I think that most people replying to this feature request thread (by pointing out that I could just prop a tablet running Roon up somewhere in the room and be done) have completely missed the point of what I’m looking for, and that may well be because our expectations of how things should be done are often informed by the ways we’ve gotten used to doing them. Perhaps those people have a history wherein the only way they’ve routinely played music from a digital collection was via a computer or tablet/phone app interface.
The full Roon interface is the best thing I’ve ever worked with for helping me find the music I’m looking for - or the music I didn’t know I was looking for - or the music I need to hear even though I’d either forgotten about it or never known about it. The way available tracks and albums and artists are woven together in a web of text and links has made me a huge fan of Roon.
BUT. But. Having spent thirteen years living with Squeezeboxes of various generations as basic life infrastructure in most rooms of the house, I’ve really come to miss their strength as a simple, straightforward audio appliance.
They’d sit in among the components of each room’s stereo lashup, a simple box like a CD player, and they’d always show the track name and artist for what was playing. Because they only showed that information, that info was displayed large enough that it could easily be seen across the room, and it was displayed without unnecessary extraneous information or visual clutter. We got used to being able to glance toward the stereo at any moment and see what was playing. Guests got used to the same thing. We got used to being able to point a remote control at that box to pause the music (if a phone call came in or a discussion needed not to be interrupted), or to skip to the next track if someone was excessively annoyed by what was playing.
Since right now we’re still using our faithful Squeezebox devices, except as Roon endpoints - and because when the Roon developers added Squeezebox support they kindly did support relaying remote-control commands back to the Core - part of our accustomed functionality still remains, but if I migrate to dedicated headless RoonReady devices like maybe the microRendu, we’ll go from blind to blind and ineffectual. Because the interface friction of picking up a remote and hitting the pause button is much less than that involved in picking up a tablet or phone, turning it on and unlocking it, switching to the Roon app, and… doing whatever. This seems trivial, but in practice actually isn’t. There’s the delay of performing all these operations, and there’s the way picking up the phone/tablet takes you out of the social space of existing in the room and puts you in that exclusionary private space of staring into the mobile device. I want to spend less, not more, time in that phone-staring posture.
Often the detailed view the full Roon interface presents me with is exactly what I’m looking for, and it helps me follow links to the next piece of music I want to find and add to the queue or playlist I’m crafting. It’s absolutely my favorite interface for putting together the list of things to play, or finding that perfectly apposite thing to play next. It’s way, way better than either of the SlimServer interfaces (player or web page) for that.
Sometimes, though, all that detail and available deep interaction is just a distraction from the simple pursuit of listening to music. I want it all - the full Roon interface exists and I treasure it, but I’d also like to be able to treat a Roon endpoint as a simple audio appliance.
To take the parallel example of how writers work - sometimes you want to use your computer, which is an all-in-one encyclopedia, newspaper, stock ticker, shared scrapbook, party line, text editor and typesetter; sometimes (just as some writers are embracing a purposely dumbed-down modern reinterpretation of the primitive word processors of the 1980s to get away from the temptations and distractions of a general-purpose computer) you want an appliance.
So the appliance I fantasize about having, to restore Squeezebox-like appliancehood to a full Roon setup where the chosen endpoints are dedicated for audio and have no displays or remote controls, would:
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Be capable of associating itself with one particular physical endpoint, regardless of what play groups that endpoint got moved in and out of
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Display just current track info (track name, artist; more sophisticated configurability optional) and two or more of elapsed/remaining/total track time. I don’t particularly care if album art is shown, although some might.
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Have (or be capable of having) an always-on display
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Be capable of receiving simple navigation commands (at a minimum, pause / play / next track / skip to beginning of this track) from a remote control, and applying those controls to whatever play group the associated endpoint is in
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Be capable of being wall-powered (I see no need at all for a battery)
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Have an RJ45 for a wired network interface. I like for permanent infrastructure to be wired, rather than depend on WiFi. Other users may prefer WiFi, so including a WiFi interface (as long as its radio can be turned completely off for those of us who prefer not to use it and prefer not to bathe the audio equipment in extra RF) is optional.
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Be designed to stand on its own, stably, with the display facing out into the room - it shouldn’t be anything purely flat which needs to be leaned against something.
Physically, it could look like a Squeezebox Touch or a Squeezebox 3 (except it’d need zero support for actual playing of audio, and it wouldn’t need a touchscreen) - or the designer could go in another direction (bigger, wider display, several side-by-side displays?) The sky’s the limit.
I know there exist all-in-one players with screens. That’s nice - but I now like the idea that the audio player could be designed and shopped for purely for its sonic prowess, the display / appliance UI portion could be shopped for separately, and it would all work together as a lovely composite device.
If someone made a good example of the device described above, I’d buy at least three or four.
But Roon proper isn’t a hardware company - so what I’m asking is if there’s protocol support such that the device I describe could be made. If there is, the next step is merely for someone to make it!
