Well spotted, Will.
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From my own personal point of view…
Any chance you could do like Windows did…
In the old days before the spin cycle of continuous ‘‘updates’’ to keep a product on trend and ‘‘looking modern’’ Windows offered a choice called classic windows…this enabled one to maintain the look of the previous version sat over the new stuff.
I only listen to albums and the ability on the previous Interface to see ‘‘suggestions’’ was great…this is now too spread out and messy…a.’‘return to previous version look’’ would be greatly aporeciated
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At last a positive attitude in this discussion. 
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I can’t get my remote to recognize the zone I’m using, I can only control Roon directly from my Mac mini. I’ve reloaded the app multiple times
Aloha - I have neither the time nor interest in reading 1276 posts. What’s the story, is Roon 1.8 still a Massive Failure? Or has most of the substantive issues been resolved?
Just wondering if the coast is clear to upgrade.
Many bugs have been fixed, but not all, and not all missing features have been restored but most. More updates expected. Summary including links to release notes for the updates:
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1.8 is no longer a massive failure for me. Since I have moved to 1.8, my system has been speedy and flawless, pretty much just as it was with 1.7. The update was also quick and flawless on my setup - Roon Rock on an 8i5 Intel NUC with Windows 10 Desktop, laptop and iPad Air control devices.
My initial concerns were primarily with the aesthetics of the new UI, and with a few bugs and functionality omissions, many of which have since been quickly resolved by Roon in a couple of patches since the original release.
I had been annoyed with the stark nature of the default colours used in 1.8 which I felt were a huge backwards step by comparison with the more subtle colours used in 1.7. There is no theme customisation offered by Roon, but some users have identified ways to ‘hack’ some of the config files in order to create a plethora of different and subtle new themes. This has made a huge difference for me, and I find my newly customised themes to be very acceptable if not quite as aesthetically pleasing overall as the UI in 1.7.
There are only two real issues for me now. The number of albums which can be displayed per page has been significantly reduced, but Roon may eventually offer an option to rectify this in a future build. Secondly, a number of pages in the UI have obviously been designed for use with Roon control devices in portrait mode, and therefore slightly limiting for users with PCs or large laptops with widescreen screens.
However, if you use a phone or small tablet as your control devices, then portrait mode should work well for you if you don’t mind the colours of the new UI (primarily purple/black or purple/white).
If you run Roon Rock on a NUC, the upgrade should go well, although some people with less standard setups have reported problems.
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Solid balanced summary.
with roon 1.8, “purple rain” is played more often than before, psychologists are still puzzling why. 
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I am new to Roon, and I really like the software. Recently it is upgraded to 1.8 and I have no issue with that. It’s only became an issue when I wanted it on my Freenas.
I probably tried Roon server on every platform , the Roon server works great on windows, Mac, Linux. and the Rock can run on any PCs I tried. To me it’s really great if Roon server can work insde Freenas.
I don’t know much about Linux, I haven’t used Linux for over 20 years. I installed ubuntu and Roon server on different test PCs, it works great! but I would prefer Roon server to run on Linux wihin NAS.
The same ubuntu installations inside Freenas or Truenas virtual machine were successful, but the Roon server doesn’t work as expected. Roon will work immediately after setting up, but not after rebooting the system. the symptoms are, after rebooting, Roon will stop playing music, on the remote application will show these information when you try to play music:
“Playback was interrupted because a track fail to load…Too many failures… Stopping play back”.
(In fact, above error message also can occur in other occasions during normal use. for example, you moved or deleted a file/folder in the library and then you tried to play them)
Naturally I tried to check the possibility of sharing issues, permissions etc, but it didn’t seem to be the problem. I can copy some songs to ubuntu VM local folders, still the same problem.
I do find a few solutions to this, such as , A. don’t ever shut down the computer; B. when it’s not working, re-install Roon server in the linux terminal, very simple, just copy and paste: sudo ./roonserver-installer-linuxx64.sh, and you are good to go before rebooting it. C. block the internet access of the virtual machine (ubuntu), Lan has to be working , since you need remote app to control it. To achieve this , I just set a wrong gateway in ubuntu then everything seemed to be fine and you can reboot the computer whenever you like. The obvious problem is that Roon server does need internet. (to download album info etc, but it will let you enjoy music just fine)
I probably installed dozens times of ubuntu on virtual machine , almost every time was same failure. by saying ‘almost’ , because I realised sometimes I would have good luck. It turned out to be some update of the Roon server builds are good!
For example, I didn’t have this ‘fail to play’ trouble in Roon server software (in Linux) build 753, 756, and 763, now it updated to build 764, the Roon server in VM machine would not work properly again (and I still can use above tricks to get around)
Anyway I think this is not something I can control. I finally decided use a PC ubuntu server, it never has such issues. yes, I managed to learn how to mount a second hard drive for my music library and sharing folders on home network.
Overall I like Roon very much, I can see lots of people complained about it after upgraded to 1.8. Consider I am a superficial user, I don’t have any of their troubles. I hesitated to purchase a NAD M33 because it’s not Roon certified, I found the Roon file transfer protocol is superior to airplay, Before I get a proper Roon certified endpoint, such as a streamer, I found it’s a good idea to install Rock on a old fanless minipc, for example I have several useless Dell WYSE mini PC with 16G SSD, it’s perfect to run Rock software and work as a Roon certified endpoint (and connect to DAC by USB). Also , a volumio on Pi is very good option to work as Roon certified endpoint too! Unfortunately , volumio on PC (such as on WYSE) is poorly supported, the Roon bridge plugin doesn’t work on x86, have to use airplay if you have to.
It was never a “massive failure.” The fact that a massive whiner discussion exists does not, and did not, make it so. There are other, more positive discussions in this community. Your impressions will be greatly influenced by where your mouse pointer lands.
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Well…when an update makes a software crashing while scrolling for example through the Tidal window or when you cannot open the settings page then you can call it definitely a massive failure. Nothing to do with whining. Simply very bad QA. Good thing was that these language related issues that made Roon unusable have been fixed within a couple of days. A UI is always something you can argue about. Some like it some don’t.
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And yet it all work fine for me and 10s 0f thousands of others. Not a massive failure at all.
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No. That does not make it a “massive” failure. That makes it a failure for YOU. I have had no such problems. I like 1.8 and it has functioned well for me with Tidal, Qobuz and my library since it was released. Is it perfect? Of course not. Nothing is.
Kudos to Roon for quickly addressing issues that were affecting SOME users.
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@Oliver_Stephan makes a fair point with this fault IMHO. When you have an international user base, get bitten by internationalisation settings and it affects as many people as this did you have a testing problem.
I don’t think it makes 1.8 a failure, but I’d be reviewing my continuous integration/deployment processes. The roll out could, and should, have gone better.
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Everyone who had a problem has a fair point.
It’s the “massive failure” term that I find laughable. Clearly it is not.
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Do you know that saying “what goes around comes around”?
I’m not dissatisfied with 1.8 so I’m not going to label this release a massive failure.
It’s just that when a manufacturer overhypes the product for years upon years, then shovels on more hype and never fully delivers on the hype that people get annoyed.
This is a very understandable reaction to me.
There is a divide between marketing and reality. Caveat emptor as the Romans used to say. There is also a divide between what the customer expects and what the customer is willing to accept in terms of quality versus hype.
Get the latter wrong and customers will get upset.
It is also unwise to assume that all the users who don’t post on this forum are all happy and satisfied. There are many people who don’t bother to complain but just pack up and leave.
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I do love 1.8, but one thing I have noticed is that the response from my Galaxy tablet can be pretty poor at times. Can take several taps before whatever selection I am trying to make actually responds to my touch. Out with Roon the tablet responds quickly to any touch request I make, so I’m ruling out the tablet being the problem. Anybody else experienced similar?
I’m not sure why you’re addressing this to me. You seem to be agreeing with the fact that I don’t think 1.8 is a massive failure.
As for:
“It is also unwise to assume that all the users who don’t post on this forum are all happy and satisfied. There are many people who don’t bother to complain but just pack up and leave.”
It is commonly thought that those with complaints are far more likely to post on forums than those who are happy with a product. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it indicates that the number of complainers isn’t a good gauge of overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction. In the unusual case of Roon, there are also many lifetime subscribers for whom “leave” isn’t a particularly attractive option.
My old statistics professor used to say that in marketing surveys negative answers should be weighted more than positive answers because most people tend to either avoid conflict or doubt that complaints will be given much attention.
I agree with this.
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