Can we have a Manual please? [User Guide Is Live!]

My two cents :blush:

Do not make the same mistake as Jriver. They have a great product and a great support forum , but no manual.

The result is that the learning curve with each release becomes steeper for new users. They have to find out which FAQ, post etc. applies to which version of the soft.

Newbie questions are brushed off by the old gang and that is commercially not smart.

When you look at support sites from IT-companies as Oracle, MS, Cisco etc they always make a clear distinction between community support which is less formal and the very formal sections with manuals and questions and answers.

Both manuals and questions and answers are always tied to release numbers. If a company has that discipline from start, it is fairly easy to review questions and answers for their validity with each release.

I do realise that their is a cost issue :slight_smile:

The Knowledge Base is going to be the formal online manual and it will be updated as new versions are released. The work to fill it out with a lot of the material in the existing FAQs or on the forum is proceeding apace.

Ideas or comments about how the KB is looking, changes that should be made, why Roon should be doing something else etc., are all welcome.

Getting every last aspect of the app documented is a big task, and keeping it all up to date is work too, but we’re working on it!

We are putting the information in our knowledge base. This is where structured information about Roon will live. We scrubbed virtually every page for out-of-date information prior to the release of 1.2. It is a lot of work, but we agree, this is important.

Our documentation on audio-related topics is a lot fuller than it was a short time ago, with coverage of topics like sound quality, understanding our settings screens, each of our supported output technologies and platforms, and a deeper explanation of the signal path.

We released documentation for Internet Radio, Linux Installation, and RoonBridge along with those features when 1.2 went live last night, too.

The lowest-friction time to write documentation for something is right when that thing is being worked on. As we give love to the various functional areas of Roon over the coming months, expect their documentation to get stronger along with them.

Great to hear that the knowledge base will evolve.
Compared to ‘other companies’, you have the advantage that there should be only two releases at one time active and supported.

It’s being done. The Knowledge Base is growing all the time. Suggestions about things that are missing which should be included are most welcome.

It’s coming soon…but not soon enough…

I couldn’t agree with you more. Little pop-ups and FAQs do not come close to replacing a proper user manual. Contrary to popular belief not everything in this software is intuitive. Roon is not the only audio program guilty of this. I use JRiver as well and their documentation is just as shoddy. I find this to be really lazy. We’re paying for this software and paying customers deserve a proper user manual.

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I agree. I believe, though, that Roon are in the process of writing a manual which should be out soon. I’m not sure where I got this information but I believe it was from Roon in another thread.

There’s a link to the Roon User Guide on the opening page of the KB. It’s just a placeholder at the moment, but as has been said many times, the user guide/manual is being worked on.

I hope the manual can be selected from within the app and downloadable in pdf format?
Also do you have an idea when this will be available?

Oh and why is there no link anywhere within the app itself to the knowledge base webpages?

I don’t work for Roon Labs, and therefore I can’t speak for them.

And there’s long been a link in the app itself to a landing page that fronts the KB…

I hope it will come sooner than later… This has been requested by many members for months now…
Clicking “Roon help” ( ⌘?) brings you to the forum…not to the knowledge base.

The main hamburger menu has a “Support” link, which brings up this:

Clicking on the FAQ link takes you to the Knowledge Base landing page…

Support and then FAQ gets you to the knowledge base. Not entirely intuitive but gets you there.

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Thanks!
Strange choice to put it there… I hope they put the manual in the “help” dropdown menu as most software does

Comparing JRiver to Roon is a reach. Roon is a pretty straight-forward GUI app. JRiver on the other hand is far more complicated. I argued your point with JimH over at JRiver more than once.

A knowledge base update works for me, especially for new releases.

I suggest you read my post again. I wasn’t comparing the JRiver app to Roon. I said that JRIver’s user documentation was just as shoddy as Roon’s.

My point was one really needs documentation (JRiver) and Roon not as much so. Sorry if I wasn’t clear in my explanation.

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