A message from the Roon founders

[Stuart_Matheson]

So, a reduced service then?

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@WiWavelength

Many of the concerns expressed then about a larger company wresting control of Roon are inconsistent with the cheers expressed now about that very occurrence.

I didn’t cross check, but maybe the people concerned then are not the same people who are happy now. Some may have changed their mind. Or, God forbid, humans may not be 100% consistent in their hopes and fears and both emotions can occur at the same time or different times in the same person.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@Stuart_Matheson

So, a reduced service then?

No, they are apparently replacing a dead file format with a different one.

[Stuart_Matheson]

So, 1) what is a dead file? 2) why can’t they say that in plain English?

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@Stuart_Matheson

1. what is a dead file?

A file format. In this case, one that was proprietary and whose main supporter is in administration (edit: or was now bought up, I am not following this in detail), i.e. MQA, which Tidal is replacing with FLAC.

@Stuart_Matheson

2. why can’t they say that in plain English?

It’s not so much a Roon issue but a Tidal issue. If you are a Tidal subscriber, you probably know. And the release notes of the Roon update have some more detail. The Tidal support pages have more - I don’t know but I guess they may have sent marketing emails when they announced their new subscription options.

[Mike_Cempa]

Still looking for that nugs.net integration. I think it fits the Roon mold with high quality live performances. Certainly more than Apple Music or Spotify integration.

[mods: corrected URL]

[Jim_F]

No, improved service with lossless high resolution.

[Stuart_Matheson]

That’s helpful but also suggests that Roon are eliding the issue for subscribers and MQA listeners- ie no clear statement that - “MQA music will not be available from-- -----”. I don’t believe for a minute that Roon don’t know Tidal’s business plan.

It would help me decide whether I want to continue my direct debit from June.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@Stuart_Matheson

I don’t believe for a minute that Roon don’t know Tidal’s business plan.

They may or may not know. If they know, they may or, more likely, may not be legally able to spill Tidal’s business secrets. If you need to know Tidal’s plans, it is probably best to speak to Tidal and/or refer to their support pages (search for MQA)

[WiWavelength (Andrew J Shepherd)]

@Suedkiez

I didn’t cross check, but maybe the people concerned then are not the same people who are happy now Some may have changed their mind. Or, God forbid, humans may not be 100% consistent in their hopes and fears and both emotions can occur at the same time or different times in the same person.

As with current events, some seem to be okay with regime change and authoritarian rule as long as they perceive that those moves will benefit them, ignoring that those same moves could come back to haunt them.

My point stands: be cautious. Getting overly low in the acquisition feedback thread was too much. Getting overly high at the reversals in direction announced today is too much.

But if Roon founders now are taking marching orders from Harman, the former roadmap is obsolete. And predictability is out the window.

AJ

[gTunes]

@WiWavelength

A “brave decision” by Roon? This sounds more like a forced mandate from Harman (or Samsung).

I wondered if anyone besides me would have this cynical take on @danny’s post. His comment was undoubtedly enigmatic.

@Simon_Arnold3

It’s a decision that should have never been made in the first place, taking away the prime feature of the app playback your music because of no internet was ridiculous…

This may be a matter of perspective.

I primarily use Roon to stream. I use Roon Radio to discover music. I play something from Daily Mixes just about every day and look forward to hearing things I don’t own. I have a very reliable, unlimited internet connection. I can’t watch Netflix or Hulu when my internet goes down and I don’t think of Roon as so fundamentally different that I believe it should work without internet.

I have a read on what Danny wrote that may be off in the weeds, but it’s my read nevertheless. Roon is magical because of its hybrid capabilities. Whether you listen to local music, stream from one or more services, or both, Roon brings it all together into coherent, unified experience. Roon has been leaning heavily into this and that has, at least to them, justified they’re “always connected” approach.

I wonder if what we’re seeing is Samsung/Harman pushing away from this and more towards a “collector” audience. Samsung/Harman’s game plan may be “we can’t win at streaming, let’s win at collecting”. I think this is somewhat coded in the “back to the roots” post from today and I see evidence of Roon not fully agreeing with this, if that’s what’s going on.

All of this makes me a bit ambivalent about the posts today. I appreciate some of the sentiments and I get that people are frustrated about not being able to use Roon when their internet is down. Especially given that it used to work that way. But I hope that they don’t pivot back so hard to collector-thinking that I’m left frustrated. For what it’s worth, I’ve been ripping and collecting as long as anyone here - I just don’t see that as the future.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@WiWavelength

Getting overly low in the acquisition feedback thread was too much. Getting overly high at the reversals in direction announced today is too much.

I can agree with that.

@WiWavelength

And predictability is out the window.

There’s no internet service that we subscribe to that is predictable. People will just have to live with that or do without them. But then you still have the pesky issue of the future being difficult to predict generally and not everyone getting everything they want in life.

[Alicja_Lach]

I would like to point out again that the quality of the data (reliability, completeness, correctness) is quite low. Own database is one of the flagship features of the Roon system and it’s worth working on it.
I am enclosing my sympathy.

P.S.
This wonderful young woman has a lot of talents, but for God’s sake - she is not an All tracks composer!

[oneofmany]

@enno

like folder browsing

Noooooooooooooo!

Please, please don’t make this a function that every user has to contend with.

I really don’t want to go back 15 years in time

Other than that I’m excited for the Roon Team and us users.

[pscreed]

Please, please let there be a focus on some new approach to solving the terrible data quality of metadata sourced from 3rd party data providers. Yes Roon did not create the problem, but it is a major issue for those curating a large music library of non-mainstream releases. Two things that would solve 90% of this problem:

1. an optional setting to use ONLY user provided tags for EVERY metadata attribute displayed in Roon, in other words expose every metadata tag and free them from only being populated by 3rd party data and Roon business rules.

2. the option to prevent any given release from a streaming provider ever being shown anywhere in Roon. This would instantly solve the artist disambiguation issue that pollutes the catalog views of any artist with a common name, or bands that recycle a name from some other band. Examples: Cream, Eric Johnson, etc etc. If I could click on all the releases by the rap artist “cream” and the bluegrass artist “Eric Johnson” to stop them showing up in the listings of the British band, or the Texas guitarist, that would be huge.

Give the people what they want

Thanks and regards, one of those guys with 20,000 CDs and a meticulous approach to curation.

[Rockhound]

@Suedkiez

I suggest we leave the design of audio streaming protocols to the experts who do this for a living.

Now just hold on a minute. This is an internet forum - isn’t everyone an expert?

[Marian (I stand with Ukraine)]

@oneofmany

Please, please don’t make this a function that every user has to contend with.

How do users have to “contend with” features they don’t care about?

[oneofmany]

Obviously if folder browsing is built into the Roon’s GUI I’d have to contend with it.

I don’t want to ever see or use folder browsing in Roon’s graphical interface, so making it optional for users i.e. a switch to turn on/off this function would suit my preference.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@Marian

How do users have to “contend with” features they don’t care about?

RoonLabs always said they don’t want folder browsing because it encourages certain ways to manage libraries that from then on every other Roon feature must take into account, so that it doesn’t interfere with or break these habits.

I’m not sure how big this danger is, but I do think it’s a valid concern that is difficult to foresee and wasn’t completely made up by RoonLabs. I have had to deal with similar things at work, where manual workarounds that we made possible at one time to satisfy user needs, while we couldn’t „do it right“, then continued to hold back the „right way“ ten years later.

In this sense, allowing folder browsing has the potential to force everyone else to contend with any restrictions it might impose elsewhere.

[gTunes]

Why not buy a few more just in case?