Good to see this announcement. Although I’ve never needed the “Internet-free” playability, it’s nice to know that will be back as you never know when you might need it. Relatively recent lifetime user building out my local collection with the help of Roon management . . . Loving Roon so far even though I’ve only scratched the surface of functionality. I invested in third party tools to manage tagging/file conversion for “unconnected” portability (Mp3tag and dBpoweramp), but this community has been very helpful in steering me towards those solutions. In terms of hardware, we’re leaning into Roon Ready for future purchases and hoping to see good reviews on new Roon Ready equipment (looking at you, Pioneer!).
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Are you a software developer? I love your photography (if you are who I think you are) but there’s decades of experience in software development and computer science that suggest that this may become problematic down the line. At least sufficient to be very careful with it.
Edit: And if you are the photographer I mean, could you help Roon sort out the complete mess in the artist bio and discography? 
You deserve better.
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Is ROCK OS 2.0 still in development?
I think you mean Roon OS. ROCK is an installer that installs Roon OS with Roon Server running on top.
Why do you want to know about Roon OS 2.0? Has Roon OS 1.0 proved inadequate for some reason?
Well, Danny teasered OS 2.0 for 2021 and there were some useful suggestions
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Roon OS, more Hardware monitoring like memory usage ,CPU % and CPU temperature
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/whats-coming-in-roon-os-2-0-not-roon-2-0-but-roon-os-2-0/153040
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Fantastic news and updates, I appreciate a lot the transparency, being myself a fairly new Roon user. I have the feeling that I am part of a strong product and community.
I’d like to see some improvements in the ARC app, having more stability connection and that new cache feature for non stop listening.
Very happy to be part of Roon, guys!! Thank you!!
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I noticed that there have not been any updates lately. Is there a reason?
Pleased to see this message. I was one of the first Roon users after using Sooloos for years, and have doubled down over the years leveraging capabilities like RoonArc which I also find useful since getting it to work properly in my cars on CarPlay. Excited to see what the future holds, Harman should be a great fit.
Updates to what? The last software update was three days ago
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I just looked and saw that I’m on build 1365, which I believe is the latest. I had to reinstall because I moved to a new computer and I think it now defaults to install automatically. It used to ask me before I reinstalled. Thank you for your reply.
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The more I think about this the more I just don’t get it. Re internet connectivity - it must be the tiniest per cent age of people who are not connected 24/7, possibly vocal people but surely a fraction of a fraction. And planning for a doomsday scenario where we have no internet, but do have power, seems odd.
This (and enabling the niche ‘folder search’), makes it feel like Roon have u-turned to now flow against the future direction of technology. To enable Roon to grow, and to have a chance of existing into the long-term future, they need to acknowledge, and plan for, the concept of local library of files slowly dying as the audience of people with locally ripped files slowly dies. Danny always seemed to understand this. The new owners I’m not so sure.
It’s baffling to me how many people don’t want something to be available to others just because they themselves don’t think it’s important.
Some people want to be able to browse their library through the file structure. Others may not always have internet connectivity, and don’t see why they can’t play their own files when they don’t.
Why is this a problem? Unless anyone can prove these features will somehow degrade some other part of the experience, why should anyone care?
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Well, the internet connection sometimes breaks down and there’s power. One time during the pandemic mine was down for 4 days because something broke and they couldn’t get a replacement part. A few other times over the years it was 10 minutes or an hour here or there.
It’s something one can plan for if one knows that Roon doesn’t work in this case, or at least not be surprised by it, but there were always users after the 2.0 update who didn’t know - and one would only know if one read release announcements or the forum, and not everyone does.
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Additionally there are still many locations (think vacation homes, recreational vehicles, rural areas) where people may have spotty or no Internet service at all. Why limit your audience if you don’t have to?
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Fair enough comment, you’re right. I was commenting more on the surprise change in emphasis and direction rather than specifically suggesting not giving some folk what they want.
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No worries; I get that too. And not meaning to single you out at all. I hope there’s enough new Harman money to do all of the above.
Planning for things we can’t predict or control is not a bad thing. We had a very expensive whole house backup power system installed in case of power outages in the summer. It gets over 105 for days, weeks and sometimes months where we live. Have to keep the AC on and fridges working. But it was a week long cold spell when the backup system paid for itself. 4 days of rolling blackouts 4 hours on/off and 2 hours on/off. We had power but our Internet provider did not. So having Roon with the ability to play local files during those periods when the internet was down came in handy. That was before the change was made to require internet access continuously. I for one am happy the requirement has been eliminated.
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Having lost my internet connection for many hours, about 5-6 times in the last 6 months. It’s a fuss not being able to play my own music. I’m sorry but I will be playing my own files for years to come and I don’t plan dying anytime in the next 20 years if I can help it. I signed up for Roon as it allowed me to play my own files and incorporate streaming in a unique way this didn’t rely on internet to play my own material nor should it ever.
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Great news IMHO. Re-focusing on the original target customers, the discerning music lovers and audiophiles. Bringing folder browsing and - hopefully - play from folder, improving queue and playlist display (track numbers …!), discarding the continuous internet connectivity requirement, improving stability and performance … Yes to all that and more!
I‘d like to add an item to the wishlist (sorry in case I missed it): Please give us HDCD decoding as a selectable DSP, including reporting in the signal path. It certainly is a niche, inasmuch as the Grateful Dead and many others are a niche … LoL …, but it is well in line with the discerning music lover and audiophiles target.
Maybe it is worthwhile to take another look at the old warhorses like foobar2000 and mpd. What do they bring to the table as bog standard?
However, there‘s a second thought now underlying all this: The enablers for these dreams to come true are a re-thinking on the side of the product decision makers at Roon, and increased resources and funds from Harman. Plus, one might figure that Roon is taking an initial beating due to customer attrition in the wake of the Harman takeover. So, how is that supposed to work economically?
(1) From our outside point of view, I could envisage increasing the market penetration in the a.m. old and renewed core customer groups. From polls on the web, I think that users of the original apps developed by the streaming services (like Qobuz and Tidal, and of course Apple Music) do outnumber Roon users. Maybe market strategists could take a look into people’s reasonings.
(2) Of course, there is the plain old strategy of increasing the price. For many reasons, I‘d be afraid of this dumb resort: Not only for all our wallets, but most of all because of the fact that Roon already today charges more than what the standard streaming services take, i.e. a lot more than what can ultimately go the artists. A bit of an upside-down world …
I do wish Roon - the people, the company and its parent(s), and most of all the product - all the best. Happy listening!
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