Why do people like/use Roon?

[Ralph_Cramden]

Logitech Media Server with Material Skin, Music and Artist info, and Lyrics plugins installed. It also has Tidal, Qobuz, and Local CD Player plugins. You can control multiple endpoints. It works great and it's all free.

Yep. Supports Chromecast, DLNA (including Sonos) and AirPlay endpoints. Material Skin is excellent, completely updates the very dated Logitech UI. Runs perfectly on a Raspberry Pi.

 

[Davelemi]

I didn't understand what you use, can you tell me more?
thanks

Well, I have about 500gb of music on a hard drive that integrates with Roon along with Tidal- my Roon core is an old MacMini. In my office I stream music to a near field setup (nCore/miniDSP SHD Studio/Paradigm Prestige/SVS SB2000) and also to a DAC/Headphone Amp (JDS Labs) that also acts as a preamp to powered speakers on my desk (Kantu). My daughter has a streamer in one of her rooms that connects to powered speakers (Kantu). Our family room also has a streamer that connects to a DAC/monoblocks/miniDSP/Klipsch Forte IVs/SVS SB2000). We also have passive outdoor speakers fed by an ICE amplifier and rpi3/DAC each of which I built. I also have a Google streamer thingy (can't remember the name) and the old apple wifi extender with optical output that I can use on the fly. Here's the point- I really like the ability to stream my music to all of these locations and control it from my iPhone or iPad and dial in DSP using the output from REW in the rooms where I don't have a miniDSP.
If you add up how much I've paid for this stuff, the $100+/yr for Roon seems inconsequential.
Hope this helps.

 

[Wes]

Roon is like liquorish

Not everybody likes it but the ones that do, really really like it.

 

[Emlin]

Roon doesn't display metadata for Radio Paradise. They claim that the FLAC stream doesn't provide it, yet LMS finds it with greatest of ease and is free and seemingly at least as well supported.

I thought metadata was one of Roon's things. Go figure.

 

[Emlin]

Same here... And for those of us in the UK it's about the only streaming platform that currently has BBC radio integrated. Overall it's an amazingly well supported ecosystem.

LMS does BBC fine! It was a bit broken for a while but is now fully restored in the iPlayer and Sounds plugins.

Unless you mean the other sort of BBC. I can't find a plugin for that.

 

[giordy]

[QUOTE="
Hope this helps.[/QUOTE]

certainly
you have a great system to stream music to multiple rooms

 

[maverickronin]

I was going to start the two week trial just to give it a shot but they won't even let you do that without giving them your credit card number like kind of shady light night infomercial...

 

[TomP]

My bottom line with Roon is after using it for a couple of years it always works, never drops and easy to use.
That is not been my experience with other systems such as Bluesound

 

[LuvTheMusic]

Some hardware manufacturers provide proprietary software for some of the functionality that's been mentioned. For example, NAD (and a couple of others) use BluOS, which indexes stored files and integrates with a boatload of streaming services/radio channels, e.g., Tidal, Qobuz, Idagio (classical), Radio Paradise (mentioned earlier). It also has multi-room control; some NAD models also include DIRAC room correction. Other hardware vendors have different solutions.

How well any of these compare to Roon I don't know -- just wanted to mention that they are out there for those buying certain hardware brands.

BTW, someone mentioned Primephonic integration: Primephonic doesn't integrate with much of anything other than Airplay, BlueSound (but not BluOS), and Sonos. They've been saying "real soon now" for a long time, but so far, no action. Pity because it's an interesting choice for classical music..

 

[DuxServit]

Roon gives me streamer-hardware independence.

When my aging MacMini and Win7 machines finally go, I can simply reinstall Roon on new PC hardware and reattach my external drive with my music collection. Simple.

I really don’t get people who buy expensive audio streamers in nice glossy boxes for thousands of dollars.

 

[ahofer]

I'm a Roon convert, and a classical music fan. I had already tagged my library for Minimserver before converting, and I have no issues finding things. I was using Minimserver/BubbleUPnP with my streamers/Chromecasts, but there were gremlins - I'd lose endpoints, just a lot of fiddling. The DSP is helpful too, so for the basic music streaming mechanics, I've found Roon superior.

As for metadata and streaming, I have only had one problem - for several weeks many qobuz titles were marked "unavailable". That now seems to have gone away. On the plus side, I love being able to click through artists and compositions to find different and new recordings in Tidal and Qobuz (yeah, I have both, I dunno). For Jazz, you can do that with side[people] on any recording. Pretty great. And a lot of the reviews are interesting. I also like the display feature- where the Roon metadata is displayed on any chromecast display you choose.

All in, it's been additive to my music enjoyment. Can't get a better recommendation than that.

 

[TomP]

Agree with Duxservit.
I have mine running on a intel nuc with Rock (I am in no way tech savy). Was very easy to put together.
Have that attached to RME ADI-2 and that goes into my amp.
I can control it with my macbook, pc or phone.
Very simple and sounds great.

 

[ahofer]

Agree with Duxservit.
I have mine running on a intel nuc with Rock (I am in no way tech savy). Was very easy to put together.
Have that attached to RME ADI-2 and that goes into my amp.
I can control it with my macbook, pc or phone.
Very simple and sounds great.

I have a NUC running ROCK as well - in both my homes. Each home has a main system in the living room (where the RME lives) and CCA or Roon-enabled smaller devices in the kitchen, bedroom, office.

What do use to run a Roon Remote on your MacBook? I have an iPad lying around, but I didn't think you could run it on a Mac.

If RME were Roon-enabled...killer.

 

[TomP]

RME does not need to be roon enabled.
You just download the roon ap onto your phone, laptop, ipad. Works with all.
Nuc into Rme, Rme into amp, amp into speakers.
controlled by phone, laptop or pc.
I thought i needed more hardware since rme is not roon ready.
Not the case.

 

[ahofer]

RME does not need to be roon enabled.
You just download the roon ap onto your phone, laptop, ipad. Works with all.
Nuc into Rme, Rme into amp, amp into speakers.
controlled by phone, laptop or pc.
I thought i needed more hardware since rme is not roon ready.
Not the case.

It does if the ROCK server is in your closet with your router and NAS. I probably could connect it directly, the fan never seems to run.

Not a big deal, I use a Pi4 to stream to the RME.

It's funny, I asked the Small Green Computer folks about buying their pre-fab Roon server and connecting it directly to the DAC. I got a long lecture about USB quality. I like the CD ripping built into their server, but they are overcharging given the CPUs in their design, and the USB stuff seems like nonsense to me. So I went DIY.

https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/...onictransporter-i5-cdr?variant=15405993558050

 

[TomP]

I have an internal Hardrive in my nuc, so it just sits nest to my RME

 

[abdo123]

DSP for every zone without buying a device or working too hard.

Multizone.

Backups

 

[terasankka]

DSP for headphones usage. I can apply the Harman Curves to my headphones. The Qobuz integration and rich metadata.

 

[ahofer]

Having seen two remarks further up about mishandling classical metadata above, I'm curious on specifics. That was the reason I used Minimserver before, and laboriously tagged my own collection. But I haven't seen a ton of problems with this. Most music services mix up composer/performer/artist and the genre selections can be weird, but Roon's search works well enough for me that I don't have trouble locating things. And I like the fact that Antonin Dvorak with and without the accent are in the same place (I spent hours correcting that nonsense).

 

[win]

It's pathetic that I pay for Roon and they've only managed to integrate two services. Meanwhile, Sonos has zero subscription fees and they have integrated with every single streaming service known to man.

Would be super cool if the monthly subscription service could integrate with very common services like idagio, primephonic, etc.