Criticism on direction of Roon

@Mike_O_Neill I guess people have different “needs” however I concur with your view. :+1:t3:

2 Likes

:+1: This. I would use this between home and work. I would even be happy to pay for a second license. But I want to be able to sync my playlists, et al., between two Roon Cores.

I solve my work/car problem with Apple Music which has the same library and playlists (mostly). When I add a new album to one, I add it to the other, via Apple Music and TIDAL.

Good CarPlay playback is crucial for me and Apple Music is good for this. TIDAL, not so much, as I frequently have problems with the TIDAL app during playback. Now that Apple Music is lossless, I’ve stopped using TIDAL in the car. And with wired CarPlay, Apple Music sounds really nice in the car.

I guess there is where the disconnect is. The Number 1 choice of most music listeners is the native app provided by streaming companies. That won’t ever change. I use the Tidal Android and IOS apps for music when not at home and they never have the same experience as using Roon. This work the devs put in is for those of us who want to do Roon when we are not in range of home WiFi. This the most popular feature request. Perhaps this (together with Roon’s other virtues) is what puts it out of reach of the competition!

1 Like

Maybe your situation is not the same as everyone else? Maybe we don’t all have iPod lying around or prefer a more modern UI? And maybe we don’t just want to listen in the car. Some here have two houses (not me) or maybe we want to access Roon from a hotel/rental while on vacation or a business trip. Why shouldn’t I be able to access my Roon collection when I’m working from an office (if I ever do that again)? I’d like a single user interface for accessing music no matter where I am. I would actually settle for an offline mode like Tidal has, but yeah full mobile access would be a great feature. Roon has completely changed my home listening, but for a lot of people, home is not where they do the majority of their listening.

2 Likes

I can understand why people want to have access to their music collection wherever & whenever they want but Roon, as far as I am aware, never suggested that they were likely to offer mobile (or remote) access.
I can also understand why users post feature requests asking for mobile or remote access but really can’t understand why there are continual complaints that the facility hasn’t been provided. There are so many options out there to take a hefty selection of music wherever one is that, in this case, that the awful word “compromise” is required and use could be made of what’s available.
Personally, I would rather Roon developers spend their time making the system more stable & network friendly.

1 Like

Ahem… 2016

2018 roadmap discussion

2 Likes

Crikey, I was just born then :joy: :roll_eyes:

1 Like

Mobile is most definitely still on the roadmap. I believe it has been the most requested feature.

1 Like

Hell, I’ll have to start commuting again…:grin:

near 200 Votes and clear statements but not everyone’s priority.

“Is on the Roadmap” is from 2015!

6 Likes

Most people are coming at this from the technical details angle, whereas you’re coming at it from the I don’t care how it does it but this is what I was sold angle - which is the right angle. So based on that, I actually agree with what you say 100%. Somewhere in one of these threads I’ve actually taken a screenshot of that promise of turning into an album cover to make the point to someone - it’s pretty obvious when you see it.

It is clear too, that Roon is not closely aligned to customer feedback, if they were some of the common requests would have been prioritised first. That said, I do understand there is a primary market here that needs hardware device integration in various amplifiers - and losing that would not be a good thing. However that should just be ‘operational’ by now, not really roadmap stuff at all.

I’m pretty darn sure, I was streaming music from Plex a very long time before 2017 BTW.

Regarding performance of the server, I’ve noticed this too. And one thing I can say, is its not the hardware you’re running, it’s either the architecture or some poorly written code in Roon. I’m running Dual Xeon CPU’s on linux, fast enterprise SSD’s and 96G Ram on my Roon machine - search is slow as hell nowadays and it wasn’t always like that. It also uses a ton of ram for what it does. Compare that to Plex’s fairly instant search, very low ram usage and it’s pointed at the same music but also does video, tidal, tv and streaming. We should really find some way to get all the common requests together and request them rather that disagreeing with each other on these forums though, it just waters down good ideas.

1 Like

I had the same setup, for awhile. On the subject of Xeons and Roon, from the CTO -

1 Like

ROON on the roadmap has been going on so long that I’m surprised Chris Rea hasn’t written a song about it……
Fortunately like others I’m happy with an iPod.

1 Like

Thanks for the link. That’s quite disappointing that Roon are limiting many things to a single core, nevertheless that’s actually not the performance issue I’m noticing - I don’t have any issues with playback, my issues are mainly with search performance. And again, this works like a dream in Plex, so I know it’s possible. About the only thing I could think of doing to make this better is match whatever Roon’s database record size is to the record size on the disk. I could also upgrade to PCIe based flash storage instead of SATA connected, however I know that’s only working around poor architecture at this point.

PS (Used bold as a highlighter - that’s not meant to be equivalent to shouting or anything, please don’t be offended it is not intended in that way).

1 Like

I’ve noticed four categories of performance problems.

  1. When the amount of RAM used is a significant majority of the RAM available, computers tend to have issues. Right now Roon Server is using 8x the RAM of the next largest service running, but it’s still less than half the RAM the machine has, so things are copacetic. But when it gets to be 90% of the RAM, things are less happy.

  2. Why does it use that much RAM? The logs tend to show some network issue when that happens. Typically some server that isn’t responding. Why that leads to ever-increasing RAM usage is a puzzle. Is there an infinite recursion problem?

  3. Even when the RAM usage is moderate, there are network failures. For instance, I see a number of errors in a Windows machine about DNS failing to resolve “push.roonlabs.com”. What’s going on there?

  4. When a local connection to an endpoint fails, Roon seems to go into a storm of re-pinging and re-connecting all the endpoints (I have about a dozen). This involves multiple calls back to Roon servers in the cloud as each endpoint connection is made, some of which sometimes fail. For some reason, that flurry of re-verifying all the endpoints seems to cause anything currently playing over Internet Radio to stop, as if the user had pressed the stop button.

3 Likes

What about competitors then? I’ve used and still have LMS on RPI. I like this solution as more portable option (both Core and endpoint in a small box). But generally there is no mobile option as I know… bluos? I guess the same and it’s strictly related to NAD hardware so only stationary usage. Audirvana?

1 Like

This is the same for me. I’ve practically given up on using Search at all. Finding albums going through my list is fast enough but some searches take 45-60 seconds before anything appears. I’m using local files + Qobuz with ~6K albums total.

1 Like

What surprises me in this thread is seeing the number of users who have a similar experience with search and the many who complain about high RAM usage.

Clearly these are a real issues that need addressing. The curious thing is that many users don’t have these issues at all.

What are the variables? Roon Core device, RAM, OS all appear to be factors. In my case RAM usage has never gone above 4 GB on a 16 GB device. Searches are rarely slow. The number of users reporting these issues with Core machines that far exceed recommended specifications is alarming. If I had these issues I’d look for an alternative.

I agree I am old , the iPod is still working fine after 12 (?) years so why not put it to use. I don’t use its interface , its the interface on the radio set in my car , which TBH is worse than the iPod.

I was simple expressing MY opinion, I am retired (as I suspect are many Roon users going by the age survey). That means I am out and about probably more than if I was working. We are prone to doing “short breaks” and camping so my musical needs are not 100% in the house.

That said I never feel the urge to search my 27 box sets of Beethoven Sonatas under canvas.

. As I mentioned my JRiver library is current and an up to date copy of the Roon library and I have never felt the need to access it from afar even when I was working . I just carry enough on my Phone to keep me happy.

Each to his own , the forum is about opinions after all , that’s mine !! :sunglasses:

5 Likes

Watch it we’ll set the Zimmer Frame army loose on you :smiling_imp: :smiling_imp:

1 Like