In a recent Innovation and Entrepreneurship class, we discussed “Customer pain points”—those areas of difficulty or frustration users encounter with a product or service, whether related to usability, customer service, pricing, or other aspects of the user experience. As a Roon user myself, I ran into my own pain point when I couldn’t connect to the Roon server just before class. I used Roon as an example of a pain point from a usability/stability perspective, and my tutor thought it was a great example, even referencing it later in the lecture.
Although I only had a general understanding of how Roon operates, my tutor’s enthusiasm inspired me to dig deeper, and I decided to explore Roon’s pain points further for an upcoming class presentation. The Roon Forum clearly reflects many users’ challenges, with common issues including slow or laggy connections, app crashes, unexpected shutdowns, error messages, system unavailability, glitches, and audio dropouts.
In Roon’s Knowledge Base, I found the following statement: “We give the same advice for users of Roon as we do to manufacturers building RAAT-based products: under-specced systems lead to bad user experiences; hardware is cheaper than ever and getting cheaper all the time; don’t over-economize if you want the best result.”
So, I wanted to ask the community: Do most of the issues Roon users experience stem from the user’s end, Roon-to-endpoint protocols, or possibly something else entirely?
There will be a flood of answers probably mostly disagreeing …
in my opinion several biggies that have raised their ugly heads
Underspec core PC, eg find an old laptop (out dated and no longer used) in a cupboard and load Roon on it. It probably has an OLD processor, 4 or 8 Gb RAM and an HDD C drive - a recipe for sluggishness .
Load Roon Server on an underspec NAS , some NAS are great as long as they meet minimum Roon spec , many are old Celeron designs with 4Gb RAM
Try to run Roon Core - Router on Wi Fi. Wi Fi can work but interference is the hidden enemy. The Sever->Router connection MUST be ethernet , even i end points are Wi Fi.
Solution
Read the knowledge base on Network Best Practice and Minimum Requirements for Roon before you start
the basic take out
Roon requires a SSD for the system disc
Roon like lots of RAM 8 or better 16 Gb
Roon Server to Router MUST be ethernet
Roon is a complex situation that requires about 10 things to work perfectly in series. If the probability is 99 percent that any of them are working, the probability that all of them are working is only 90 percent.
It’s a little bit like Boeing trying to launch Starliner.
I read about a 350k user base somewhere. And maybe no 2 systems are alike in terms of gear, structure, library, remote devices and the way they are used.
Not to forget the number of different hardware partners. How many brands offer products being certified by roon, 200+?
You feel that the software is complex when using its sophisticated options others do not offer, it is a great and versatile ecosystem doing complex multiroom jobs in a home and creating a music database at the same time. Given all aspects of the aforementioned complexity, roonlabs team is doing a fantastic job with keeping it running. A certain number of pain points are to be expected and I hope we can all contribute to solving as many as possible in future!
There’s no doubt about Roon’s superiority over other solutions; I’d even say Roon has no real competition. Your insights have been fascinating, and the key takeaway seems clear: Roon’s performance depends heavily on user-side hardware and network quality, with many issues arising from setups that don’t meet recommended specifications. I believe the Roon team is doing well in managing these challenges, and it’s encouraging to see a shared commitment to continuous improvement.
Would it be fair to suggest that Roon could place a stronger emphasis—through social media posts and other channels—on the importance of adequate equipment to ensure optimal performance? Perhaps such messaging could address the user pain points I raised in the opening post, helping users better understand the role of their setup in achieving the best Roon experience.
That seems likely: I would imagine that such information is proprietary… and growing.
So - if in any one year - even 100 people (roughly one in every three days) doesn’t immediately find an answer (likely for the reasons you and Mike state… try and calculate the number of possible combinations of hard- and software as well as configurations and operating environments etc) the figure is closer to 0.003%!
Couldn’t agree more. There seems to have been an even stronger presence of tech support staff, moderators as well as knowledgeable users in recent week as well. For which, many thanks!
Is that still a valid case for such a seminar on pain points? It might be a better example of a significant success, @darius_novak .
I’ve read about the issues in the forum but that is not from the majority of users that don’t feel the need to post about how well Roon does work.
Roon works very well with a lot of different equipment. But it is a Network beast (as I’ve heard it called). Some issues are related to trying Roon with equipment on hand that is not up to minimum specs, or internal Networks that works great for everything else except for Roon. There have been issues related to Roon updates for some setups but I’ve never experienced any problems.
The only problem I’ve encountered was with my internal Network. Going from Wi-Fi to having our old home wired for Ethernet resolved the issues we’ve had.
Perhaps we’re just lucky that Roon has worked for 5+ years without any problems, but more than likely it is because we had or selected equipment that was up to or over minimum requirements and we were willing to modify our internal Network to work with Roon.
I agree that Roon is indeed a success, and that most user issues likely stem from inadequate equipment setups. To add to this, I thought my setup was quite adequate - Roon Core on 2023 Mac with an M3 Pro chip and 16GB of RAM - yet I still couldn’t connect to the server from ARC on the university’s excellent wifi. And just now, I went out for 30 minutes, and once again, ARC couldn’t connect to the Roon server - I could only access the music downloaded directly onto ARC.
Just to clarify, our tutors encourage us to draw on real-life examples, so we can talk from experience rather than fantasize. That’s the only reason I used Roon as an example; I’ve experienced a pain point with the service right before class. My goal was never to portray Roon in a negative light, and I genuinely appreciate the team’s hard work. Roon has a lot going for it, and I see firsthand how much the team gets right. I’m really enjoying hearing everyone’s insights and learning directly from the community. Please keep the ideas coming - this discussion is truly fascinating!
The problem is merely that roon´s demand of computing and networking resources heavily depends on the user´s library size and structure. Is it not really predictable which resources you would actually need to make roon run smoothly even if you know the number of tracks and albums. There were numerous discussions which factors - such as having a lot of unidentified albums or multi-artist boxsets locally - might eat up computing or networking resources overproportionally.
There are very general minimum specs and the recommendation to not run libraries larger than 100,000 on a machine as powerful as a Nucleus or Nucleus One. One user might easily run a 150,000 track library on that one while others encounter minor signs of sluggishness at 75k.
My guess it that roon is so multi-dimensional in the way it is linking references between tracks and albums and offers such an enormous amount of convenient browsing methods that it eats up computing and networking power like no other music software.
All of these questions are why you get a free 14 day trial. If it doesn’t work for you, you can fix whatever the issue is or move on to some other music player program. That seems to me the best way to give potential new customers a fair way to give Roon a try.
Your university network will have some form of enterprise controls on it, however transparent it might seem.
ARC relies on port forwarding that might well fall foul of network rules. ARC often doesn’t work or works partially when on business networks.
This is quite interesting. I will say Roon does need initiative from the user to get proper hardware in order to perfectly work. But prime example Arc, with tailscale integration it can work but at times doesn’t. It could be cellular connection or something within the system but you never know.
I am in the user experience field so you rarely want to blame a user unless they are using old hardware or not taking steps to evaluate it. But when you have proper hardware it can work. But I will say Roon is for an advanced listener, an average one just wants to click play.
I’ve always thought Roon is a little too complex for an “average” listener. It also seems to require a fair degree of computer and network knowledge. I don’t think I would ever recommend Roon to a friend or relative because I would not want to be blamed for bringing the added stress to their lives.
Apple Music, on the other hand, just works great, all the time, and is easy to use.
I have recommended Roon to friends and family but they were mostly happy with whatever simple streaming method they already used. Smart Phone with a bluetooth speaker. They weren’t ready or willing to tackle putting together a home system.
I bought my cousin, who built my high end desktops, a year subscription for Christmas one year. He did use it but he was already attached to Plex something or other and that was good enough for him. Wasn’t interested in spending money to keep it up.
I spent years, starting with 8 track tape , looking for the best solution for a nice home system. That always interested me more than just listening to music. Finding Roon to replace loading discs was perfect. The streaming and discovery was a great addition for me.
I think Roon is primarily for audiophiles/equipment enthusiasts. However, could this change with the recent Harman acquisition? While Samsung is already active in the automotive industry, some believe the acquisition of Roon could align with Samsung’s plans to expand its in-car entertainment offerings. If Roon becomes integrated as an in-car entertainment interface, it could significantly boost the brand’s global visibility and shift its focus away from being solely for audiophiles and equipment enthusiasts.
I feel like Roon just makes sense to use music wise. Apple Music is cluttered and pushes you more to playlist rather than Roon presenting Albums and playlists.
Or worse, the dreaded friends and family discount (read free and immediate) tech support. Constantly. With zero interest in learning. Like, worse than with the printer set up nightmares of olde.
Stranger or barest acquaintance? “Roon is freaking fantastic! Try it! RTFM, follow the recommendations and enjoy.”
Anybody with my cell number that would be overly awkward to ignore? “Rune what? Is that a Druid thing? Oh, ROON. Never heard of it. Have you tried Spotify?”
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, looking for the best solution for a nice home system. That always interested me more than just listening to music. Finding Roon to replace loading discs was perfect. The streaming and discovery was a great addition for me.