While doing a( New Years-) clean up on my iMac (2012 High Sierra 2.7 GHz 12 GB) I decided to delete Roon and cancel future subscriptions.
Why?
A lot of minor and some major problems that popped up the second half of 2018.
- Start up time went up to 45 - 60 seconds. With that persistent Roon startup logo on top of my screen overruling all other software it became quite irritating.
- After startup Roon would not find my audio system so I had to restart it. If I was lucky Roon would recognize my audio. Sometimes it did not and I had to repeat the procedure.
- Using a VPN was no advantage timewise. Probably related to point 4 (?)
- Having internet down every day five to ten times a day, due to living on a (Italian) mountain and a sloppy wireless internet provider actually prevented Roon from working. I did not know that an internet connection was essential for Roon to work.
- The keys on my regular Apple keyboard wouldn’t work with Roon anymore. So I had to use a mouse to start/stop, rewind etc.
- There happened some strange things with my musical library regularly. Albums would be split spontaneously in two or more albums. Three years ago this was thé reason to kick-out iTunes permanently.
- 150 regular albums, mostly bought with that infamous iTunes, were not recognized. That’s circa 5% of my library.
- Of course I re-installed Roon to overrun failures, but nothing improved in the end.
I really liked the Roon GUI. Nice, clean, logical and simple. I didn’t agree with the reviews all the time but that was a minor thing.
Pricing made my final decision easy. I had already paid three years for an Annual Membership ($ 360) and by changing to a Lifetime Membership I had to pay an additional $ 499. That’s a lot of money for a piece of software that doesn’t do what I want or expect.
Of course I don’t go back to iTunes, but I bought a (lifetime) license for Swinian for only $ 19. That works good enough to start 2019 with.