“For the Roon Labs COO to proclaim this is the best release ever and has fewest user issues is frankly delusional.”
Indeed. I’m feeling an imbalance of marketing vs reality in this latest release.
I’ve been a lifetime sub since 2015 so I can’t say this applies to me, but if I’d just ponied up for lifetime based on 1.7 and been hit with the 1.8 update, it would feel like quite the bait & switch.
The major issue here is that roon as a piece of “live” software precludes rollback and all but insists you’re on the latest version. It seems likely that the majority of the roon user base has been built upon local library users who may or may not also stream. It seems to me that 1.8 is a step backwards for many of these people.
Imho, the roon team should have seen this kind of reaction from these people to 1.8 coming…or perhaps they did, and decided the new direction was worth the short term pain. Personally, after being an early adopter and roon evangelist for the past ~5 years, I am for the first time looking around at other options. Never thought I’d do that.
As someone who has strongly criticized Roon version 1.8 based on posts and screenshots of the new version, I feel that I have to redress my position somewhat now that I have followed through with the update on my own system.
I run Roon Rock on an Intel 8i5 NUC, have a principle control device of Win 10 Desktop with large (32") monitor for my main system, and Win 10 touchscreen (15") laptop or an iPad Air for my other systems.
The update from version 1.7 to 1.8 completed flawlessly and very quickly on my system, and although some relatively minor bugs are apparent, version 1.8 runs every bit as well on my systems as did version 1.7. I have a bonus in that I no longer experience the very annoying issue of missing on screen metadata when listening to Roon Radio.
I am not a fan of the UI’s new look with either default Dark or Light themes. However, when substituting some of the themes displayed in the Tinkering/themes threads and getting rid of the circles used to display artist pictures, the UI becomes much more palatable. I am now fairly comfortable with the new look and even the fonts. Roon should now offer more subtly coloured themes - an easy inclusion for Roon developers - and this would also ‘sort out’ the iPad which can’t benefit from the ‘theme tinkering’ process used for other devices. These themes should offer alternatives to large areas of white text on pure black, or black text on pure white which lead to eye-strain.
A few obvious tweaks are required. These include:
an option for more albums on screen and more tracks displayed on screen in playlists. This is a major restriction on all devices, but particularly on the iPad.
consistency with regard to the use of colour to denote areas of text which constitute a link. Links should be a different colour from standard non-link text.
the new ‘Focus’ feature is much less intuitive than the original
So, for me Roon version 1.8 is no longer the massive failure I thought it was. I still prefer the fonts and general aesthetic of 1.7, but I can now live fairly comfortably with version 1.8. I won’t be looking for an alternative music management application just yet.
Sort of got caught. My iPad autoupdated to 1.8 so I can’t use it with my main roon core (on unraid linux) that’s still running 1.7. I can access my main core from my windows machines, though, which didn’t update.
I have another roon core running on windows 8.1 on a 4th gen NUC. I moved the license over, upgraded it to 1.8 and have been testing 1.8 from the iPad.
I would probably upgrade the main roon core to 1.8 but for the fact that the 1.8 core on the NUC can’t’t see my DAC connected via USB, though roon sees it as an ASIO device. There are several active bug reports regarding core not seeing DACs, so I’ll wait a while. Do I want to gamble that a 1.8 core on linux will work with the bridge on the NUC and stream to my DAC? Nope.
Yes this is a small help. But what is really needed is not only a loose thread but an actual pinned status page that would allow Roon Developers to state day by day progress of the 1.8 bugs.
All users would get used to this new proposed status page and would check in there looking for like issues. When they see same recorded issue, there would be no need fo them to either create another strand on same bug or create a Massive Failure 1.8 thread in frustration.
I agree, I created the topic for the reasons you mention.
Elsewhere I’ve suggested that for each major release the forum has a pinned banner (as used during outages or Nucleus/sub offers) linking to a service like Trello showing how Roon are responding to issues from that release.
Interesting to see how much those figures have changed since my original post (though they may have been underestimated even back then). However the figures you’ve shown emphasise the point I was making even more - “hundreds” of complaints, or even “500 users” as someone later quoted is really a very small percentage of both the total number of Roon users as well as the percentage of active users using this forum (however you measure it).
This is important context from which to view the complaints especially as many users (myself included) are not experiencing any technical problems, nor have major issues or criticisms to make of the new layout or functionality. Personally I really like it.
As I said before, this does not mean anyone’s problems or opinions are in unimportant though it is not unreasonable to expect people to express themselves in a respectful way or to provide enough information for others to attempt to help them. Otherwise it becomes little more than a toxic rant and things will never improve for them and people like me will lose interest in trying to help.
Yes I signed for lifetime in December. It does feel a bit of bait and switch. And it does got me thinking what they will take away next. After being on the roon fence for a long time , and then finally committing, I feel like being at step one again.
Audio devices randomly disappear in the iOS app. Have to reboot Roon Core before using
Mixed Zones when playing to Bluesound multizone (e.g. Select living room Power Node plays in Backyard Node)
Unable to accurately adjust Volume levels in some devices
Some Audio devices show in settings but are not selectable for playback
Play bar at the bottom doesn’t show in iPad, I have to exit the screen and come back for it to show
1 BlueOS PowerNode device doesn’t show in UI
