A Philosophical Dilemma that all started with crossfade

Roon Software Discussion
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I’ve been a longtime Roon subscriber with a Nucleus. I’ve been using Plexamp recently (I have a paid PLEX subscription) especially for mobile listening, and I’ve noticed that the crossfade function is FAR superior to anything Roon has done. The streaming has been flawless as well.

There’s no question IMHO that Roon’s app has a superior look and feel, though Plexamp is pretty good as well. The integration into my two Cambridge systems is so convenient with Roon as well.

Why is it that Roon cannot have a competent crossfade feature? I realize this is ultimately a small thing, but, again IMHO, it make for such a pleasant listening experience - especially when I’m just casual listening or out for a run. Sometimes, (though I do emphasize SOMETIMES) I feel Plexamp’s algorithm is superior, bringing up artists and songs in my library that I had completely forgotten.

Is it just that my use case scenario and preferences don’t align with Roon’s philosophy and goals? Is the Roon target audience more interested in things I’m less interested in, and thus, I’m simply using the wrong software for my intended purposes?

I feel as though if Roon took a few things from Plexamp’s playbook, it would be pretty near flawless - as flawless as flawless gets with any software, let’s say.

Does anyone else feel that Roon isn’t quite scratching the itch, but it’s so close they won’t get rid of it, but find they’re using Roon less and less?

That’s where I’m sitting currently . . . Is it me?

And just in case you’re wondering, this is a genuine question. I’m open to the notion that I’m using the wrong software, or that I’m lacking some perspective. I’m hardly anti-Roon, or Pro-Plex. I feel I’m somewhere in the middle, so I’m all ears.

Thanks for reading this far. I’m done now.

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I agree that Plex have made a great product in PlexAmp. Sonic analysis is really good and plays fresh music from the library.

But, Roon also have a crossfade function? I use it when I’m listening to playlists (want my albums to flow as intended)

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Yes, I’m aware of Roon’s crossfade feature. Sorry if my post was not clear enough. I said Plexamp’s crossfade feature is FAR Superior, and it is. Roon ARC does not have a crossfade feature at all to start with. Roon’s crossfade stutters for me, clips tracks, etc. I’ve been over it with support. They blame my network. I get it . . . but Plexamp doesn’t have the same issue on the same network - that quite honestly handles everything else I throw at it with no trouble, including Plexamp, so . . .

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Continuing the discussion from A Philosophical Dilemma that all started with crossfade . .:

Whilst I rarely use crossfade, it works just fine in Roon.

Having looked at your posting history, all three tickets relate to playback issues, e.g., unexpected dropouts, stopping etc. Roon has an entirely different architecture to Plex, and is always tougher on the home network, which is why you can’t practically compare Roon with Plex or other players.

It would seem that your decision is really about living with network shortcomings (that Roon exposes) or fixing the network. If this isn’t appealing, Plex may be an option for you. However, in the home, something like Lyrion music server may be a better option for music-only playback.

Incidentally, you don’t need a Plex Pass to stream music to your mobile device. But again, there are other options, e.g., Symfonium Music Player (Android only) that can connect to Plex or other music servers.

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The issue here is a matter of priorities. Roon prioritizes bit-perfect playback for audiophiles, and when shuffling files, if the formats differ, there’s no clean solution other than to cross convert the files to one format. That sorta violates Roon’s core principles for its core audience.

In ARC, there is less of an excuse because its default behavior is to cross convert. Nonetheless, it has an option to use original formats, so providing a solution is thornier than it may seem.

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Thanks - I’m Apple and Mac only, so Lyrion and Symfonium are not really options. My network is rock solid with everything else. No one piece of equipment is more than 20 feet from the gigabit wireless router, and most of it is hard wired. If Roon is too much for that home network, then I accept that . . . but that leads me to lean toward cancelling Roon. It’s just not meeting my needs.

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If you mean your last support thread, you actually confirmed during its course that the issue was unrelated to the crossfade being enabled. The last post was Roon support not blaming your network but a possible performance issue in Roon with Qobuz content. I guess the fix they mentioned didn’t fix it for you, so it’s understandable if it was no use to you, but it stops there.

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That’s correct. I took the crossfade off to eliminate that being the cause of the issue I was having. That doesn’t eliminate the fact that the crossfade was chopping off the ending of the songs, and that it didn’t work very well.

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I just think that if breakup issues still happened, then the problem is probably elsewhere. But yeah that won’t help if you don’t want to look at the network and have decided that Plex is fine

Apart from the issue, it seems that Plexamp is just better with radio and playlist style stuff, so if that’s what you are into then maybe working on the Roon stuff isn’t worth it

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Thanks. I think you’re right. I just cancelled my subscription.

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Does it work when the two tracks have different sampling rates? This is when it cuts off the beginning or the end of the song for me.

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I never use it, so I decided to test it right now. Tried crossfading different tracks from different sources (local/Qobuz, Qobuz/Qobuz, etc.) and different sampling rates, with 5 secs and 10 secs overlaps, and it didn’t cut off for me :man_shrugging:

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@Urbndwellr Lyrion has a native Mac version, FWIW.

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14

Hmmm…is this no longer true?

Roon will crossfade content when:

  1. Both tracks are the same sample rate and bit depth

  2. Your server has enough time to calculate the crossfade

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No you are right, my mistake. Annoying

Edit: I guess one could resample to the same rate, would that work?

Edit 2: I see where I was confused. It does work for me if the bit depth differs as long as the sample rate is the same. E.g., 24/44.1 to 16/44.1 works. It fails with different sample rates.
This differs from what the help says:

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So, crossfade doesn’t “work just fine.” I understand the OP’s point here…Roon has left some stuff very half baked. Crossfade should not activate when tracks are of different sampling rates. It’s a crappy experience to have it cut off a track.

Further, although this is more of a feature request, crossfade shouldn’t fade consecutive tracks from an album.

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It doesn’t do either of these things.

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Weird… It does on my system. When Crossfade is on and the tracks have different sampling rates it cuts off the track and doesn’t cross fade successfully.

It also cross fades between consecutive tracks on the same album.

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Same here, it doesn’t just not do crossfade, it seems to stop the previous track at the point where crossfade would normally start (like 5 seconds before the regular end)

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Oh gosh, I never noticed that. I will have to pay attention. My recollection is just a standard song to song handoff with no crossfade.