Although I wasn’t asked for it, but anyway… More than a year for this one and more than 2 years on this one.
1 Like
Danny, don’t mean to pile on but my experience mirrors exactly what @Matt_Simpson describes. A bug related to Roon Radio and mult-part works which I raised years ago got some initial interest, only to sit there untouched and it’s still present in 1.8 (a fact that I reported back to your team with no acknowledgement so far). It’s sad as I really love Roon, but the lack of interest in polishing the existing functionality does leave a bit of a bitter taste.
1 Like
We’ve always designed the product we want, not the product we are asked for.
No UPnP and no file browser are examples of that – “everyone” asked, we told them no. Even if it may be apocryphal, Henry Ford’s quote about the faster horse is what we always believed.
That said, we do listen a lot, but we use that knowledge as feedback, not as instruction.
It was fixed but it was not a super high priority fix, nor was it a big complaint.
I’m not turning this into an “address everyone’s bug reports” thread, but the linking of compositions is a tricky issue. There may be a bug, there also may be limits in what the data design can do. It’s unclear, and this unfortunately has been low on the priority list because there are bigger fish to fry.
1.8 is mostly about polishing existing functionality in the area of UI. For example, the #1 request in the area of UI has been portrait mode tablets and extending the functionality of the phone UI to be a closer match to desktop/tablet. It took years because we had to decide when we were going to bite the bullet and spend a year doing it.
10 Likes
And it’s not just improving existing functionality, it’s often fixing breaks they introduced to the software.
I completely understand punting obscure bugs and never fixing them, but not fixing bugs Roon introduced gives the appearance that quality is not a high priority, making new features is.
but you guys broke our bookmarks and focus queries, tagging and shuffle in this release while neutering a lot of existing functionality by making regularly accessed UI elements 3-4 clicks/taps deeper in some places.
I like the new UI theme, I don’t appreciate that all of the functionality I use on a regular basis got worse.
I’m repeating this, but if you’re going to bury UI to add and remove tags, consulting with user groups to identify how much they use the feature might avoid burying it to the point its now a pain.
I expect Roon to lead on new features. I expect Roon to listen to customers about how they use the functionality of the existing app. None of that feels present here and extending the beta to us to see these issues 2 business days before launch just felt like a “nothing I can do now!” moment.
6 Likes
…and it’ll get fixed. I believe you were arguing that we don’t fix things we break…
See here or wait for future releases:
5 Likes
I wasn’t arguing, I just provided a clear example of a major bug introduced 2 years ago and never fixed impacting 1/4 of my library.
The issues around the burying of features that impacted many of us is something that seems to fall under Roon doing things Roon wants.
I’m being sincere when I say I appreciate you reading the feedback on a Sunday and listening to us. I’m just pointing out examples of where feedback has been provided or could have been provided to save Roon and many of us time and a better experience.
Sorry, I meant “arguing” as “give reasons or cite evidence in support of an idea, action, or theory, typically with the aim of persuading others to share one’s view.” and not “exchange or express diverging or opposite views, typically in a heated or angry way”
5 Likes
No, and I didn’t expect it. But the main topic of the thread is whether developers are reading here any my impression is, yes, they read, but once it gets a bit tricky, they simply drop it as the need to “fry bigger fish” by polishing the UI instead of fixing reported bugs. Mostly annoying as I zipped three times in the past my whole library with several gigs of data and managed to send it through without even getting a proper solve of the issues I reported.
Thanks for reading…
1 Like
1.8 feels like it went a lot beyond “polishing” the UX. It’s a full revamp which took several months’ worth of work by your entire team, seemingly at the expense of putting effort into fixing bugs and improving portions of Roon that were borderline unusable in 1.7 and remain so after the upgrade (just 2 quick examples that come to mind - making tracks match on the album identification screen, or moving around multiple tracks at once in playlists). So while many of us (myself included) are enjoying the massive UX overhaul, we’re also left with the bitter taste that you wrapped a product that it’s still somewhat immature in a prettier package.
I wonder what the reception would have been if you had kept 1.7 largely as it was visually, added portrait mode for tablets as the one big UX improvement, and put more work on some core usability aspects throughout the product.
4 Likes
yeah, it was fixed in 1.8 like I said but not before that. It was an issue introduced by your update of 610 in August and stayed that way for 6 months…
I am talking about bugs specifically here. I am not asking you to change anything or make something specific for me. I am not even going to take the bait about Henry Ford 
I can guarantee we’ve been reading.
I haven’t been posting much over the last few days because most of my time has been spent making all this feedback actionable – turning what I’m reading on Community into tickets and specifications that our designers and developers can start on immediately.
Some of the feedback will take time to address, but a number of major feedback points should be resolved in the next week or so. Some of that work was completed late last week, and I’m getting a number of other changes and fixes lined up for the coming week now.
We won’t address every request but we’re absolutely reading it all and we have pretty thick skin, so keep it coming everyone.
46 Likes
This is VERY refreshing to read. Thanks for posting, Mike!
Gosh. Not sure I could work at Roon, and I’ve done some dirty jobs. Thank you for all you’re doing!
5 Likes
Thank you for portrait mode
7 Likes
This is precisely the best attitude and approach needed 
7 Likes
To get a better understanding of your „approach“ to address customer needs. Regarding for example the mobile app is lacking cover art in playlists? This is commonly found on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and many more and useful. Why has this essential element been removed?
Am I the only one who finds these statements contradictory? I am not judging any of those approaches, but they seem to be exclusive. You can either build what you want, or listen to the customers with top priority, can’t you?
6 Likes
Do roon developers ever read anything in here?
I think they are reading, only that they are professionals so they do not react hysterically …
I would like to add that the developers monitor online the operation and statistics of 1.8 (Community can’t see it) and they exactly know how 1.8 REALITY looks like…
3 Likes
I don’t agree with the analogy. It is not about getting somewhere (vacation), but about the tool you take to get there.
to me, It’s like:
“I want to build a great car”
“But I want to have heatable seats”
“I build what I want to build - I don’t need a heated seats. Just more horsepower…”