If you have chronically sketchy internet, then install 1.8. Roon lets you do that and you can live blissfully secure in knowing that if your internet goes down, you can still use Roon. if you have REAAAALLLY chronically sketchy internet, then roon probably isn’t for you.
I would think that it’s a tiny subset of users who have internet so crappy that it affects their listening. Yes, it’s a vocal group, but that’s expected.
There are so many ways to listen to music when the internet goes down, that it seems like everyone is whining instead of looking for basic solutions to a rather silly, temporary problem.
Use Audirvana
Play a CD
Play a record
Play your guitar
Get a streamer that allows you to load your library on it, and play your files directly without roon. (I’m thinking of the Eversolo DMP-A6. I have a backup of my entire ripped FLAC library on its M2 flash drive.)
Get cellular backup for your internet service. I happen to have comcast as my ISP (love them or hate them) and a cellular switchover device is part of the plan. Takes a little config time to switch it over, but it works
Try to use your phone as a hotspot for your roon core. Never tried it but it might work.
Use your phone to stream your Tidal/Qobuz/Spotify or whatever and send it to your stereo or bluetooth headphones
Walk the dog
Play fetch with the dog
Groom the dog
Vacuum all the freaking dog hair in the house with one of those Dyson rigs that have the little green dust-detecting laser on the beater bar thing and it will blow your mind because the hair is EVERYWHERE and you will be so grossed out you want to do it multiple times a day
Rather than think about this from the standpoint of how do I play my music without Roon when the Internet is down, I think about how I can keep my Internet from being down. I need an internet connection for reasons far beyond Roon. So I have a cellular modem ready for when my main line goes down. That has happened to me once in the past 5 years. Roon not working without Internet is not the problem to be focused on.
I run JRiver as well as Roon for just such internet-down times. I paid a one-off fee to JRiver (about $30 currently) which I do not have to pay year after year. I started wit a one-month trial version. Why not take a look and see if they still have a trial version? If you hate it, bin it.
Every year you’ll be asked if you want to pay to upgrade to the latest JRiver version. You don’t have to, I myself am running a five year old version without issues.
I use a hardware streamer product that currently uses Roon / Roon core as its user interface.
They have been working on an alternative for a while now, and will soon release it to allow users to choose an alternative (eg uPnP) interface. Even with some of the benefits Roon brings, I see a slow migration away from Roon towards an open format for this specific product… closing down / imposing restrictions on use is rarely a great business strategy….
UPnP streaming isn’t exactly new. Many streamers have implemented it for ages. Its limitations are essentially why RAAT exists.
It is a useful and friction-less fallback, though, if the streamer supports it and one owns a NAS (edit: or indeed any computer because a UPnP server is installed quickly)
UPnP may be old but it works without internet and on far more devices. The Grimm MU1 which I assume this is the device referred to was designed to support only Roon due to its superior management system now it’s been bitten by this little chestnut of no internet no Roon and its customers quite rightly are wanting alternatives.
As I had no access to the Internet in the past days, I could not reply to each of you for your contributions. I would like to thank you all for your answers to the question, and also for the answers not-to-the-question .
Despite some homes here are still without Internet and without electricity, my village has recovered both four days after the Ciaran storm has gone. So the problem of not being able to use Roon without Internet has temporarily disappeared for me.
I understand that using Roon without Internet is not – and will not be – possible with version 2.x. So I’ll give a try to version 1.8. I upgraded to version 2.0 hoping it would fix a bug with my KEF LSX and it did. That’s why I am a little afraid of going back to an older version.
Still feeling confused for having selected a lifetime self-hosted solution that requires a live connection to a service provider. That’s where the world goes anyway…
I’ve had this work but only with my library, and only with 3.5mm from FIIO Q3 to speakers. From MacBook to fiio is a usb-c connection…dunno if any of that matters lol
Prior to v2.0, using Roon without internet had always been problematic for some users anyway. There are many old threads on that issue, but apart from a monthly (or 60 day?) licence check Roon v1.8 would work offline by design for many users. However, some ISP routers may not function properly without internet, which would render anything but an all in one Roon solution (Roon and storage in same box directly connected to a DAC) inoperable.
Just fired up my lifetime Audirvana 3.5 to check if it could handle the apocalypse player duties. Perfect and sounds great too. Back to roon discovery mode.
Yes, we all know: complaining about Roon will not be tolerated (that is the simple truth in my opinion).
Edit: in view of the responses, apparently not everybody agrees. To me that feels like denying the light of the sun. Curious how long this opinion will survive on the forum.
Personally I’d like Roon to continue local playback duties when the internet’s down. I’m on the overpopulated South coast, Uk, we have awful mobile network connectivity and internet does fail occasionally. So you don’t have to live in a really remote spot to get hit by this! I’d be happy with no search functionality when the internet’s down, I’ll navigate directly to the album/whatever I want to play….
@Jan_Stes, this is incorrect. Nonetheless, expressing an opinion and presenting it as fact, as you have done, is not acceptable. You may wish to edit your post.
Posts are usually removed when they don’t conform to the community’s guidelines or are off-topic. When a community member flags a post for our attention, volunteer community moderators get involved. Occasionally, other posts may be removed in response to infringing posts.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
68
And it now works so well!
Seriously, the Roon folks are going to do what they want because they want to do it. If you aren’t happy with that, use something else.
It would be nice if someone could build something as sophisticated as Roon to play local music on local devices. Seems to be some demand for it, as reflected in this thread. I don’t really have an idea of how I’d play from my NAS to my Chromecast speakers without Roon. Can HQPlayer grow to fill this niche? But it’s hard to do; from a business point of view, it makes more sense to just sell a box like the Nucleus, or move everything to the cloud.
I seem to remember an app that could do this not too long ago, that was pretty much identical to Roon (sans the ‘improved’ cloud-based search facility). Wait, it’s on the tip of my tongue …
.
That’s where the world goes anyway…