Hi I see you’ve asked that question a few times now, I assume it’s somewhat rhetorical but I’ll reply, Roon’s position has not and imho will not change.
Roon are a selfstated unapologetically opinionated company, they have their vision for the product.
As users we can make suggestions but being frank Roon will always follow their own path.
Personally, I think it’s wise to have a fall back alternative, irrespective of the Roon requirement to be online, equipment breaks, drives fail, etc. etc.
Maybe we should spin off the bits of this thread that are more related to alternative music strategies. A thread called “When Your Internet is Down and You Can’t Use Roon” might be more useful than having the protests and the suggestions mixed together.
Roon introduced Roon 2.0 and Roon 1.8 Legacy on September 22, 2022. We’ve all had over 4 months to weigh in on the subject of internet issues and make our thoughts and opinions known. My personal opinion is that it’s time to shut down this thread and move on. It is what it is, like it or not. Figure out how to deal with it.
Agreed. But I’d love to see them engage more in discussions on how best to use Roon to ride out internet outages since that does affect many - even if only occasionally. I, for one, do not want to seek a non-Roon fallback contingency. Ideally, I’d like to find a fallback solution for my ISP/router.
There are only two solutions. Find and use another internet source or find and use an app that doesn’t need internet. I think we have probably covered plenty of options here. And, of course, play CD’s and LP’s.
It is dissappointing that software that used to support local listening is changed to this. I used to use Roon daily but now only once or twice a week is normal and it is hard to recommend it to those seeking software for local file playback.
The point of voting is to give feedback to Roon Labs; they will take the strength of voting into consideration, but ultimately they are the ones who decide direction, not us.
Based on Roon’s comments, I doubt they even see this as an issue to address. Roon has said they’ve received less pushback on this issue than they anticipated.
Personally, I don’t see the point of the voting given Roon’s stance. Might as well chuck this feature request in the bin with folder browsing.
I doubt Roons position will change, voting is futile. Darko has the pertinent quote:
The takeaway from my two-hour phone call with Dulai is that he and his team have already done the maths: that fewer existing users will quit Roon (because of 2.0’s move to an always-on Internet connection) than will join for Arc’s remote streaming functionality or as yet unknown software smarts coming down the pike, enabled by a shift to cloud computing.
Me too, I think this is very disappointing. Roon seems to be moving towards becoming just another streaming service. They used to have a strong USP, that seems to be eroding now.
I suspect it’s driven by economics and the money isn’t in the audiophile niche. Sad fact.
Offline mode and audiophily are independent dimensions. Most of my music is local, but I appreciate access to Qobuz and to integrated search and metadata. In those rare periods I’ve lost internet at any of my 3 locations, I had more to worry about, such as getting service restored, than temporary lack of access to Roon. In any case, all my local music is accessible over DLNA with vendor-supplied phone/tablet apps, so I can still listen to my local collection, if not as conveniently.
To be honest, I think what I miss most on those rare occasions when Roon is not working is the loss of music playback across my various endpoints. Roon has spoiled me with that and using other music playback solutions will never be as simple if even possible.
