I was one of your early adopters having made the decision to purchase a lifetime membership and taking the chance that Roon would be around for a minimum of five years which if so, would have beat the yearly subscription price of 120.00. Thus far it has proven to be a wise decision. From all accounts, Roon has been integrated into a variety of hardware products helping to insure its usefullness to the community of music lovers for which this software is intended. Listen to my tracks through the roon ready Bluesound Vault being driven by Yamaha 's 2100 Amplifier driving Klipsh Cornwall III speakers makes the investment worthwhile.
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Yes, how much is Roon worth ?
What are the improvements to the sound quality I get using Roon ? please compare with JRiver Media Center or Foobar.
What about metadata ? have a look to the metadata (and the booklets) provided by Qobuz.
Qobuz now has Hi-Res @ âŹ349.99/year, that is âŹ29.16/month. This is âŹ10/month more than with TIDAL, but Qobuz has many, many more Hi-Res albums. 60-70% of the new releases for classical and jazz.
So, why should I spend those âŹ120/year for Roon ?
âRoon will solicit an âoh-my-god-thatâs-awesomeâ response from anyone that uses itâŚâ.
This didnât happen to me âŚ
Then you need to go and use it because time spent talking about it here is time wasted!
Why do you think I have not tried Roon ?
Roon is not a streaming service as Qobuz is. For me I donât really care about Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify and friends. I use roon for my own local files that I bought and collected over many years. Integration of one or more streaming services is a bonus, but not the reason why I use use roon. Comparing Qobuz to roon is apples to oranges.
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Not sure why you are still here posting then if you donât use or want Roon
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Of course you have, and made your choice. It isnât for you, use Qobuz and be happy.
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Until now I havenât received any answer to my original question: âhow much is Roon worth ?â.
What are the reasons why I should like Roon over JRiver, if I have only local music ? or over Qobuz, if I listen to streamed music ?
âŹ10/month are a lot. I like better to have a lot of real FLAC 24/96 instead of some MQA.
The answers I have received until now, are âreligiousâ.
You donât have to like it over JRiver or others, but logically many on this forum do. Nothing beats hands-on experience.
I never tried JRiver, at the time mainly because it had such a high version number and it seemed you had to buy every major version update. Silly maybe but hey. And it seems to focus on all media which I donât need. ITunes did this too, I donât want to show a movie tab/button.
I do like it over iTunes because it not oniy shows your music but connects it. In-app access to the reviews, artist data etc. and it just works smooth. Loads the cover album much faster, has more audio settings, and proper DSP now. The first âmodernâ Hifi app Iâve used.
I love the app, had the necessary hardware to get started and figured people pay thousands for Naim/Linn/Aurender etc streamers with apps that I strongly disliked and are basically PCâs with UPnP. To me, the MacMini/Roon is an alternative to those devices. Roughly a âŹ1000 vs easily âŹ3000+, just have to put it together yourself.
Teodoro,
Iâve not tried Qobuz, but Iâm sure itâs great 
. I tried Jriver, but couldnât see much benefit over Foobar that it could offer.
There are many factors, any combination of which could elicit that âOMGâ response from people when they first experience Roon, however. For example:
- The ability to integrate Tidal music alongside oneâs own HDD stored music for a seamless experience
- The ability to throw 1000âs of locally stored albums with poor tagging and art at Roon and for Roon to automatically catalogue most of it for us, providing bioâs, reviews, album art, tags, credits and links
- The ability to play music from multiple devices and control the music from those devices
- The ability to integrate with and switch effortlessly between most modern DACs and play difference music in multiple places
- The great enjoyment that users are experiencing by following connections between artists and albums/tracks
- The community spirit and exciting onward development.
Indeed, many of the members who have contributed to this thread have highlighted some of these factors as their valued reasons for subscribing to Roon.
Regarding your pop hereâŚ
It seems that you are almost trolling for reaction. But I can assure you that the passionate responses you are receiving are based on sound analysis.
Iâm sure that Qobuz or Jriver offer perhaps some of these features between them but clearly there are holistic reasons why Roon is appealing to so many of us so passionately. These features may not be important to you, and thatâs fine but to many on this forum, they are almost priceless.
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Roon allows me to run my Meridian endpoints without the need to purchase Meridian Sooloos Core and it also means that I donât need to replace my Squeezeboxes with equivalent Meridian endpoints to control them all from one system. On a purely monetary value this saves me over ÂŁ4000 in a lifetime. If you want to give me your definition of âhow much something is worthâ I can give you other examples.
Cheers
Tom
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Simple answer is because it works a whole lot better as a music player and organizer.
Once you get comfortable with Roon, youâll quickly forget about JRiver. I have had a JRMC Master license for a few revisions, and for me Roon is a far superior product for my needs. If JRMC works better for you after a fair trial, then thatâs what you should stick with.
Support from Roon is far superior. JRMC forums are tough to get much help from. A few good folks there, but itâs a jumble getting direct answers. So in my case, JRMC is collecting dust in my imacâs cache. It took me a month to figure out I was staying with Roon for good, and subsequently purchased a lifetime membership.
Probably because youâre the only one that knows the answer. How much it (or any product for that matter) is worth largely depends on your needs and what you get out of it. If you gain a lot from using it then itâs worth a lot, if you gain nothing and donât like it then for you itâs worth little. Iâm not sure what youâre hoping for by asking a forum?
The answers donât seem religious but relatively well thought out considering the way the question was phrased, but of course it will be biased towards happy Roon users since this is the Roon forum and most contributors here love the product. If you want more balanced answers, there are probably better places.
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One other nice aspect of Roon is the fact that the interface is identical whether on a PC, Mac, or Tablet. This makes it very easy to switch from one to the other. Moreover the application on a tablet is vastly superior than any other application out there.
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No, no, I only try to understand the âRoon phenomenonâ.
Yes, the responses are passionate, but it seems to me that people is self-convincing that they have well spent their money (there are exceptions, of course).
You are talking about âsound analysisâ âŚ
Yes, I agree with you that TIDAL is somehow discontinuous, that is it stops playing too often, and that it needs to be âawakedâ. This doesnât happen with Roon.
Even Qobuz is not perfect: with WASAPI my DAC displays always 24/96; this doesnât happen with WASAPI (Exclusive Mode), but after a while synchronism is lost and an horrible jittering replaces music. Itâs for that reason that I use the WDM driver of JRiver as back-end (so I could use its DSP or even have multi-room).
But, when playing local music the âRoon soundâ is absolutely identical (if you choose to be âbit perfectâ) to the one of JRiver, Foobar, MediaMonkey, Bass24 (yes ! I can write in C# !), âŚ
I hope Iâm not deaf and my system (https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/17635574_10154524674012709_4647481396253689266_o.jpg?oh=1c31722f8ff5518fb7a870fe2f43fcd5&oe=59A58F2C) is âgood enoughâ.
@AndersVinberg
Where do you get that Deal?
200$ for Roon and Tidal a year? Its something like $ 360 per my latest info.
Please let me know your source.
I wouldnât do it for sound quality (although it had a lot of hifi minded settings and development choices to put your mind at ease) , but for user experience.
Is it a lot of money? Yes. Is it worth it? You decide. The lifetime option certainly is to me and there have been tons of improvements already since I joined.
Please ⌠Iâm here to learn !
Ok Teodoro,
So you are approaching the argument of lack of the âWow factorâ with Roon from a sound quality perspective?
If so, then I would agree as personally I find Roon simply on par with most other hi-fi platforms Iâve tried, free or paid; i.e. very good indeed.
And I not alien to good audio; my kit consists of, in my office, Adam A5Xâs fed by Mojo DAC and in kitchen, some KEF X300Aâs and I also have some Beyerdynamic T1 headphones and K3003 AKG IEMs. On the music side, I have many 100âs of HD Flac albums and SACD rips; probably 10% or more of my extensive collection is HD.
But (big But) for me, the benefits of Roon lie squarely in the other areas mentioned in my previous post. My main wow factor with Roon comes with the ability to automatically catalogue music and the linking and cross referencing of music, the latter of which allows me to follow very enjoyable âmusical journeysâ when I listen over an extended period. As mentioned in prior post, if the ergonomic and functional benefits of Roon are of little or no interest then definitely itâs not for you (sorry - edit - in my humble opinion ).
@Sallah_48
Once we agreed on the sound quality (even if there are humans with bat-like ears that state that they can hear the difference among JRiver and Foobar), we can discuss about functionalities.
I must admit that in my configuration (JRiver + Qobuz) the integration is null. Reading your list of features I can say: âYes, I can do it with JRiverâ, âYes, I can do it with Qobuzâ (I agree that the Roon community is more excited, perhaps for the reasons I explained before).
My main argument is TIDAL. If the integration were with Qobuz I would be more positive.
The amount of Hi-Res albums in TIDAL is ridiculous (compared with Qobuz). Yes, my daughter finds in TIDAL the rappers she likes (more difficult with Qobuz), but the amount of classical music in MQA (thatâs not really Hi-Res) is null.
If only Roon had a way to explore the albums (local and âstreamableâ) with a tree view structure âŚ
The horizontal interaction is good if you control Roon with a tablet (even Microsoft gave up this approach: did you noticed the differences among the UI of Windows 8 and Windows 10 ?), poor if you have a mouse with the wheel.
P.S.
What you see is
- DAC: Audiolab 8200CD
- Amplifier: Xindaq XA6200 (hybrid, I have replaced the original, Chinese, E88CC with 6922 Sylvania NOS)
- Loudspeakers: Sonus Faber Tiny Towers
- PC: Windows 10 Creator Update, JRiver Media Center 22, Qobuz
- 1200 CDâs
- 1098 âliquidâ albums (20% are from the ripped CDâs)