Well to sum it up - ROON radio needs some considerable improvement. Unfortunately it’s no even close to where other services have been many years before or where todays standards are.
And especially as ROON claims the radio feature will provide a great personal music discovery based on individual preferences - it’s exactly what where it’s massively missing out.
@mike I guess could give some feedback about ROON‘s plans.
Yeah I would be a lot more inclined to continue my subscription again if Roon would be clear about what they want Roon Radio to be, and give us some sort of basic roadmap of the features that they’re planning to add to it over the next year or whatever. It needs more granular control, e.g. like what Slacker had.
I gave some ideas for improvement here and here.
Over the next few days I’ll go back to my original experiences which I listed at the top of this thread and see if Roon Radio is still spitting out the same stuff now as it did back then. So far I’m not hopeful that anything has really changed.
It hasn’t it’s the same old thing, rinse and repeat. The only thing that has changed for me at least it seems to be playing more of my own files. It seems what was the brand new toy has fallen out of favour for development.
Well that’s unfortunate. As I said back then, it seems like Roon has all the puzzle pieces that they need to make Roon Radio absolutely amazing. It’s baffling that they don’t do much with it – a Roon Radio that is customizable, can generate a station based seeding it with an eclectic playlist, that doesn’t repeat artists or songs much, and which has granular controls for deep dive vs hits vs discovery etc… could be an absolute game changer, and I suspect would generate a lot more subscriptions for the service.
This seems to be the biggest complaint on the Spotify subreddit. The shuffle sucks which to me, is what a good radio feature is. Intelligent shuffle.
Having that level of control would be unique and people do care a lot about it. Deezer has almost a cult following because their “flow” feature is basically shuffle but with a small amount of control.
I am starting to find that PlexAmp is way ahead of Roon on its radio options so many to choose and customise, the new Guest DJ feature is pretty good to but it seems to be limited to your own music. Something Roon has forgotten about completely if you only have a local library as Radio is rubbish as it’s designed for having streaming services, local file users are just not catered for.
Yes I think I made that comment in the PlexAmp thread, especially after the audio analysis was added.
It just seems to do a great job on creating the right mix.
Not that I have barely used used PlexAmp in the last few months. It’s been all ARC besides the odd couple of times when it just wouldn’t work.
Mog.
/10char
Plex haș superior data to work with.
Metadata sources are the same are they not so what’s this based on? Are to you referring to the Sonic analysis it performs? Or is there something else it gathers ?
sonic analysis, and an understanding of how different sonic characteristics relate to one another.
It seems as though Roon is good at Allmusic integration, endpoint sync, and sound quality. All the other things that music players do are kind of ugly stepchildren. Playlists, radio, search, speed, indexing… All of these are much better done in different software. I use Swinsian to build and export playlists, Plexamp for Radio and Mobile. Instead of getting bent that Roon can’t do these things particularly well, I’ve decided to just look at it like any other tool. One doesn’t complain that a screwdriver sucks as a chisel. Saves me a lot of headache.
Thanks for the recommendation. I downloaded Plex and Plexamp yesterday and so far I’m blown away with the Radio parts of it – and that’s before the Sonic Analysis of my library has been completed, which should make it even better. It has so many ways to customize the radio and dial in exactly what I’m in the mood for. My girlfriend who is not into audio stuff at all is also impressed with the songs that Plex is surfacing. Looks like I won’t be continuing my Roon subscription. Plex is not only giving me super relevant and interesting songs, but it’s only $5/mo and not $15/mo like Roon. At this point I’m struggling to see what advantage Roon offers.
Yep it’s a good package if your using a pc or pi as your streamer. Shame it doesn’t support Qobuz only Tidal. My intention wasn’t for it to replace Roon as I have used it for years for Video as it’s lacking in lots of other ways but it’s getting better and they seem to be listening to users needs. I hav had lifetime since they introduced it years ago and it’s good value as all my TVs support it to for video and when away it’s handy. Good luck with it.
For me it’s library management. I use the focus feature all the time, bookmarks for smart playlists and tags.
I couldn’t explore my music in Plex like I do in Roon. It is a massive difference in price though. For me it’s worth it, others not so much.
Plex has similar filters to focus but not as deep also it’s crap with complications, doesn’t have any grouping or concept of versions. Give it time and I think it will develop a lot more. For remote access to your music it really is king, arc isn’t near close and won’t be for sometime yet.
I guess ROON will finally reallocate resources to fix/improve its radio feature & recommendation engine.
Maybe @mike or @jamie can share some thoughts before more customers leave with disbelieve about ROON‘s future.
Fully support this approach. Enable each user to add their own simple preferances and avoid over-complicated Artificiall Intelligence algorithms getting lost in genre’s, song/file locations, new/old music , whatever…
I hoped Roon would “finally” fix Roon Radio for 2 years, and it seems not much has changed.
Another great feature of Plexamp: It shows up as a real audio player on my iPhone, so I can see it on my lock screen, control it with the hardware volume buttons, etc AND it can stream to two different Airport Express endpoints at the same time in perfect sync with the ability to control the volume separately on each (I think this is some kind of feature of iOS, though I’ve never noticed it because I just installed the second Airport Express today).
In what way, serious question, not just looking for an argument! 
.sjb