Afraid to commit to Roon - But I did for a year :-)

I own licenses for JRiver, Audirvana, Amarra, and Roon. I’ve been a Roon lifetime subscriber since July 2015. I am pretty techie, and have compared all manners of software and setups.

Things Roon is great at:
1- Plays both local files and streaming in one platform
2- Supports all music formats you might have in your local repository
3- Connectivity is simple and simply works
4- It is robust, stable, always works, and has a strong support team

Things Roon is unique at:
A- Provides incredible metadata depth to your files
B- Easily find music in streaming services (I subscribe to both TIDAL and Qobuz)
C- Easily match music from streaming service - eg find your local album in streaming services and/or find an album in one service from an album in the other
D- Album versioning is fantastic - you can group together all versions of an album under one primary album - eg I have many versions of Aretha’s “I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You”, and they are all under my primary version (this includes both local and streaming versions, and there’s no difference between their treatment other than the indication it is on TIDAL or Qobuz)
E- Amazing integration of many endpoints into one interface - you can play different things to different systems in your house all at the same time - and supports RoonReady, USB, SONOS, Airplay, ChromecastAudio, Squeezebox, and Meridian’s old SOOLOOS protocol.
F- RoonReady works great and brings all DAC controls back to the Roon interface
G- Runs on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) and includes a version of a Linux all-in install (Roon Rock) that you can set up in an inexpensive NUC and be done with for years on end
H- iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, and Windows interfaces of impecable quality
I- Roon Radio is actually fantastic

I don’t know of any software that is as all-encompassing and robust for music playing.

PS: Having said all of the above, there are two major bugs I am experiencing (TIDAL login failure and iOS app instability - for a long time now) and as such I have to say I am on the fence on recommending Roon.

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You takin no money to the grave honey.

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How is that?

Do you mean how well does UPnP work? I am actually not 100% sure it supports UPnP streaming since I have never used it, nor have I used the SOOLOOS protocol (but a friend does since he has Meridian speakers).

Roon does not support UPnP/DLNA (and never will).

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I think there are 3rd party bridging devices that do it by pretending to me squeezeboxes on one interface and then sending to upnp.
But I can’t remember the details, getting old.
But a search of the forum brings

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I bet there’s an RPI solution for this which would cost you $50.

We think it is. I articulated why here, almost 5 years ago:

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Someone asked about why some trials are 14 days and others are 30 days. Roon’s current trial offer is 14 days. I ended up with 30 after because I canceled when their Kindle control application kept crashing, making it impossible for me to use the program. Roon wrote me saying they knew about the problem and would have a updated fix available in a few days. They offered to extend my trial to 30 days because of that. I took advantage of that but still ended up deciding Roon wasn’t for me. I explained my reasons for that in a different post.

Quite apart from the way that Roon integrates my locally stored albums (Synology NAS) and albums streamed from Tidal into a seamless music library and the fact that it offers a UI that is much better than anything else I have used, here are a couple of additional features that make it invaluable for me.

I have 4 music streaming devices in my house (each from a different manufacturer) that are used to play music in different locations. Prior to taking Roon on board, I had to use 4 different control ‘apps’ to play music: Linn Kazoo app (Windows or IOS) , Naim Audio app (Android or IOS), Tidal app and Marantz app. This presents a number of problems. The Marantz app is ancient, no longer supported and a real pain to use. The Linn and Naim apps are ok, but it is a real pain having to swap them in and out.

I no longer use any of the above control apps. I have the Roon control app installed on my iPad AIr and each of my Windows 10 devices, and now use Roon to control each of my streaming devices. This has a number of benefits. Roon recognizes that both my Linn Klimax DS/1 streamer and Mytec Brooklyn+ DAC can play hi-res files up to 24bit/192 MHz and so passes hi-res files straight through to these devices. It is aware that my Marantz NA7004/Chromecast Audio set up has limited hi-res capability, and is also aware that my Mytek Brooklyn DAC supports DSD files and MQA whereas my other devices do not.

I no longer have to wonder whether or not the files I play are compatible with any of my devices. I simply select the highest resolution files from my music library and if that file is not compatible then Roon automatically transcodes the file into the highest possible resolution PCM files that each device supports. Similarly, it transcodes on the fly DSD files I have into the highest possible PCM files that each of my non-DSD devices supports, but feeds DSD files directly to my DSD compatible Mytek DAC. Finally it performs the first MQA unfold for each of my devices that do not support MQA, but feeds MQA unfolded to my Mytek DAC which is able to perform the full software/hardware unfold.

The whole process is seamless, and a joy to use.

Then of course there is Roon Radio which works wonderfully well for me, and has been invaluable in the new music discovery process. Roon Radio appears to divide opinions and have its detractors, but then of course you can choose not to use it if you don’t like it.

I really would hate to be without Roon nowadays. Its absence would greatly reduce my music listening experience and enjoyment.

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Yes, Roon Radio is fantastic, much more so than before after the Valence engine was released. I cannot be without Roon in my main system, it would suck.

A few more useful Roon uses:
1- When I am on my home computers (mac pro or macbook) I can always run Roon and play to whatever DAC I have connected to them. I don’t have to run another app.
2- Same goes for iOS devices - I can run the Roon app and play anything to their DACs (external such as Dragonfly or Chord Mojo) or internal in my iPad. The external devices will work in hi-res - even MQA rendering if you care - and Roon can always do the first MQA unfold for you anyway to any DAC anyway.
3- The fact that the Roon app is available on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac means I can control any music to any endpoint anywhere in the house with any device I have closeby

Software that is this versatile, that allows you to play music seamlessly, consistently, from any source (local or streaming), transparently and without a glitch is well worth the asking price IMHO.

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I only can lineup to this comment. Since I started using Roon (txs) the need of purchasing CDs is gone, my CD player is on sale and a lot of the records, which has been ripped on my hard disk is rediscovered day by day

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Thanks Chris. :+1:

@danny

Excellent, more reading over my Easter break. :grinning:

I read that many people here like Roon for it’s multi- end point ability and seamless integration with their many devices. I think that’s great. However, I’d also suggest that there are uPnP for DLNA apps that can do this for under $10.

I just thought I’d point this out as it’s highly possibly that happy Roon users have not looked at viable alternatives for some while.

Sure, you’d not get the UI and a host of other features found to be useful, but merely for streaming to various end points, that’s easily achieved by single apps these days.

Cheers.

I spent a lot of time on UPnP/DLNA before I found Roon. Nothing even approached Roon in usability, reliability, ability to handle gapless play across devices. Besides Roon’s much better play control, it also gives me the right view of my collection in terms of artists, albums, … rather than some buggy mishmash of folders and “albums” that requires endless folder/filename structure and ID3 curation to be usable. My time is worth a lot more than the savings for those apps over Roon.

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UPNP/DLNA can be brutal. RAAT is at a different level of reliability and control.

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I’m not knocking Roon Fernando, just suggesting there are alternatives at a fraction of the cost as it seems from this thread, some are unaware of the current selection of apps.

I can confirm that there are apps that are not buggy at all. However, yup, you’d need to browse via folders (for some this is good, others not so), yet search functions alleviate that issue. You could then browse by genre, artist and so on. There is no overcoming though, that you’d need to tag all your albums and ensure you provide all the necessary metadata you deem important.

Whether that’s time well spent or not, I’d suggest is up to the individual. For me, I tag as a matter of course in the same format & ensure album art is included. I’ve been doing this for years. And I’ve got roughly 5000 albums in my local library.

As a Roon user, I do this simply as one would back up their digital files. Whether it’s necessary or not is up to the individual. I think it’s future proofing. (But, that’s just me).

Cheers. :smiley:

I didn’t say you were knocking Roon. As for non-buggy UPnP/DLNA apps, I’m very doubtful because those protocols are fundamentally broken for serious music playing. I looked closely at the protocols themselves as I was trying to debug different setups (servers, clients, control points) before I moved to Roon, and I’ve never seen such mess, driven by short-term product concerns rather than from sound protocol and API design. The fundamental reason Roon works so well for many of us is that they dropped that junk — which I fortunately forgot since — into the trashcan and designed a simple, robust alternative for sending high-quality audio streams around a LAN.

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YES! I bought a Pro-Ject Expression 10 (it might be an Evolution 10). It cost a fortune for a record player!

BUT it was set up in situ before I committed to buying it. My husband has a vast collection of vinyl. I asked him to choose a record he really liked and that would show him the quality or not of the deck. After a few minutes I saw his eyes dampen and he was in his own world. I knew I had not made a mistake,

We have spent, mainly me, on vinyl over the last 3 or more years. I do find it annoying that some are very clean and others are not. I buy 180g or 200g when I can but due to my limits I avoid albums that are double but with only 2-3 tracks a side. The sound difference is negligible and is not worth the pain to me of changing sides or records so quickly.