Let the trial begin!
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First thought, your in for some very late nights exploring and playing musicā¦
For me, so far so good. Installation on my iMac was a breeze, integration with Tidal simple (and amazing). Comparing sound now to both Media Center 20 and Audirvana+ 2ā¦ If youāre a Tidal user the integration is wonderful and so much better than the anemic Tidal desktop app. I can easily see how one might lose vast amounts of time between listening to music and mining all the information about what youāre listening to thatās at your fingertips. The user experience absolutely stomps any other catalog/playback software Iāve used. Just doing more listening tests before really making any comment on that part. I have not set up any other computer yet but plan to do that in the next day or so to play with the client/server aspects.
Iāve been looking forward to this all week. 19:29 - Roon announcement email 19:30 Signed Up 19:31 Friend turned up to go out for dinner!! Back home now and completed set-up - It found my new MS200 instantly - All working as expected -
Bowie on.
First impressions - attractive - responsive - clean - intuitive - informative - addictive !
Congratulations Roon!
So far so good here. Love the app so far, except for one unexplained crash.
Still looking through the library. Mike Olfieldās Tubular Bells is listed in classical. 
Beau
So far so great! Easy install (on OS X 10.10.4), and easy scan of iTunes & Tidal.
Feature request: under Albums, please add a āSort by Album Nameā option!
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Hey Chris, Iām curious what your use case is for wanted āSort by Album Nameā?
Do you actually want to browse your albums that way or is it more to help you find a specific album? If itās the latter, you can click the āFocusā button on top of the browser and use the āFilterā box to narrow down your albums (we also have a hotkey for filter, just hit " / " and start typing 
).
Hi Brian. Thanks for asking. Iām well-steeped in the Sooloosiverse, so am familiar with Focusā¦ But in this case, (due to limitations of predecessor systems like iTunes) I have already edited much of my library metadata in the vein of album title = āComposer: Form#_ {key} āFamiliar nameā Op.#_ - Conductor/Ensembleā (e.g., āBeethoven: Sym#5 {c} āFateā Op.67 - Karajan/BerlinerPā versus āā¦- Dohnanyi/Clevelandā)ā¦so I can say āIād like to listen to Beet 5, but I donāt know if Iām in the mood for Herb or Chris or whomelse so I have?ā Yes, I acknowledge I could switch to the Composerās tab and scroll down, and down, and downā¦but the one-row-per-work is less space efficient than the Album viewās grid layout. And yes, I acknowledge I could re-rip (or somehow undo all my metadata edits) to be more in line with Roonās album-centric work-parsing methodology (which I do love!)ā¦but until Roon can replace the built-in Music app & library on my iPhone & iPad, I abhor the idea of having separate music libraries for home & portables. By any comparison, a āSort by Album Nameā option seems far more simple to implement.
@Chrislayeruk, you were absolutely right, late nights and much time! It took me a few days after release to get a suitable PC, the one I had wasnāt up to the job! After a week in use, I love it! Iāve found links I wasnāt expecting and have been on a musical journey!
NO criticism so farā¦
@Not_Roon Good job guys
I know this is an old thread - but first impressions seemed applicable to me, having finally taken the plunge today after lurking here for a while. I was holding out for the iOS remote as thatās really the way Iāll use it as I have a headless server, but since I had a few days at home I thought Iād just get stuck in. Iāve also signed up for a Tidal trial (Sorry Qobuz - donāt worry, Iāll be back when youāre supported) to get the full experience.
First impressions are really very good.
The setup was straight forward enough. Iād read a bit on here first, but it was still a pleasure to have to do a minimal amount to get up and running. I was a bit confused about the default iTunes path options, as I dont have mine in the default place, and they couldnāt be edited - I had to disable them and create a new one (no idea if this has the same benefits).
The whole UI in general feels nice, and there arenāt an overwhelming number of options, and when you need to configure something you kind of seem (so far) to be presented with the option dialogues at the right time.
Iāve left myself just in my iTunes folder until I know what Iām doing or what the benefits are of a managed system (well, managed by Roon rather than iTunes).
Loved the zones thing - took me only a few minutes to work out what was going on (after realising I didnāt need the local playback speakers etc enabled). I only have one zone at the moment, but I can see this will be amazing when get something supporting Roon in kitchen/bedroom.
I seem to have a proper connection (purple?) to my Devialet over USB ticking the usual options and not a hitch so far. Whether itās better/worse SQ than Devialetās Air and the setup I was using before Iāll save for another timeā¦.
Not much more I can say as itās a new piece of software that I donāt really know how it works, but I think Iām going to enjoy finding out. I feel a bit out of my comfort zone not just having a classic setup of albums/genres/artists - I feel I could get lost in here, but maybe it doesnt matter.
My most used feature in the first few hours is clicking on artists I know (mainly electronic so far), and following through to the āsimilarā and āfollowedā (no idea what that means) to discover new stuff.
There are three things Iām immediately not so keen on so far, which I will note as they are real first impressions - it may well be configurable or just take some getting used to:
-Play. Yes, really! When i hit play I really do want to play NOW. I donāt want to confirm or have to make another press. After such a slick UI this seems a bit overkill, akin to ādo you really want to delete all your filesā? Maybe Iām doing it wrong but I would prefer a āPlayā and an āadd to playlistā which wouldnāt take much of the beautiful real-estate.
-I dont particularly like the order of information presented - individual favoured tracks first for example, as I rarely listen like that. But itās new, I need to explore and see how it all works first.
-Switch from vertical to horizontal scroll is a bit odd. It means you donāt quite know which way to go - you get used to one way and then things stop moving and you realise you have to go another way. I do like the pages rather than perpetual scroll though.
So, thatās just first impressions, I love the interface so far its such a change from all the other Audio Applications Iāve used its hard to understand how no-one managed to do this much sooner - but hats off to the team. Initially I did feel a perpetual subscription to play my music was a bit too much of an expense, but I can see the logic especially in a ālifetimeā membership.
I hope iOS comes out before my trials ends so I can test it too, but if not, Iām enjoying the remote application - that too is a very slick way of doing things and I have it on both laptops to test (the remote access needing to be enabled caught me out though, finding that wasnāt so obvious to me).
Yes, Iām feeling guilty about Qobuz, but enjoying some new music to take my mind off it.
Thanks Roon team.
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Thanks for that hifi_swion, Iām in the same boat as a (relatively) late adopter. I first saw Roon when the hifi media folks started going crazy about it during launch. Some of those breathless write-ups did not do Roon justice and I was left scratching my head wondering why I would pay an annual sub to do what I do already with Amarra in one window and Allmusic.com in another.
Well here I am trying to decide between the annual or lifetime subs. I use a Mac Mini as a music server for my 2-channel rig and I like having access to my music in other parts of the house so Roon is working well for my home listening needs so far.
There are some things Iād like to see, like you mentioned, a 1-click play option and some consistency to the scrolling directions (preferably a way to set it to only require up/down scrolling). Iād also like the option to see what albums I donāt have from a particular artist in addition to what is in my collection and what is available on Tidal.
Regardless, Iāve tried the usual player / library management suspects and Roon is the first one that just clicked for me immediately and Iām definitely excited to see what Roon Labs has in store for future updates.
Great posts guys. Thanks for that! Always a pleasure to read about the good experience one has had earlier, which is now shared.
I think there is a logic behind the horizontal scroll that some people like me coming from the Sooloos world do like. Especially those people that stream a lot of music. To be honest I for one have never got to the āCollectionā section as I always start from āOvervievā or āSearchā and take my journey from there.
My collection is small at less than 2k albums so TIDAL is a big winner for me now with a hope it can grow up once they have got a hi-res or even an MQA option.
Thanks!
Hi @Dmitry. Having now used Roon quite a bit more since my first posting, Iām more used the the scrolling, and to be honest I donāt really mind horizontal. I never did really. What caught my attention was the inconsistency.
Horizontal by āpagesā
Smooth vertical
And also sometimes instead of horizontal scroll, an āexpand rightā button (in tidal albums for example)
Like everything you get used to it, but I can see why some new users especially might find it a bit odd/confusing. One hopes you could hand it to a friend and it would be intuitive just like the majority of the interface - which I guess is the case for Sooloos users (Iāve never had the opportunity to try - bit out of my league). But I donāt think the developers should necessarily just make it work the same as the majority of apps for the sake of it, but it should ideally be consistent/obvious.
It might help if there was some ātā logic to the scrolling, say right / left from album to album for an artist or genre and then up and down to see the track listing below the description, tags, etc. Right now when youāre looking at a specific album, I donāt believe there is a way to jump to the next or last album from that artist without hitting ā<ā, backing up and then drilling down again. Regardless, you do get used to the current navigation.