Do You Have A Roon Fallback Plan - Options / Alternatives

[JohnFlower (John)]

@James_I

That said, I am certainly dusting off the alternatives. This was my beef with Roon from the beginning, that its methods of tagging and organization are within the Roon database rather than embedded metadata in the files, meaning that much of my organizing work will be lost if I stop using Roon. However, that is not as big of a deal as it was to me in 2017 when I started with Roon because, well, streaming titles don’t have my embedded metadata either. So I probably am pretty committed to trying to use Roon or its derivative in some form if at all possible. So let’s hope that Harman decides even if it branches off development from “our Roon” that it makes it possible to bridge “our Roon” to Harman’s products.

Are there any alternatives that detach file metadata like Roon does? Saving information to an internal database is essential for my setup because I can’t modify the files.

[James_I (The truth is out there but not necessarily here)]

I’m not sure because it’s opposite of what I’d want. J River may have that but it doesn’t integrate any streaming service.

[Jim_F (Minimalist)]

I have a Mac Mini (late 2014) I use as a backup server for my Nucleus and also to “keep tabs” on the Nucleus when away from home in case it needs a reboot or reconnect to Tidal or Qobuz. I just added a much faster 1TB SSD to the Mac Mini so it is much faster and more responsive.

The Mac Mini already has Roon and Apple Music installed and I just installed Audirvana 3.5. It’s playing to my main system over UPnP to a RPi4, Meridian Prime, Denon AVR-2805, and Pioneer HPM-60 speakers.

This could be another fallback if I lost internet. I would use my Verizon Hotspot data to stream from Tidal and/or Qobuz.

[Jim_F (Minimalist)]

I guess some of us got to put our “fallback plans” into action with the recent Qobuz issue. While I could have just played Tidal on Roon, I chose to play Qobuz on Audirvana 3.5 and all worked well. Worked so well, I just purchased a year of Audirvana Studio. I have used it in the past, but not recently.

[Michael_Harris]

Having been through a few responsiveness issues with Roon (and dropped ARC completely) over the last 18 months I have built a decent fallback solution that now gets used most day’s.

First off I removed TIDAL and Qobuz from my Roon Library (not an option for you I know Jim) but I have almost 80K tracks of music I enjoy listening to and things have been more reliable since I dropped them. (Hopefully as a result of this recent debacle, they will invest more effort in fixing some of the long standing complaints about metadata updates going wild and stopping Room being usable)

I then put to use 4 spare Raspberry Pi 4’s I owned to good use running Ropieee and having moved from Rock to DietPi I was all good as I just selected to install Plex server and LMS, both of which work nicely with Ropieee.
Later on I saw something about AssetUPNP and BubbleUPNP both of which I used to use in my pre Roon day’s. I bought a new license for AssetUPNP and that is also now running on my DietPi server.

I still use Roon pretty much every day, but I also use the others and actually enjoy browsing my library using the different methods.
Last.fm has become the go-to list of what I have been listening to now as they are all linked up to it.

I haven’t felt the need to try Audiavana yet, but it must only be a matter of time

[Torben_Rick (Torben - A Dane living in Hamburg - Roon Lifer)]

@Michael_Harris

I bought a new license for AssetUPNP and that is also now running on my DietPi server.

Did the same And than bought JPLAY app. The design looks similar to Roon.

I don’t understand the hype about that app - it is just an “transporter”

Torben

[Michael_Harris]

Funnily enough I downloaded it to my iPad after reading something you wrote about it. It’s quite pleasant to use and did work nicely with HQPlayer as well in my testing. I don’t feel like it’s worth the annual cost for me, but could well be for some. I already have enough backup plans
(I have a Google task to cancel the subscription on Monday so maybe I should try it again before then)

[Torben_Rick (Torben - A Dane living in Hamburg - Roon Lifer)]

It works fine - home and remote. I have VPN WireGuard installed on my router so no need for port-forward (same goes for ARC).

The nice thing about JPLAY is the integration with Qobuz. That you don’t have with Plex.

Time will show

Torben

[Jim_F (Minimalist)]

Anybody running Audirvana Studio 3.0 beta? I have it installed on my Dell, MacMini, and NucBox G5. I still question that it sounds any better than Roon. I much prefer how Roon works but might keep Audirvana as my “Roon fallback” solution. I got rid of Apple Music long ago when Verizon started charging for it.

[Jim_F (Minimalist)]

I have been trying for four days to get Audirvana Studio beta to work properly with their convolution protocol. Try as I might, I can’t get it to work without stops and repeating over and over the last second or two of each and every track. I’ve tried my Mojo 2 and Meridian Prime with Audirvana on my Dell, MacMini, and Nucbox G5.

That said, Audirvana works well otherwise and sounds very good, so I am going to let it renew 1/25 for another year as my Roon fallback. I just won’t use their convolution as I don’t use it in Roon either. But, at least it works well in Roon.