My music situation is that I mostly stream from Qobuz. My itunes library is old and resolution is no higher than 256 kbs and I really don’t use my itunes library. I have only a few hi rez albums downloaded as FLAC or DSD files to see if I can hear difference from streamed file. I use my iMac running Qobuz through a DAC, intergrated amp to my Sonus Faber speakers. I have sonos as well and can set them up as endpoints but then again, I can stream Qobuz from Sonos directly.
So, I’ve heard so many good things about Roon and yet I wonder if my use case justifies the cost. Yes, I get the Roon interface and all it comes with. But if all I’m really doing is streaming Qobuz, is it really worth my time and $$ to purchase roon? I have to imagine I’m not the first to ask a question like this.
Roon has a unique and rich interface. It’s free for 2 weeks. Anyone interested in music, artists, associations between them, discovery, etc… worth the effort to load locally and play with the interface a while. Different people get different things out of Roon. Impossible to tell you where you will or will not find value. Just dive in… plenty of us lifeguards (users) willing to answer questions if you get lost. It’s also a great community.
The only person that will know if you would like Roon, is yourself by testing Roon.
I understand it takes quite some effort to really get aquainted with Roon, and the test period is not extensive. However, if your initial findings are postive, you can still extend by taking a subscription with a montly fee. After 2 months you should know if there is enough added value in Roon for you to go for a yearly subscription (or life membership)
Thanks and I know it’s YMMV. I plan to test drive for two weeks once I return from a much needed vacation. Always good to get other peoples thoughts. It just feels like perhaps my use case is somewhat limited especially since I don’t have an extensive (existing) digital file collection.
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AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
5
Don’t forget that now even after the all too short 2 weeks free trial you can just opt for a monthly subscription if still unsure.
Not a huge outlay to begin with unlike a short time ago where it was stumping up for lifetime or a year minimum.
I think it’s well worth dipping your toes into the waters of Roonworld even if you end up feeling it is not for you after all.
Cost is, of course, relative. We have Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Direct Stream, Qobuz, Apple+, Pandora and Roon.
Even with that, I pay for some movies which will appear at no additional cost within weeks if I chose to wait. I also rent from RedBox.
I am definitely not a Roon hobbyist, but we’ll renew it and Qobuz every year. It is “nice to have around” and for our needs works flawlessly,
I am no longer an audiophile and have (compared to my past) a simple system which has given me rare and small (and immediately) fixable problems.
I also bought two Playstation 5 consoles and belong to PS Plus.
Some homes have country club fees or home owners association fees.
Roon feels very cost contained and is fun in the limited use to which I put it.
I do not know your circumstances, but I think you will find it a nice utility to have. We adjust to costs over time. That’s what the electric company tells me.
Thanks for the responses so far. It all makes sense and I certainly plan to dip my toes in the water even if I have to pay for a month or two before making my decision. Even then, nothing has to be forever. I’ve seen Roon in operation at my local HiFi store and I don’t think they’re using it much more than for streaming as well but they have dozens of end points throughout the store for demo purposes!
I’m currently on day four of my 14-day trial. I spent quite a bit of time researching Roon and asking questions on here. At the end of my 14-day trial I plan to subscribe as I’m already seeing the benefits of it. I’ve invested a lot of time and effort in building a Roon ROCK server and three Raspberry Pi based endpoints. I have Roon on my iMac and remotes on my mobile phone and tablet. The help received on these forums has been tremendous and formed part of my decision to subscribe.
I also have Qobuz and a small local library of songs, and TIDAL. Everything integrates really well into Roon.
Other little tidbits I found was the partnership with Audeze with Audeze headphones presets built into Roon. That was another part of my decision-making process.
Roon is sending me daily emails for things to explore in Roon. I’m on Day 3 of that learning adventure and today’s email was about Roon Radio and Valence. These daily learning guides are really well structured and I wasn’t expecting them!
Over four days I’ve only scratched the surface of Roon and, for me, it’s already good enough to subscribe to.
I highly recommend trialling Roon at least, and possibly paying for one or two month’s subscriptions to see if it’s for you. You have very little to lose, and perhaps a lot to gain.
I had a decent collection of rips, and a decent way of playing, searching and organising them (JRiver + JRemote). I got Qobuz, and lived with the Qobuz app on my laptop, and put up with no remote app for my iPad, and flipping between JRiver and Qobuz. But as time went on, and as my Qobuz favourites increased to more than a few screenfuls, with no obvious way of searching or organising them, I took a punt on Roon. Now nearly all my listening is from Qobuz via Roon - I don’t often listen to any of my ripped CDs, indeed in many cases they are duplicated in Qobuz in higher resolution anyway. Roon has a good remote app, and better ways of searching and organising both your own rips and Qobuz stuff, though I still sometimes need to use Qobuz to search. The extra artist and album and composer and composition info with Roon is excellent. I’d give it a try, if you don’t feel you need it now you may well change your mind a few months from now. When CDs first came out (if you are old enough) you probably didn’t need a shelf to put them on, because you only had a few CDs, but eventually you needed so,e shelves. . Roon is like those shelves. And Qobuz is a bit like someone who owns a record shop has told you you can borrow as many CDs as you want, and when you realise what a fantastic resource it is, and how much it can enrich your life, you’ll likely want a better way of managing it all.
How do you listen? Do you listen to whole albums or playlists or individual tracks?
How do you find new music you might like?
Is your iMac easily accessible when listening or do you want/need a remote?
How important is info about the artist and/or recording to you? Reviews, bios, credits, other albums by the artist and others appearing on the album, etc.?
If you mostly listen to albums that you know, learn about new music from various online magazines, reviews, etc., look up album/artist info on Wikipedia or other free online sources, and don’t need a fancy remote, then the Qobuz app will probably work fine for you and you probably don’t need roon
If you want all that artist/album info integrated into your playback system, or want new music recommendations, auto-generated playlists, multiple ways to sort, filter, and categorize music in your library, or you want to integrate live internet radio, or you are thinking about multiroom playback or could use DSP for eq or whatever, then take a look at roon.
Merging files and streaming is only one use case for Roon. There are others as you will discover during your trial.
But since you seem concerned about this use case, I’ll expand this feature to include a situation that arises after some time. We find that many who start with streaming-only eventually add files to seamlessly cover gaps with the streaming services’ catalog. For example, some of my favorite albums are not streamable, so I augment the streaming content with files. Others augment for quality purposes or special editions, bootlegs, other other stranger cases.
Here’s a fun anecdote: Our CEO has a digital rip of a Led Zeppelin II cassette tape that he overplayed in a hot automobile during his teens. The tape is warped in places and he knows that album with trippy long stretched out guitars that don’t exist in the official release. His “hot car” edition sits alongside his streaming version. He did this after digging out the tape from his parents basement in his early 30s, inspired by my own “skippy CD” version of Coil’s “Love’s Secret Domain”.
Just be aware that as soon you enter into Roon’s World, you wallet will suffer I went from a single Bluesound Node 2 to an ARCAM ST60 Streamer while testing Roon and 3 weeks after I was Roon Lifetime subscriber. Then 1 month later got a Matrix Audio mini-i Pro 3. 1 month after got and returned a few Roon Ready end points and now, 5 months after getting into Roon, I have also added a NUC 10i7FNHN ROCK, Matrix Audio X-SABRE 3, RME Fireface UCX II, Bluesound NODE (2021) and 2 x Rapsberry Pi Displays with RoPieeeXL. Also, my local library is not big. I mostly use Roon with TIDAL and Qobuz. To me Roon is a must have if you love music.
Certainly its the best I have found for a household that has many areas wanting music and coverage from a single source.
My wife uses Spotify (not so much a roon user) but most of the endpoints also support other streaming options without any changes to the infrastructure (RopieeeXL endpoints and Lumin’s) so its seamless for her to play with Spotify or AirPlay or Roon as she chooses. grouping of zones is another feature I use a lot, but moving a playing a stream from one zone to another as I move about the house is my real favourite.
Thanks to all for your comments. I will take the dive, trial first and pay by the month and see what I think but from the likes of all of you, I think I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Well i was a bit like you : Qobuz, a small collection of cd’s ripped by myself. But found Qobuz app difficult to play from room to room and to go between my files and theirs around the house. Plus, I happened to have Roon Ready amps…
Once the house network properly set it becomes a pleasure to use, to browse between remote files and in house ones and to switch from room to room…
I play it from a Mac book pro mostly running for it. And connect to main amp via Ethernet cable directly.
Roon/Qobuz is a great combination. You can keep Roon Core on your iMac, but IMO Roon (Remote) is best and most easily controlled on a portable device like an iPad – via your wifi.
Roon has more and more 192/24 music and it sounds better than 44/16 on my system. Roon also allows you to experiment with hi-rez files that you purchase. Nothing sounds better than DSD files (from Blue Coast, NativeDSD, 2L, etc). The sound quality is astonishing. And it’s a great test for your system’s overall sound quality. But you need a DAC that will process DSD or DSD over PCM (DoP).
Off topic, but related to improving your sound quality from streaming:
Desktop computers, like the iMac, are notoriously bad for streaming. They are noisy, muck up the signal and sound harsh. You may want to look into upgrading to a dedicated streamer. I highly recommend a Sonore device (microRendu or ultraRendu). They are tiny computers (to replace your iMac) and are purpose-built to only stream music without the noise that mucks up the signal. They accept Ethernet directly from your switch/router and then feed via USB into your DAC. It’s an immense upgrade in sound quality – if your current system is good enough to hear the difference. The next upgrade step may be a better DAC, depending on what you have. You probably want something at least as good as a Mytek Liberty DAC (or the latest Liberty II).
So, for a couple thousand dollars, you can upgrade your system so that Roon/Qobuz streaming sounds as good as a comparably priced turntable. But the big benefit is you don’t have to by LP’s – you have access to pretty much all the music ever recorded. And no pops and clicks, no cleaning records.
Nowt wrong with a Mac mini here - no noise and my vinyl doesn’t click or pop.
Plenty of people are perfectly happy with their systems without throwing more money at them too.
I went from a single Bluesound Node 2 to an ARCAM ST60 Streamer while testing Roon and 3 weeks after I was Roon Lifetime subscriber. Then 1 month later got a Matrix Audio mini-i Pro 3. 1 month after got and returned a few Roon Ready end points and now, 5 months after getting into Roon, I have also added a NUC 10i7FNHN ROCK, Matrix Audio X-SABRE 3, RME Fireface UCX II, Bluesound NODE (2021) and 2 x Rapsberry Pi Displays with RoPieeeXL. Also, my local library is not big. I mostly use Roon with TIDAL and Qobuz. To me Roon is a must have if you love music.
or Roon as she chooses. grouping of zones is another feature I use a lot, but moving a playing a stream from one zone to another as I move about the house is my real favourite.