Dears,
Twice apologies as my email keeps pinging me as this thread keeps living and feel some small responsibility … if I may offer a few thoughts and maybe some actions to take this to a good place? Initially am seeing three categories of responses mixed up in here?
1> Technicians: there are some who seem determined to tell/show/diagnose how bad/screwed/fubar’ed the network is (and ok, a few swipes at windows as a core), quite a few are genuinely interested in helping to understand and dig out the network problem, might I invite all of our ‘technical solution oriented’ conversation over to the original troubleshooting post? (thanks @blackjack, and to repeat, An audio file is loading slowly. This may indicate a performance or hardware problem.” ). I will commit to re-engage on a technical level (and help to prove how it is all the network’s fault)… also please commit to reading the details before diagnosing (the first person asking if the router is running the latest firmware will be beaten to death with an xkcd bludgeon: https://xkcd.com/806/ ) … I do not redit/4chan and I am old enough to remember when the WELL were the new kids …
2> Eco-systemics: Thanks so very much to the open and honest discussion of benefits and pitfals/limitations of the other solutions and where and how they can/should/not be used and more. @Hardclip, and @Mike_O_Neill thanks particularly for this and being detailed in what you say, but really, so much good stuff in so many comments. As mentioned, have some LMS background but did not really wish to fail that far ‘backward’, failing forward was the point of my post and it was apparent that many share this experience and that being willing to ‘switch horses’ as needed is a good survival trait. Will still be looking at an alternative to see how this works out. As my partner is an old command-line fanatic, some of the bad UI may be a benefit as far as she is concerned. But the sharing of different experiences and evolution and ‘how we make this work’ are some of the best testimonials. As a second-system or co-running, JRiver seems a first stop if you are taking a balanced approach with emphasis on playing the music/content when we strip out some perhaps anti-anything-not-Roon sentiment (confirmation bias or other reasons for resistance)? And really well answers the need of the original post. Thanks again!
3> Roon-ites: @Holland_Wood’s characterization of me, and of what we could do as a community for Roon neophytes was the kindest and most accurate assessment and one I truly appreciate and brings me back . @Bob_Worley mentioning a fully kitted out fiber and dedicated setup is both lovely, and possibly frightening to the ‘weekend warrior’ or would-be ‘new-entrant’ to digital audiophilia but is also very open in his desire to see Roon do better. @Robert_Borley mentions running on old kit and being ecstatic with a lovely eclectic kludge, how fun is this? Repeated was assessment that network/wifi is -always- problematic, and if you really want Roon to work:
a. dedicated stripped core, preferably linux,
b. mondo-wire/fiber to endpoints (no wireless),
c. commercial grade end-points. all professionally integrated by a network pro.
d. killer internet connection
@dannybgoode, good laughing at image of pulling apart post-party installs! whoof!! @Robert_Suryan, yes to the part of a good integrator be invaluable! my audiophile partner used to work with your type when constructing new homes for wealthy clients when we lived the San Francisco lifestyle before becoming refugees in the backwoods of Europe, and this is one reason she resisted going digital so long, she knows what what real gear and a good wizard costs, and how invaluable you both are!! (ahem, and that you will need to be called back again sometime when something fails or the ISP switches a digit somewhere)
3.a> Roon-centric: If we look at this from the Roon (company) perspective; presumably wish to reach many more customers and grow their footprint (and referrals). When we look at purchasers, the digital early adopters and spend-is-not-the-obstacle seems well represented in this conversation and points 1> and 2> above. Laggards and dilettantes such as myself are less represented and I was leaving after a seemingly inexplicable bad experience. Why?
Roon attracts strongly with the idea that relatively simple setups (read their list of minimum requirements for core systems!) and seeing hifiberry hats and ecosystem. Premise (dar i say ‘promise’) amazing quality for pennies! as a Unique Value Proposition is huge. Idea that a small DIY approach may result in semi-decent audiophile setups that are not for a gear-head/constant-fidder. When it works they have a massive winner on their hands (Ikea effect, we value more what we build ourselves)! And for many thousands of people this seems the case. However, if many more are also silently slinking away after trying and realizing a true barrier to entry is a dedicated professionally installed fiber based system, then Roon loses out on a mass-market of people ready to move up-quality in audio (and everyone in a classical/listed home or renting a concrete bunker who will not be jackhammering cables into the walls). Into this ‘domestic’ market we enter the difficulty of end-users and our myriad of systems, was chortling reading back at how many posts could be characterized as “Roon is perfect damnit! (as long as you do not have any network, or endpoints)”.
3.b> Pesky Consumers: Helping Roon fit into a complicated/nasty/confusing/mass-market space is a truly laudable effort. One I would love to see this community help them with. And them to focus on. Am intrigued. Capturing what causes people to leave, and giving the DIY’er some better troubleshooting tips seems a start. Giving Roon some useful software development directions of how to lighten their ‘load’ while keeping quality and improving OOB experience and/or troubleshooting error messages. So easy for us to say, so hard to do! Maybe a step towards ‘Easy-entrant’ setup, Pro-sumer setup and Professional setup as differentiators … but also bring us in early, and lead us a merry upgrade path instead of having us slink away.
3.c >Fixing for the Future that is Wireless: Making Roon happier on wifi is a no-brainer. Mesh networks are the future/current de-minimus. And blazing fast and carry massive loads and every new system will be going this way. Professionally I run in enterprises where we no longer run ethernet to the end point, we are all meshed at work. New houses are not being ethernet cabled , or fibered, may as well run coax! This is not a ‘problem’ for the professionals to fix, this is an ecosystem expectation. As a (possibly unrelated) example: if an end-point connects to a mesh-point on 5Ghz and the other insists to connect on 2.4Ghz, Roon needs to not tossup a generic file loading slow hardware error when all systems and network are under-stressed. And keep doing so even when the qroup is torn down and removed from wireless (may or may not have happened that way). If the ‘fix’ is as simple as setting your mesh to display both networks and manually connecting both end-points to the same (slower) mesh-network frequency. Seriously? This is something the Roon OS can be made aware of and manage transparently, or worked around to use connectivity efficiently… Then the professional and community boards will not be telling people, ‘wifi bad, mesh nightmare, use fiber’ but instead, “Roon is stable on any network layer above ‘x’ bps running lossless and RAAT, lets sort this out!”… unrelated case in point #2 Roon hammering DNS/internet connections is also not OK, mass-market clients live in complex environments with always-on-stable-internet-access either not stable or worse, off on holiday where we pay per gigabyte on kludged 4g network mifi’s in south of france (or Panama @Hardclip?) streaming, end-use needs to be happy-on local network and running silent outside … stuff that fails with my ISP or blows my bandwidth caps when running off-line will end up recycled for parts…
4.> Growing Roon: Have long been attracted by good audio quality digital music, and wish this for everyone! An analogy, when you look at how digital photography has transformed with budding photogs starting with smartphone cameras, then migrating to ‘serious’ kit and then further into prosumer and more serious gear. Roon is perfectly positioned to make this happen. For the benefit of us all! My old-guard buddies toting their Leicas around and with encyclopedic knowledge of light have an utterly different relationship to lenses and digital. However, the new-born creativity is astounding and drives a totally exciting market in quality gear like we have not seen before. I hope Roon sees this through for themselves and digital music. We pine for the days when new music releases are not pre-flattened by engineers for lossy compresion algorithms but are let loose again to play with extreme quiet as well as extreme violence in playback…
Thanks again to all the interesting commentary and learnings , and I dare hope learnings for Roon monitoring the boards to see their way further into mass-market adoption …