I don’t like 1.8 - it feels like a massive failure

Unacceptable for my money. 1.8 is a major regression compared to 1.7. This new mess is an unthinkable catastrophe. Someone needs to be held responsible for this debacle. WAS THERE NO BETA-TESTING AT ALL?

For me (and certainly many other customers):

  1. UI is imbalanced, ugly, too much negative space, non-customisable, the colors are ungodly.

  2. The fonts are too small and the new typeface is inadapted. Trying to look modern doesn’t make you modern.

  3. iOS crashes are UNACCEPTABLE.

  4. The waveform bar has been RUINED. Who validated this? You think all your users are nimble-fingered ballerinas? The bar is too short and too small! Massive fail.

  5. Where are the star ratings on albums when viewing discography? This WAS useful. Sorting by popularity is based on what and whom? Whose opinion is this?

  6. Light and Dark modes are too light and too dark.

  7. Stll too much header space at top of home page. You changed/moved the user icon but you didn’t fix the space usage.

  8. The hyperlinks on pages are not clearly evident. You have to tap/click on everything just to see if it’s a live link.

  9. Live lyrics on individual songs are disabled? Why?

  10. Now playing page typeface and fonts are MUCH TOO SMALL.

  11. Wasted space on album views. Now I can see EVEN LESS album covers! Who had this brilliant idea?

This is only a partial list of grievances on form and not even functionality. You’ve massacred the UX, added some new functionalities that are yet to be proven and called this a major revision. This is pure heresy and totally disrespectful to your customer base.

The entire 1.8 experience is negative. I cannot believe you released this. All this hype and effort just to cram this this thing down our throats is incomprehensible. You had a good thing going and now you have literally destroyed it.

For the first time in 3 years, I have totally lost confidence in Roon and am now actively considering other solutions.

So disappointing to see what you’ve done.
Brgds.

155 Likes

No doubt it could have been handled better, but let’s try and think of our blood pressure :roll_eyes:

57 Likes

Handled better? The central and company-wide dysfunctions are slightly deeper than that. I enjoyed Roon up thru 1.7 and am not fundamentally against change and evolution. 1.8 is so horrificly ruined that I will jump ship for sure. It would take them months just to address 10% of the grievances they garnered in the last 12 hours. Total joke and incredibly disrespectful to customers.

30 Likes

I do agree:

  • No Radio links works
  • Settings is not working
  • Bad screen for Credits
  • Constantly crash on iPad
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Actually I don’t mind the bugs and that it’s not stable for some. This can and will be fixed soon.

The bigger problem for me are the poor design choices. To some I might adapt, but on a whole this is going in a complete wrong direction.

This is bitter, because I was just about to find Roon to be my end game audio software and now it’s fubar.

39 Likes

I didn’t need a new version. With each new version, roon develops from an extraordinary software to an ordinary software with all the inconveniences. From stable software to buggy software. From simple software to confusing software. Listening to music in a relaxed way is important to me and that I can operate all of my hi-fi devices with software is awesome. But if there is frustration because the software is not stable and confusing, the fun stops.

43 Likes

I think there has been done a lot of input and work for that update. I hope roonlabs will find soon the missing link to get a functional system. All other things I can’t judge in the moment because it’s not working proper. Let us calm down and let the people do the job. Maybe it is an option to get back to the 1.7. version for people who have tecnical issues as long as we get a working version. I would like this!
Cheers Christian

15 Likes

My settings are also not working, wth?

I’m only seeing the general settings, but nothing else

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Hands down, there are currently bugs preventing a stable use of Roon 1.8. But I totally disagree that

It would take them months just to address 10% of the grievances they garnered in the last 12 hours

Unfortunately some bugs which should have beed discovered in beta made it into the released product but I am pretty sure that the Roon team will iron this out in a matter of days not months

6 Likes

Massacre !!!

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What Roon should of done a long time ago is offered to have as many of their paying customers as they can join a beta test program so that there are many more people who can experience bugs and report them properly. For this release, it seemed as if it was a beta given out for a special “friends & family” promotion so they barely had any beta testers. This happens all the time, what they should do is make a poll every few months of the top Feature Requests from the customers and we all get to vote on what Roon should prioritize adding to the software so that no one will complain about any new updates because we all would mostly agree to it. I don’t think 1.8 is bad but it does feel weird using it, some features I liked from Roon before have disappeared such as when you are viewing Lyrics now it shows a black screen behind the lyrics instead of the image of the artists and other subtle things that I thought were completely fine. 1.8 wasn’t a major update, it is just something that at least refreshes Roon for the time being but didn’t add anything in terms of new important features. 1.8 to me feels like a windows application on a Mac and a small update that took longer than any other 1.x update to be released.

I’m sorry if some of it doesn’t make any sense, I didn’t proof read my message because it’s really late here and I am exhausted.

35 Likes

It is a pain to try to find the credits for each song, it was within the now playing screen but not anymore :frowning:

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Same here.

No major issues for me. Using Windows 10 PC (core + endpoint), MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, Android (remote), Raspberry Pi (endpoints).

I like the design changes and everything I’ve tried so far works with no issues.

43 Likes

it seems that the iOS crashes only occur if you use the non english versions

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I also don’t think they should of overhyped us regarding the release of this update. They could of done that with something that would of been revolutionary (future 2.0 version) but the emails did make it seem a lot better than it actually is. And I do get that Roon doesn’t have many developers which is fair on their part to be able to develop this stuff in the first place, but I mean it felt like they only listened to people who like specifically classical music and didn’t care about anyone else. The “in their prime” section doesn’t even show for any artists on the computer and when it did once, it only showed 4 out of 16 albums from Chris Botti for instance. I think they should allow us to part take in the beta releases because it will help them fix things more efficiently than just throwing a new release at us.

1 Like

No you don’t. I run my setup on an old i5 desktop - dedicated to running Roon. The key is to have it directly connected to the router/modem. Having a decent router/modem also helps.

The iOS app also crashes if you are playing any song and try to click on DSP while the song is playing.

5 Likes

As someone working in the software industry with a strong interface to end-users let me say this: congrats to roon … you did everything u can do to get rid of your customers …
Stability, perfomance, usability … what a mess

And for the fan boys: using a Nucleus in a stable and bullet prooved network. So no space to blame the user.

20 Likes

ROCK is free unless you buy the nucleus. Running ROCK on i7

Some absolute hates are others absolute delights!

I use IOS and have never had a problem - and this has been the experience of many IOS users. The same goes for Android and Windows 10 laptop.

I ABOMINATED (yes I can use the capitals on my computer as well) star ratings - how were these arrived at! At least the written reviews provide some explanation. Popularity is easy to determine - and does not rely on “opinion” - simply determining how often a disc or track is played is easy to do and would be an indicator of “popularity’. I have already found in my relatively limited use, that for me this is a much more useful indicator.

There are some features that I used to use often that are not available in the update - but I have already found workarounds for them. I suspect that as I get more familiar with the new functions, I might actually find that I don’t actually needs these.

I am of relatively advanced age and yet have no problems reading the text and appreciate the “airiness” of the design. I think the general look and feel is an improvement on the past.

On balance, I think this is a great update and I am prepared to continue to be challenged and delighted by the different ways I can now interact with both my extensive personal music library as well as that from Qobuz.

46 Likes