Noris,
Thanks for your response. I appreciate what Roon is doing, which I understand is really quite impressive. But I have an enormously complex iTunes playlist that I have developed over many years. Because iTunes allowed me to create folders, subfolders and playlists the way I wanted, and best suited to how I thought of my music, and wanted to listen to music, search for performances and browse my collection, it was perfect for me – clearly not best for others, but perfect for me. Maybe I could spend a years trying to find a way to do something similar, with tags, etc, in Roon, but I have no interest in doing that.
Again, I do like what Roon does do and I would certainly keep it, indeed buy a lifetime membership, if it were only able to also give me back a playlist that I carefully developed over more than 10 years. I decided to do the free trial because Roon advertised that it was able to “import iTunes playlists”. Indeed, in Greg Stratton’s first email to me, he seemed to me, and this was my mistake, to be saying in response to my question that I could use Roon to browse by folder and subfolder as in iTunes. I did not understand what he actually said really entailed. I was very disappointed to read/learn that while I could “import my playlist,” in a sense, I could not do so in way that would enable me to use the playlist in the way I wanted when created it.
Regardless of the reasons for not allowing browsing by folders etc, I think it is misleading to people like me for Roon to advertise, without further explanation or qualification, that an iTunes playlist can be imported into Roon. While I now see that that may be technically true, I suspect that many iTunes users will misinterpret that in the same way I did. It may be obvious to many or most the people interested in Roon, but it will not be obvious to people like me, a 63 year old long time iTunes user who is semi-computer literate at best. It doesn’t matter to me because I am on a free trial. But if I had purchased a year’s subscription, or worse - a lifetime membership, before I understood this, I would be very upset about Roon’s advertising on this point.
In any event, I read that Roon has already “made its decision” on this issue, so maybe it is pointless for me for to say the following. But I will anyway. I know nothing about the technical issues. But I must say that given how impressive and advanced Roon is, it would seem to be a very simple task to add a feature that would simply allow a user to browse the iTunes playlists in the same way they did in iTunes. That information must be on the XML file is some form. If it is not an easy thing to do, then I fully understand why Roon would take the approach it has and would have no issue with Roon for doing so - save for my criticism about the advertising above.
But if it is an easy thing to do, it is my opinion that Roon is making a mistake by not adding such a feature. I read some comments on the message board that attacked some posters who wanted to browse by folder as old fashioned and unwilling to see there is a better way. I hope that is not Roon’s view. Refusing to incorporate a feature that would be easy to incorporate because there is a “better way” would be a mistake because ”the customer is always right.” If Roon enabled me to import my playlist and browse it by folders and subfolder as I can I iTunes, you would have had my check for $500. It is a great, really impressive product. But for the reasons I stated above, just not what I want.
But thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it.