Evaluation of a Roon launch with millions of music titles

Certainly a proposal that is gratefully received, but also makes a lot of work. Now I experiment first with Roon further, find limits, advantages and disadvantages in the application field large database and then I will also install Lollypop and other times again. Many things continue to develop. Some things remain without support.

Uwe, I’m in awe! This was always my interpretation of how best to use Roon with large collections. Big, very powerful PC’s or servers with lots of memory running Roon. Usually remote from where you listen due to size, heat and noise. I definitely think Roon have gone for a use case that captures people like me, relatively few (13,000) tracks because we are the vast majority of its likely users. In addition the chosen recommended hardware like the Nucleus and related NUC’s result in there being nothing the people with monster collections can refer to for guidance. If you offer a pathway for people like you, you are doing Roon a service. It is odd to me others don’t see that but sadly this is the world we live in right now.

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I think Roon and Foobar2000 occupy a rare special position as far as the possibility of building even larger private collections is concerned. Those who only cling to the folder structure have much less evaluation and discovery possibilities. Roon tops this off by tagging everything well (even external content) with keywords/links. Roon weakens on tagging because that is no longer the focus with streaming. Without streaming, you have to keep an eye on alternatives, but even Roon could well add that as a second product with a price and performance advantage to the offering without development effort. It’s all there with further expansion stages that are obviously less trivial and fault tolerant. An observation needs a lot of time, but brings more insight in a step-by-step approach.

The machine absolutely has to be a powerful PC/server. They don’t make noise or much heat as a good notebook today. My fan almost never comes on, I only hear the disks without headphones for a few minutes in the startup phase. That the Nucleus or NUC noiselessly leads to ruin, but we can also not claim. Every niche has its market. The simple USB DAC with the desired performance data and good headphones on the standard notebook and 95 out of 100 users are satisfied. The majority here does not have a Nucleus. Those who are looking for the expensive listening heaven, have only tested and recommended devices (Roon-Ready) to the bone. That’s where the science stops. Everyone has his individual feeling for the right listening room. Many in the audiophile world have gone broader, not just digital, but independent/networked with old analog. Roon certainly has more of this clientele than pure nucleus streamers. They are certainly expanding that to avoid being a dinosaur under the wheels of the streaming world. Time will answer whether partners like Qobuz and Tidal stay in the race. At this moment, there are many synergies, but also interface problems. Pure streaming I can have every day alternately if I create two folders for Roonserver and rename them as needed. Only I see the added value there less. Qobuz already provides so much also from more sources and in German. There are more artist descriptions, references to awards…

At the end of the day, I would like to show what the metadata optimizer managed to do in a daily comparison.

Today the identification was only about half as strong as yesterday with about 37000 music titles.

There are now 31272 of the 323542 albums through the second step.

If i understand your posts correctly, you are running your Roon Core on a laptop, also used for browsing, Roon Control etc? Why is that? Why not a separate PC in cupboard somewhere acting as a dedicated Roon Core, permanently On and always available?

Using a lappy as a core with your library size “does not compute” in my head… The greatest task needs the best tools, but somehow you chose the “worst tool”… :innocent: (tongue in cheek, a lappy has got great talents, but doing server duties is not one of them)

When I first started using desktops in the 80s, this rule was still invariably true, and even 10 years later I would have preferred the big box under the desk. That changed with this great entertainer:

It had the most powerful i7 processor at the time, an 18.4-inch screen. At the time, a staggering 8192 MB of main memory, two huge hard drives (640 GB) for the time, a fast graphics card for games at the time, an HD audio controller, separate audio ports, Firewire, USB, eSata, Gigabit Ethernet, controllers…just up to Webcamp, remote control, optical BD drive…everything a desktop could never offer for multimedia lovers like this. It came with Windows 7 Premium 64 bit and still runs better with 16 GB main memory, 2 x 1 TB SSD, Windows 10 and Linux Manjaro than many a laptop that is sold off cheaply. This machine is good for 1.5 million music tracks with Roon and already has 13 years of life under its belt!

The only bottleneck for larger tasks was the main memory.

There I now have 64 GB and that would be enough for 5 million music titles.

Heat and noise will only be experienced by the hardcore gamers. Use with browser, Office and Roon doesn’t tax either machine much if only the main memory is reasonably sized.

I have Roon on notebooks, tablets and mobile. Macbook Pro from 2009, my Acer V5 touch and Acer V5 anti-glare are also older, the 13 year old and very good Solution 8943G and the fresh XMG. My tablet and phone (Android) have Roon. iOS/Android as a remote control do not find so great. The youth thinks differently about it.

I like to save power when I don’t listen to music at night and use a device with USB DAC/headphones sometimes with Grundig V7000 (80s technology) when I only listen to music in one room.

These solutions are as mobile as any cell phone with/without external hard drive!

I read marketing arguments but am always wide awake as to the actual experience. Permanently on and always available would be uninteresting to me. Turn on and off myself, only use power when needed, not too exotic or far away in the closet…we have different needs.

For me, anything else would be pointless and not the right tool. If my XMG with Linux Manjaro was the bottleneck, I would have chosen a different solution. Here, the bottleneck is not in the end device, not in the user network, but in the cloud infrastructure run by Amazon AWS. Perhaps Microsoft or Google will help as the next contractual partners, or the Roon team still has ideas on how to make “Identifiy” run faster with an unchanged cloud structure. No program code is set in stone.

Loosely based on George Bernard Shaw, I would say:

I have learned not to expect too much from Roon. That is the secret of all true serenity and the reason why I always get pleasant surprises instead of bleak disappointments.

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Wow, this is some serious research, well done! If you’re interested in publishing any of your comparisons at Music library management blog - bliss I’d be open to that!

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@Dan_Gravell take the liberty to elaborate in your own words with or without linking. I have no commercial interests and just write down in a timely manner what I actually experience in my attempts to improve something.

I’m also not worried about Roon, they have a finished and bug free program without streaming.

With new interfaces and service providers come new problems, but also solutions.

The Roon optimized way into the ROCK fascination does not go without frustration and the way is longer than thought.

The later view after the mountain stage is heartbreakingly beautiful!

The interim balance for today looks like this:

Surely more than 60000 music titles will be identified again today. The pictures of the previous days that it runs faster at the beginning (restart) solidify.

However, no linear decrease is also ascertainable. Not much happens on the P drive today. The essential progress usually only affects one of the two hard disks.

I’m just saying you’ve obviously put a lot of work into your research, and for a software developer it’s “gold”.

I thought I had a large library! What do you use as your core?

first post with pictures

As a senior citizen, you can use it to keep yourself mentally fit and enjoy and manage music in the best way. The youth has the right to see everything differently.

My collection is rather modest, but I find myself always returning to the same 100 or so albums that brought me through my childhood. All you can eat leads to gluttony.

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I just hope everyone who has these large collections, has them legally with the CD’s in their possession. If you sell or give away the CD’s, you have to delete the files to conform to copyright laws, at least in the US anyway.

Sure we live in a very seductive time as far as unrestrained music consumption goes, but even 4500 albums is not modest and is a testament to the love of music.

I also handle the 100 albums, but every week 2 x 1 hour old familiar without a journey into the wider music world would spoil the joy of music and let me grow old. Only memory, no participation in the newer developments of music…

…and I also enjoy discovering with KI music that is 50 to 100 years old, which I have never heard before, but which can be perfectly placed in a row with these 100 albums.

I’ve got 16 GB in my nucleus plus and it’s handling 700K tracks very well. I have the ears of a 16 year old [according to the audiologist] and swear by hi-res at home and on a portable dap.

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The first murder pirates came from the United Pirate States and are all criminals are locked away forever. In fact, I would be surprised if not commercial interests, the legal radio recording and much more were punishable in the United States and really any digitization that can be found frantically fast in Roon, can be found just as quickly in the basement or attic (in still good condition). Theory and practice…

I have no idea what you just said, but OK.

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For HiREs are actually very good ears needed. That doesn’t work for me even with studio headphones when doing it with a blind test. Roon helps with small psychological tricks (clear color representations = safely “see” what you hear with “old ears”).

With 16 GB Roon should be able to handle even more than the 700000 music tracks, but it will probably still not NVME SSD with the best CPU installed even in the Pro version. DAP has a future in our niche!