I am a Deezer user and I tested Roon Labs und Tidal trail version for some weeks.
My feedback …
I liked
- nice information on albums and artists (unfortunately only in English)
- Easy handling of the iPad app
- Good and structured layout of Roon
Main concern:
- Roon radio vs. Deezer flow (I did not find any information how the algorithm works, but from my subjective feeling after several weeks result of Deezer flow fits much better my taste)
- TIDAL content seems not as wide as Deezer content (unfortunately TIDAL could not convince me)
For the price of Roon, I am disappointed , that so many smaller and bigger issues are not working perfectly:
- iPad portrait mode (even so the iPhone is in portrait mode, why not on the iPad - I do not understand it)
- Chromecast streaming seems not in the focus of Roon:
- No meta data information in the chromecast stream (Using the Deezer app the meta data carried by chromecast is displayed on my loudspeaker displays)
- No multiroom possibility (grouping of individual devices) direct in the Roon app with chromecast devices
- Stability of Roon connection:
- One in a while there are connection problems between iPad app / Roon server (all other iPad apps are running fine, so it should be not my network ?!?)
- Once in a while connection problems with TIDAL. To get it working again I had to stop and restart Roon core software on my NAS
- In different overviews you see below the Cover-Art release-date & star rating of the album. On the following „show all“ display these information are not displayed at many, not all. Why not always?
- Missing focus selections: I would like to have more focus selections on statistics. E.g. where I can filter like most played, least played, last played, not played, recently added, played long ago track or album or genres or artist
- In general more statistics would be interesting on my listening behaviour. I am sure Roon Labs are collection all this data and analysing it. Why do not give the information back to the owner of this data?
- Live Radio, to select and find new radio stations it is much easier with TuneIn.
- No individual customisable main / overview screen. It would be nice to have a main screen, that I can choose what content in what order I want to see. Not what Roon Labs think I is good for me.
- Why is the header of overview screen so big. I know my name, why wasting so much grey place (1/3 on my iPad) for nothing? I can scroll it away, but when I select this screen again, I have scroll again.
- Listening to audiobooks is not really supported. For example setting tags within an audio file. Storing where in a Audiobook I left off, last time I listen it. How more minutes to go until the end of the total audiobook.
- …
Conclusion
- Amount to pay for TIDAL and for Roon Labs together is too expense for me considering the additional benefits I get from Roon. Especially considering that using TIDAL instead of Deezer even will reduce the audio content provided, so I will stay with Deezer without Roon.
