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
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.