Unless Roon can provide a facility to log into the Bauer Radio Limited stations then Iâm going to have to go back to using my old Meridian based multi-room system. That means using my G91A as the âcoreâ of my system and distributing S/PDIF music round the house via co-ax cables. Internet radio then comes from my Apple mac mini attached to the G91A
You have to be in the room with the âcoreâ to change stations or select music. Which is a pain and one of the reasons that I switched to Roon.
Welcome to the walled garden. It seems Bauer want the âdeepâ knowledge of what youâre listening to and when to no doubt market you to death a la Facebook and other enclosed environments. Itâs a shame as I listen to a local Edinburgh station owned by Bauer Media when Iâm getting ready in the morning for local news, weather and most importantly traffic reports. I used a Sonos Roam in the bathroom which Roon happily connected to through Sonos streaming. For now Iâm running the RadioPlayer app on my iPhone and going via Bluetooth which works for my use case but if I wanted a Higher Fidelity experience in another room then it doesnât really work.
I fear much like the removal of headphone sockets on smartphones Bauer will lead and others will follow. I got redirected to the BBC Sounds app the other day when trying to listen to a ârawâ BBC Radio stream.
What might be the answer is an app that you can plug services into (much like the native Sonos app) and they play to a virtual speaker that is a streaming endpoint of http://something_local that Roon can then âlistenâ to. Conceptually similar to Print to PDF, itâs not really a printer - itâs a local file.
Bit of a pain as I liked having internet radio anywhere I had Roon.
Native Sonos does have a Planet Radio service and Alexa can use it as well so you can say âAlexa, play Forth One in the kitchenâ but of course only useful for Sonos endpoints.
Iâm sure that if Sonos, Alexa etc have found solutions then Roon can as well. And as you say, where one company goes their competitors are sure to follow. So soon you will only be able to access the more popular streaming services via an app.
So come on Roon, step up and give us an interface!
Before Roon, I signed up to Planet Rock to listen via a web browser as you receiver fewer ads. But it is really spooky when the radio suddenly says something like âHi Adrian, Wickes in Banbury are offering 10% off stuff todayâ. I prefer to use the Roon interface; you get a few more ads but the system isnât trying to talk to you personally!
Well they have done it. I can no longer access any of the Bauer Media stations. I now get a message âPlayback was interrupted because a track failed to load.â
So that means I can no longer listen to Planet Rock, Scala Radio, Kerrang! Radio or any of the Absolute Radio stations through ROON.
I need a solution to this problem because Iâve now lost ROONâs multi-room capabiIity for my favourite radio stations.
I understand that ROON may be a bit reluctant to start storing personal info to allow an automatic log in to the web site interface Bauer Media now want you to use. But it must be fairly easy to intercept the audio output from the web browser (Safari in my case) and route it into ROON?
Or could ROON be made to look like an output device?
There are long standing feature requests for something like this, for example
Another route for technically minded people may be to catch the URL and add it to your my live radio. The URL should have your personal token/details and so would not be circumventing Bauerâs wish for your info.
⊠and unfortunately it doesnât work after a few hours, as tokens are time limited.
So no solution at this stage for the integration of Bauer stations in RoonâŠ
Iâve scanned through the database and have hidden all the Bauer stations that are no longer available. Some still are, albeit with the warning message. Iâll leave those until they, too, disappear.
I may have missed some, please let me know if you find any that shoud no longer be there.
Letâs hope, but I am pessimistic. Live Radio seems to have low priority and limited resources for its maintenance and development. Some basic features have not been sorted out more than 2 years after the launch (such as being able to stream all existing radio streaming formats) so a heavy modification of the GUI for the management of radio subscriptions sounds unlikely.
OK, so Iâve clearly got no idea what
" Another route for technically minded people may be to catch the URL and add it to your my live radio . The URL should have your personal token/details and so would not be circumventing Bauerâs wish for your info."
actually means.
Which also means that most other people who have paid up for ROON also have no idea either.
Personally, I signed up with a life membership because I thought the multi-room capability and ability to manage CD library and streaming services was brilliant.
So come on guys, its all very well making micro-improvements on the way the search engines work and the way the HMI is displayed, but if we are losing the ability to connect to mainstream internet radio stations then the ROON service is being significantly degraded.
To be fair, ROON used to be able to play Planet Rock, itâs Bauer Mafia that have messed it up by restricting access by imposing log in requirements
But if Sonos can still manage to play Bauer Mafia stations, then it canât be that hard, can it?