninstalling any sw that auto updates, disabling wifi drivers and hard wiring to Lan....., just to get dpc latency under control and page faults into a usable range. This is with a reasonable i5.

I'm not saying my experience is ubiquitous, but its not uncommon and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it or way to predict if you'll have that nightmare combo of pc + windows that hates real time music.

Its why I'm reading this thread, dedicated hw and sw without the nightmare of windows telemetry cutting out my audio sounds like a very attractive option right now.

What program/s were you using to play the music? I didn't do any PC optimization on my headless PC (fanless, i3, 4GB RAM, Win10) and its been my Roon Core for a while now and works flawlessly. I did have a lot of trouble with jRiver as it needed constant attention (crashes, freezes, but never clicks, pops or dropouts) which didn't work well with a headless system.
 

Kal Rubinson

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I'm not saying my experience is ubiquitous, but its not uncommon and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it or way to predict if you'll have that nightmare combo of pc + windows that hates real time music.
I do find this puzzling. Over the years, I have had a fair number of devices, mostly fanless, running JRiver or Roon (and dabbled with a few others). I do not run any "headless" because I prefer having keyboard and mouse but ocassionally use iPhone/iPad apps. The storage is on a NAS and my home LAN is nothing special: modem/router, switches, CAT6a. Dropouts have never been an issue unless I force operations that are too data intense for the particular CPU. Same for crashes, freezes, pops: I have to force them with unreasonable demands. And I play mostly hi-rez multichannel all the time.

Perhaps you might start over with a simple arrangement.
 

DDF

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Thanks for your feedback. Windows audio systems still feel immature and don't really lend themselves well to root cause analysis. Corrective actions need to be guessed at & instead of the classic "5 why's", the procedure is more "why me"?

One valuable lesson learned was the sensitivity of usb audio to proper ground isolation. Local file audio was grainy and coarse (easy DBT discrimination but without pops or clicks) until the laptop brick was changed to remove earth ground.

Local file play (foobar2000, USB drive or NAS) is now OK but Tidal and Spotify have regular drop outs. Memtest and system file check all clean, no apparent HW issues. Latencymon running for 3 hrs with the laptop idle resulted in windows "trusted installer" turning up 4000 hard page faults, windows search utility 1000 more, and a third unknown windows process yet 1000 again. DPC checker is clean. Vodka sales have notably increased in the greater Ottawa region.

On a happy note, the disc spinner is still as fault free as ever after 20 years, and I'm greatly enjoying this recent steal: https://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Great-Operas-Wolfgang-Amadeus/dp/B001KK6RBK
 

Kal Rubinson

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One valuable lesson learned was the sensitivity of usb audio to proper ground isolation. Local file audio was grainy and coarse (easy DBT discrimination but without pops or clicks) until the laptop brick was changed to remove earth ground.
Good point there. I had experimented with a high current source for both DAC and endpoint and found that either one was cleaner and quieter with the other one fed by another PS with independent ground.
 
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amirm

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Local file play (foobar2000, USB drive or NAS) is now OK but Tidal and Spotify have regular drop outs. Memtest and system file check all clean, no apparent HW issues. Latencymon running for 3 hrs with the laptop idle resulted in windows "trusted installer" turning up 4000 hard page faults, windows search utility 1000 more, and a third unknown windows process yet 1000 again. DPC checker is clean. Vodka sales have notably increased in the greater Ottawa region.
How are your latencies to Tidal or Spotify servers?
 

DDF

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How are your latencies to Tidal or Spotify servers?

To local ISP server is 10 ms ping which is decent. Ndis.sys (network driver) has highest machine DPC latency at 230 us which is reasonable. Thinking it's a page fault issue as drop outs occur without DPC spikes. Machine is 32 bit win 7 with 4GB RAM (the max addressable) but that should be more than enough for a machine heavily stripped down. Hoping next 40 hours aren't spent learning about page faults and how to wrestle under control. I'd buy another machine but concerned with just a repeat Windows mess.
 
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