1.8 a wasted opportunity

That of course is what the manufacturer tells the purchaser so that they won’t feel quite so silly about paying the price. Probably needs to be considered with a grain of salt. Prices in general have little relationship to cost – it’s whatever the market will bear.

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Some of us actually research extensively what they buy, and get detailed references from attested sources. Others, get by on a generalized dyspeptic cynicism.

Or, perhaps, a realistic appraisal and average over history of how people treat other people when they’re trying to sell something.

I will admit that I’m not a big believer in hand-crafted technology. Always willing to learn, of course, but I think that day has passed us by.

I agree with the OP… not every one wants to filter tracks down to one legged drummers who wear red socks… some just want an attractive music player with some added extras (that dont dominate the user space).

The missed opportunity with Roon, even from day one, for me is they didnt make the GUI user configurable and also provide different browse styles for different use cases.

Want to rock a 55" TV as an interface, click here… an 11" Ipad, click here etc.

Dont want big-arsed photos, click here etc

Its hard to create a single scalable GUI that utilizes space optimal when its not web based (i.e. web sites conquered disparate screen sizes years ago)

Yes it would have taken some fore thought during the design phase and a little more implementation time but rather than a rigid “one size must fit all” GUI/work flow we have now, Roon could have worked well with many different types of use cases and people wouldnt have to maybe use Roon in a less than optimal way (with respect to their use case)

Peter

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Really? You would pay $120/year for a slightly more attractive version of JRiver?

I, for one, would not find that an attractive value-proposition.

Actually, it’s much easier to do so in an app than on the web.

The iOS and MacOS interfaces (to pick one such pair) are substantially different.

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Now Roon has kindly said they are going to further develop the rough edges and major bits of broken functionality which saw a regression in 1.8, I’m more than happy. I like the way it’s going :slight_smile: and hope for many new innovations and UX devs to come.

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We only argue about things that are matter of opinion… everyone’s opinion is fact to them.

The important stuff we all agree on… like MQA, and audiophile ethernet cables.

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I feel so sorry for the developers, when they have to deal with a whinger like this.

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Pardon my European ignorance, but how can a radio station come with a car?

New cars, sold in America, often ship with SiriusXM enabled hardware that is integrated into the car’s sound system. A special satellite antenna is also needed.

Wow! That is kind of incredible and also totally weird. But that explains why it felt so confusing. Thanks for explaining. :slight_smile:

I love 1.8

Horses for courses.

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I had SiriusXM and still never heard of Jim Ladd, perhaps it is because SiriusXM is predictable and does not explore listening in the genres I select. Sirius was much better when you could modify the genre’s play choices, now it too repetitive since they took the ‘custom’ feature away. I do not listen to SiriusXM anymore. Ever since I updated to 1.8, my system has performed flawlessly and Roon is discovering even more music for me. Roon coupled with Tidal and Qobuz is quite the listening experience. I wish I had more hands to give more thumbs-up for 1.8.

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Whew!…where to start. Firstly, I have a very similar environment to yours. I have a whole house sonos system with 7 zones, and a “dedicated” listening room (living room) for my more serious gear. I also have users in the house who are more than content with sonos, both it’s usability and it’s features and would never use Roon for their listening needs. They would chafe at the learning curve and wonder why it had “all this stuff” that they don’t find important.
I don’t share your opinion that Roon’s UI “needs to be brought into the 21st century”. Sure it could use some tweaks, but what player doesn’t?
Why do you feel that you are “forced to pay & wire this debacle” for your needs? Is someone holding a gun to your head? You’ve decided on your configuration based on your needs (and probably past investments, based on your Sooloos/Meridean reference). Clearly you’re not satisfied with the sum of the parts. So change it. Dump Roon, find another system/UI that meets your needs and “rewire your debacle” to run it. If you’re sitting on your terrace and want to listen to Jim Ladd in “non-cutting edge sound” why not fire up your sonos? Is your terrace not a sonos zone? Then make it one…problem and angst solved. As for me, I guess I must be one of those “detail oriented music lovers” for whom a hybrid system of both Roon and Sonos works just fine. I don’t find it a “poorly designed, niche product at all, and I suspect if I did, I would probably find another solution that would better meet my needs. I’m not sure the “rest of the world” is currently “shaking it’s head at such a poorly designed product”. In fact if you read many of the online mags & audiophile sites dedicated to sound enthusiasts, Roon is almost universally the interface of choice for them and their communities. Same if you attend any audio/industry shows (although Covid has greatly curtailed those).
Finally, I believe that Roon’s management very clearly understand their “audience” and has designed a clever product to meet it’s needs. I suspect this, because I’m one of them. They’ve pretty clearly proven that, by virtue of the fact that they’ve built a successful business and effectively brought it to market. One man’s success is another’s starting point, but by any measure they’ve clearly established a legitimate business model and are growing their user base based upon it. It might not meet your criteria for a sucessful business, but it clearly seems to meet theirs.
Bottom line you seem quite passionate about your distaste for the product, it’s “mission” and it’s management team. I believe your remark was that “it’s insane”. Well…you know the old adage about insanity…”doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. It seems if you’re going to have any happiness, you need to try something different.

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I’m also an ex Meridian/Sooloos owner, I purchased the system as a “junior” hifi zoned room system that the family could use, while I listened on my serious hifi systems in 2 dedicated rooms, I preferred the ritual of record player, reading sleeve notes, spinning up the odd cd for stuff not available on record and going out to listen to live music. While the tagging was interesting on the Sooloos, I rarely used it other then to find a band members who might have played on other albums and often find it quicker to search the internet on a ipad if I want chapter and verse. Having spent a lot of time in recording studios and then hearing the output via master tape/record/cd/tape/radio -I don’t hold radio or internet as hi-fidelity, radio sucks the life out of music with respect to dynamics and timbre.
Recently I moved countries and sold my passlabs, magnepans, sme and PT, krells’ etc kit plus all the sooloos kit and retained just the kii3, auralic, inuous and nas for running roon and I have to save I don’t miss Sooloos, and I don’t miss tinkering with the hifi trying to eek out that last ounce of sound.

Roon is cheap( Tidal/Qobuz/Spotify/Apple/Amazon Music subscriptions are the expensive part), functional and easy to use. My wife finds roon easy and useable quite unlike my old hifi delicate setups.Tags other than rock/jazz/folk/classical are of no interest to her. I’ve accepted a downgrade in overall music fidelity for convenience and consistency, time gained to listen and look forward once more to live music once Covid moves into the background of our lives.