2 days of trial: my feedback

Hello, i don’t know if it’s the right place to post a feedback, but here is mine.

I tried Roon Labs on my Windows 10 for 2 days.
Only with almost 5k local files (FLAC for the most, and MP3)
I tried your app with 2 separate libraries, one tagged and the other not tagged.
All my tagging was done manually with Musicbee (which is my music library since many years)

My feedback will be mainly focused on the “local music manager” aspect:

  • Firstly, Roon has not enough customisation options.
    Musicbee is a far (far) better music manager and is free.
    Your solution seems better for “automated” organisation, but like all the others on the market, it is far from perfect, and thus it required manual tagging and organisation anyway.
    And for that (major) point, it lacks a lot of things.
    To sum it up, the automatic informations gathered by Roon were too much missing, wrong, incomplete and imprecise.
  • Roon’s genres are not enough detailed (look at Sonemic/Rate your Music, you have a big big leeway).
    So i used mine (the ones tagged in my files), but even when i told Roon to not use its genres, they were still appearing sometimes:
    On some artists page, with generic tags like “Electro” and “Techno”.
    In the Genres tab and in the Focus column. (all the Roon’s genres)

  • None of my track ratings are displayed.
    I only see a rating for the albums and it’s not even mine.

  • Artists pictures system is not working well enough.
    I can’t upload my own pictures for banner and avatar and have a different one for both.
    I can’t crop or center pictures directly through the app.
    I’m forced to have top Art Director pictures. (Why not let people choose the pictures they want to display through the Art Director submitted pictures and directly through the app ?)
    I’m forced to have circle cropped avatars.

  • I can’t manage different artists with same name.

  • I can’t manage aliases for artists.

  • I can’t manage some “customized or non-customized existing embedded” tags like moods (E.g. emotionnal, energic, dark, …), contexts (like from which movie or video game this song comes from ?), origin (like is that a cover, a remastering, an adaptation ?), notable instruments, lyrics language.
    I see that Roon tries to manage album versions, but it is really not enough reliable. (i look at Discogs for that)

  • I had embedded album covers which were not recognized by Roon, i found out that it was because the picture files were not .JPG
    Again, a free app like Musicbee can read PNG and BMP formats.

  • No real customized tabs, only a hard to reach “signets” list.

  • My time-coded lyrics are not displayed, while they are conventionnal and taken by my Android Music Player app “GoneMAD”

  • Weak number of non-editable keyboard shortcuts. (and no mouse shortcuts)

  • I’m forced to display Artists by Album Artists and not by “Track Artists”.
    To resolve this partially, i have to go to the album view (so not the view i want), and through the “Focus” tool with its ultra long lists.

  • Filters design (with the “Focus” tool) have to be revamped completely, as it is not ergonomic at all, and sometimes has its display bugged (my “Genres” column was cut off and i wasn’t able to click on the “Show more” button at the bottom).
    Again, look at Musicbee and all the ways it offers to filter things.

But i understand that the main part of the UI problem is that Roon wants to be responsive, when Musicbee is Windows (and non-mobile screens) only and thus maybe more free.
I just want to be honest with you, your product is certainly suitable for a fair amount of peoples, but right now not for me unfortunately.
I will continue to follow your progress though :slight_smile:

On a more positive note:

  • I would have paid for your “radio” automatic playlists. Because shuffle systems in Musicbee can’t create automaticly smooth playlists based on tracks fingerprinting.
    But again, Plex Supersonic does a better job at it. Not only for the playlist generation, but also for the transitions created between the tracks, which are based on their algorithm and not based on a fixed number of crossfade seconds.
    But anyway, Plex is even worst at file managing…

  • I liked your signal quality monitoring, i liked the “Home” tab too, with the stats. The “Discover” feature is a good idea. (but would need more exploitation, right now it’s just a gadget imo)

  • Everything looks modern. (And it’s hard to have Musicbee to look as modern.) But i said “modern” not ergonomic.

  • I like the multi-accounts, the sharing tools and the easy way to switch from one source to another, especially to a Google Home.

  • I was more amazed by the efficiency to cast to multiple sources at once.

  • I liked the DSP presentation, and the parametric eq.

But that’s all i found “better”, and it doesn’t worth $13 a month when all the other mechanics are not in place.

I hope i have been a little constructive.

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Not bad for 2 days. Did you spend any time listening to music ? I’m a happy user, in my 7th year of enjoying the product, and still learning new tweaks and ideas to make my experience even better. Each to their own; if Roon is not for you, then that’s fair enough.

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I use Roon to listen to music. Works great.

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After my first two days of using ROON I found myself to be a ROONIE almost over day. Sure the interface has its drawbacks. But these are minor for me since my first and absolute objective was and remains best quality of sound and using different endpoints.

When still in my trialperiod I set up ROCK on a NUC that communicates with my NAS and since I am a newbieroonie, it took some frustration. Thanks to the info here and on the web, I managed to get it done.
Streaming or playing via NAS both sound evenly excellent.

I play via MiniDSPshd which controls two pairs of speakers, one of these are bi-amped and the other single amped, all tubes. Thanks to ROON I now controll my current main setup and three more on different locations in the house with this one interface which is made for sound. How I could have survived all these years without ROON still is an enigma to me but that was then, now is ROON.

Not sure you will get much sympathy here

You seem to have had a constructive 2 days , in my 6 years I have neve even thought to do a critique like this

I suppose I am too busy listening music :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp:

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Hello, yes of course i had to listen to music, what makes you think otherwise ?
I focused mainly on the managing aspects of the app, because that’s a big part of the sold package, but to be able to judge things like radio playlists or signal quality monitoring, it’s obvious i listened to music lol

I hope everyone here are mature enough to understand that this is a feedback, with suggestions for things to improve.
I understand that everyone have different needs. I exposed mine and why i won’t pay for Roon.

Again, take it like a feedback, not like a critisism against Roon users. :slight_smile:

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Musicbee?? Serious?

Maybe if you spent more time learning what Roon is and what it does instead of listing everything you think it should do, but doesn’t.

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Haha i understand.
Well, i have simple needs when it’s about “gathering” differents music sources, managing different endpoints; and i’m aware that those are the strong points of Roon.

So i quickly realized that music quality and diffusion efficiency were really good.
Then no reason to spend more time on listening to music. (even if i was listening during all my tests)

The thing here is that i had some comparison points (Musicbee mostly, and Plex), so i knew what to investigate to.
This is why most of my notes concerned the flaws of the organisation’s automation, and thus inevitably the manual organisation and customization.

I see, you’re also someone with constructive comments like me :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed:

I know what Roon is.
I read and watched about it before trying it. I’m a good student.

The things i listed are the things i learned (like you said) by spending time trying Roon.
Do you want me to spend more time on it ?
Will that erase all the negative things i listed ?

In that case, it doesn’t seem that Roon is the right product for you. I’m not familiar with any others except Audirvana and I doubt you would like that either.

Ok that’s enough for now as this is only going to go downhill from here I fear.

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