Hello everyone, so I’ve been using the Roon trial for a month and I love how well designed and integrated is with my music library, artists, and TIDAL for streaming, despite finding that it does sound a tiny bit warmer and a bit flatter than Audirvana (which is what I had before, perhaps it’s the design of the built-in renderer of sound signal or something that goes to the output?). Thinking of investing in Roon anyway, since I find it to be a very complete solution.
I thought I’d leave a feedback with my impressions / recommendations with some things I’ve noticed while playing music and browsing the app in one single post to not overwhelm the topics. In case if it’s already been discussed and there’s already a way to fix/adjust it, please let me know 
Hardware wise:
- Perhaps it’s something with my USB, but my iFi Zen DAC v2 more often than not keeps disconnecting when Roon tries to play another song. It says “failed to initiate device”, then it disappears from the Zone, there’s a 5 second pause and then it appears back, but then I have to manually press play to listen the song, and sometimes the error starts again, and I gotta click a few times to make it work.
- This doesn’t happen when I’m playing on my DAC through HQPlayer, seems like it always maintains it connected. The DSD upsample makes my right ear hurt so much after a couple of songs, but perhaps I’m sensitive to the extreme high frequencies? (no problems with 192kbps PCM though), but that’s for another post.
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Love the ARC app, very useful for on the go. I would add the option to choose the download quality (overall, or per each “downloaded” album - I have some that are only DSDs or Hi-Res, and I don’t need that on the go).
~ARC: The keyboard color doesn’t match the theme (I have it set in Dark, and the keyboard layout is white and hurts the eyes at night)
~Surprised to not see the “live radios” in the Arc app, so I had to switch to the ROON one. -
Urgently need a similar native app for Apple 4K TV. I know I can send the music over AirPlay but that sends only the sound, there isn’t any visual accompanying. Yes, I did download the TV:Remote app for it, but it’s just not the same. Plus, all this is AAC being AirPlayed, rather than sourcing from the Core in Hi-Res.
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(Solved) I understand how the “Zones” work and that you select them first to play different music in each one. BUT, say I’m listening on my Phone zone, and then I want to push that music to my receiver to continue listening there. How do I do that? Because when I select another zone, it shows the other song that I had played long time ago. So I have to pause, go to the new zone, and search for the song again in my library and then I can play in my new zone. So cumbersome and disruptive
UX/Software design issues:
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When I’m listening to a song, in the lower part where the playback info is, would be great to add a “Heart” and “add to library (+) sign” next to the Title/Artist on the left. This is very useful especially when you’re seeing something else in the main window section, or when you’re listening to TIDAL related new tracks that you quickly want to add and favorite it. Otherwise, I manually have to click on the Title/Artist > shows a full screen > and then I have to go into the album to add it, or dive deeper to add just the track… Unnecessarily complicated.
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Following previous comment: The left panel should be improved: When clicking the artwork, it’s good that it goes to the big screen and shows the lyrics/info. However, I feel that if I click on the song’s title, it should jump and show the track within the album view in the main window (and perhaps highlight the track that you’re listening for a few seconds). I find it much more intuitive when you want to locate or explore where the track comes from and it’s related album. Same for Artist name, click on it > jumps to Artist’s main page with your library.
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When I’m listening a TIDAL album and I add a single track to my library (only the first time), it automatically jumps to that album saved in my library, showing the only single track that I just added. So when I try to go back to see the full album to see and/or add other tracks that I like (I don’t want to add the full album), I can’t. So I have to go back to the main TIDAL page, find the album, it says it’s in my library already (with 1-track only), so I have to click on “Show full album on TIDAL” on the bottom, and only THEN is where I can add other tracks to my “saved album”. Thankfully, when adding the other tracks, it doesn’t glitch-jump out like the first time. It’s just annoying when you want to add just like 5 songs off an album.
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TIDAL: when I go to the search bar and write let’s say “Ambient Chill”, I’m expecting to find curated playlists under that name/category. But Roon only shows “Top result” album, artist, albums, tracks and Live Radio. It doesn’t show TIDAL’s playlists at all, and there do exist since I can see it in their native app.
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How do I add a multiple artwork to an album? In settings, Roon allows multiple album covers (one main, and others as extra), but how do I add it? In album options I find it lets me to apply only one. I have an album that has 2 covers (not sure how it worked), but then… I can’t seem to find how to assign the 2nd cover as main, for example.
Final note: For the life of me, I can’t find such option, please let me know if there’s something: is there’s a way to identify single tracks (that weren’t identified) inside an album?
For example, I have an album that the official release is 14-tracks, and Roon was able to Identify it. However, I usually add B-sides and bonus tracks (from editions all over the world) at the end of the track-list to have it all organized under same album.
However, with this structure, Roon doesn’t recognize the last tracks as they aren’t part of any official 14-track release, but those tracks do exist in other editions or CD singles that Roon does have in their database (let’s say: one track is from a Japan 12-track CD, two tracks are from an European release, and another one is a B-side off a single). But if I were to identify them by their proper release, it would mess the main album identified metadata and unrecognize the rest of the tracks.
So, is there a way to match those individual tracks within an “identified album” with information of another release (just for that single track) so they can also have their credits info, lyric, release date, etc?
And yes, please enable a drag/drop mouse click to re-arrange the track order… Those arrows have consumed my lifeeee in slo-mo, moving tracks up and down… especially that when a “rogue” track goes through a correct one, the correct one doesn’t stay there but it also moves UP! Now I have to fix that one as well. If it’s not possible to change the arrow design, at least it’d be nice to keep the correct tracks stay in their place while the ones I’m trying to move, just pass through.
Thank you so much for your time reading this, sorry for the long writing, and if you have any recommendations or solutions, feel free to reply
Perhaps this might help the developers to improve some things they consider doable.
Good night!
omg! Thank you so much for this!! Never would’ve thought of looking in there, this is so great and easy. One thing less from the list, lol. Thanks!!