Alternatives to Roon on the go

#24

I bought a high Rez Sony player for that purpose, but admittedly I spend a lot of time on the road. Still, there are several models in different price ranges, and I find the solution optimal to save battery elsewhere. It also simplifies transferring without having to convert.

While I already had a good headset, I did buy the aforementioned Sony WH1000XM3: it’s not too pricy - when compared to good headsets - and it’s the best in the market as far as I’m concerned when it comes to managing noise cancelling and maintaining a good sound. I use it exclusively in the plane, and it’s a godsend (especially is your sitting next to a few babies).

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#25

I could not have said it any any better. The Sony WH1000XM is truly an outstanding headphone and unbeatable for the price.

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#26

I bought the in ear version wf-1000xm3 and they are very good indeed on my commute on the London underground. Personally if you are commuting I don’t think buying a high end DAP is worth investing in as the environmental noise even with noise cancelling overides the improvements.

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#27

Bose QC25 or the older QC15 are excellent, where was the bum review. I have the Sennheiser 550 too both Bose sound better

Kills airplane noise nearly 100%

I use ipad mini 128, audioquest Red , perfect the Onkyo HD app handles the hi res flac files

#28

I use Roon via VPN and if connection is not a bad one thats OK and fine with me.
But usually for travel - Astell Kern SP1000M with tidal offline and my choice of IEMs - Andromedas or KSE1200 Shure.

#29

I’ve described my Roon-on-the-go solutions in detail elsewhere on the community and have been very satisfied with this approach for now. Assuming Roon keeps pace with macOS Catalina and can watch the new Music folder (rather than the former iTunes folder—has anyone tried this yet?), this approach should continue to work:

#30

Hi Gigatoaster
If you want to listen HiRes Music on the go ( flac files ) I will recommend - VOX ( Coppertino ). You don’t have use data space on your Iphone - you simply upload your wished music to your voxcloud ( unlimited space ). Check out their homepage here :

https://vox.rocks/

Kind regards from Denmark
Lasse

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#31

Yep.

I deleted iTunes folder and am re-organizing my folder structure and cleaning up file-naming and tagging. I put everything that’s done in a new folder, have pointed the new “Music” app as well as Swinsian and Roon all to that same folder.

I do not allow either Swinsian nor “Music” to change anything to my folder: organizing folder structure is off and especially for “Music” everything concerning “Apple Music”, “iTunes Match” and music in the cloud or iCloud is off, I had problems with that mess before in iTunes.

I was only using iTunes for some tag-organising since I had Roon, now I do that with Swinsian which also has a column browser. The “Music” app I don’t use anymore (no column browser) but I pointed it to my music folder anyway so I can sync music to IOS devices via the Finder.

Ripping or converting FLAC I do with XLD, tagging with Yate.
Someone recommended me Yate earlier this week and I must say it’s awesome: so easy and uncomplicated while so much can be automated.
Saves me weeks of time I think.

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#32

For Vox, I couldn’t find a clear page with their pricing on their website.

#33

$4.99 per month.

#34

Really helpful to hear all this, thanks very much. (I didn’t realize Apple’s new Music app in Catalina loses column browsing, that’s a shame. Good to know about Swinsian as an alternative.)

#35

Roon on the go…I just upped my Verizon Wireless data plan for this month to 75GB. My wife and I are away from home and I’m streaming Tidal and Qobuz via Roon through Dell laptop and Dragonfly Cobalt to Sony headphones.

#36

My music is managed by ROCK on my NUC. I can connect to its file sharing with the iOS Apps EverMusic and MusicStreamer. Both Apps allow me to download music for offline listening. They also read embedded meta data and let me browse artists, albums, genres etc.

EverMusic has the nicer interface and feels more natural to me for music navigation. But MusicStreamer is way faster reading and indexing my huge library. EverMusic took weeks in my configuration and MusicStreamer has scanned my 5000 albums in less than 20 minutes.

Well’ those Apps are not a good solution if your files are not tagged very well.

#37

I really wanted to like VOX but it’s a complete no go to sync or transfer to their cloud without a Mac - or at least it was for the year or so I kept an eye on this, and this was until a couple of months ago. Windows just not supported to any workable degree at all. Shame - as the interface is gorgeous :grin:

#38

There are plenty of apps that will play FLAC and other hi-res files on an iPhone or Android. Some better than others (FWIW, my vote goes to the Onkyo app in terms of sound quality - and I have tried many, believe me - your mileage may vary).

However, I haven’t yet stumbled across a ‘similar enough to Roon’ mobile solution that will allow incorporation of metadata beyond album art. For me this is where the value of Roon hits the road. I’m meaning album notes, credits etc. Anyone have any success with this?

I have tried both Plex and Emby with this. Both do some things, but ultimately it’s disappointing. You can add free text in the album overviews section in Plex, so I experimented with adding web links in this space to Last fm and Music Brainz webpages, and also for the Qobuz web app page for the albums. Good idea, but the hyperlinks (though a different colour) didn’t work! Troubleshooting didn’t solve it, so I have posted on the Plex forums to see if this can be resolved. Also, Plex can’t - from my experience - sync files any greater than 320 Kbps to mobile devices, and transcodes hi-res files down accordingly. Bummer.

Then with Emby - again you can add whatever you like in the free text areas, and they already have custom links to metadata sites. However, the links and free text aren’t visible in the mobile apps. I did seek clarification in their forums, but it appears they removed the free text and links from their mobile apps for music libraries - apparently people were complaining that scrolling down past this was irritating - they just wanted to click immediately and listen! You can sync hi-res files in their original quality to mobile devices (whereas Plex couldn’t), but I found the end results disappointing. Perhaps to do with the quality of their player. To be fair, they aren’t catering for anal audiophiles.

I appreciate of course that with the mobile Tidal and Qobuz apps there is a certain amount of metadata, but it’s not the same (and in Qobuz’ case, it’s presented so unattractively it’s fairly off-putting, IMO).

I get too that you can of course just launch a web browser and search for as much metadata as you like while listening, but it’s not the same.

So, any experience of hi-res mobile apps (in my case, iOS) that can handle metadata? Of course, being able to access Roon remotely would obviate the need for all of this, but clearly this ain’t happening yet. I have read up on ZeroTier for use remotely with Roon, but the consensus seems to be it doesn’t play nice with iOS.

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#39

Plex added the same level of artist album info that Roon a couple of months ago. In fact Plex offers far more artist info than Roon does. When Musicbrainz has no info on an artist, Plex uses other sources to fill in. Works very well. Doesn’t have the in text hyperlinks that Roon offers which is excellent for discovery. Plex also syncs hi-res files with no problem but also offers the ability to transcode to lower bitrates (right down to the per track/album level) to save space which is fantastic in my opinion.

I have begun to use Plex at home over Roon more often recently, simply because I know I can launch it and get music playing more quickly and more reliably than with Roon.

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#40

I have SubSonic installed on my NAS and pointing it to the same music-folders as my Roon Rock. With the Dsub app on my android phone I have access to my music library from anywhere. Works fine!

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#41

Well. I never talked about Android and I never talked about NAS. I was looking for an iOS app. But thanks for your comment!

I don’t know why but every time I ask something someone comes with “I have a NAS”. It’s like 10 years ago when you were going to a friend’s place that had a Nespresso machine and when you knock the first thing you hear is “hello you want a Coffee? I have a Nespresso machine”.

I am sure we are plenty here doing the same with Roon or our music haha.

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#42

Thanks!

Without wanting to derail this thread, it is indeed about workable alternatives to Roon on the go, so I am okay with again mentioning Plex.

Sounds like your mileage with Plex is considerably better than mine! I have tried several times to sync hi-res files to iOS and each time they covert to a particularly shrill and in your face version of 320. Have of course double checked all settings on both server and app to no avail. Posting in their forums for assistance has been a complete non-starter, no responses from mods, devs or indeed anybody. Contrast to Emby who always reply - couple of days at least, but still.

Shame as I do agree that Plex is otherwise the best Roon alternative, especially with Tidal integration and of course the whole gamut of media. I was hesitant at first about letting Plex metadata loose on my content, but like you I actually found it impressive.

Now, if only we could get Roon on the go…

#43

For those using Plex for music on the go and using iOS, you should check out the Prism app. You can download your FLACs locally from your Plex library and there is no transcoding. It also has a much nicer interface than the native Plex app. It only costs $5.

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