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

[Peter_Deschamps (Peter)]

@bbrip

Would I have choosen “Purple” as the color of choice? Nope.

Says the man with the purple icon.

[bbrip]

Roon choose it . I never bothered to change. Well spotted.

[Howard_Seward]

Hi, yes , I listen to classical also and apopreciate the better focus aspects of 1.8.
But, I can’t see how to ‘focus’ on conductor as ‘promised’ in the lead up to 1.8 release emails, any pointers please ?

[Peregrino]

@Chris_KA

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

No, it crashes in English as well!

[Squeezemenicely (Dom)]

@Klaus_Kammerer1

The lack of proper beta testing is really a concern

Big Time! They should have some of the very critical users of this forum in the main Beta team - the ones that give constructive critizism. They would find the bugs. It seems to me there are mostly fanboys in the group - who love absolutely everything that Roon does. The people who reply to every critical message with the - it is perfect for me comment…
The more critical the users are, the better the betatest is.

[Chris_KA]

I had the exact same experience after joining the beta 4 days ago. Especially the international settings problems with the iOS app were instantly noticeable.

[Chris_KA]

Did you really change the iPad Language in the iOS Preference screen?
We are not talking about the language settings within the roon app.

[Michael_Walter1 (Michael Walter)]

Under settings “customize album displays” you can enable the live badge, and other things that were enabled on 1.7.

[Chris_KA]

Hi Paul,
when you use Artists as entry point it seems that there are no composers in “Focus”. However they are there when you use Album, Tracks, Composers and Compositions as entry point.

I don’t know why. A possible explanation could be that a composer does not directly point to a recording but to a composition and is therefore excluded from the Artist page. Just a guess

[Peregrino]

@Paul_Williams

Finally - classical music lovers get heard! As I mentioned in another post, we might constitute a niche market in the overall music world but we are much more likely to appreciate good sound quality and many of us (but not all!) are not only audiophiles but being also privileged elderly (but not yet dead) white males have the means to indulge our interests. This marketing power is also reflected in the overall music industry in general. I suspect a fairly large proportion of Roon subscribers are classical music lovers.

Well as a classical music lover I appreciate the effort, but I’m mystified why they have abandoned the elegant display of album tracks in a multi-part composition: parts/movements are no longer nested (indented) beneath the work’s title, so the view of tracks in a Classical album has lost all clarity. This is surely a backward step?

[Peter_van_Leusden]

It’s a bit awkward to say the new “focus” is merely “changing colors and typeface in absence of other ideas”. It’s a good improvement.

[bbrip]

It surely must be a bug. Has been reported by quite a few people, including the two of us.

[cinematic]

roon should open a topic where they name all the errors and issues which are known by now.
So users can first take a look there if individual issues are adressed by roon yet.
Would make fthe boards much more userfriendly at the moment.

[Yevgen_Bormashov]

Spent a lot of time studying. Concluded: The interface is good for mobile devices, but poorly optimized for large displays: Mac or PC. Small fonts and large amount of unallocated space. 1.7 much better

[Leon_Jehae (Léon Jehae)]

My ROON at 12K
But agree, there are (to) many bugs in 1.8 (settings for example) en 1.7 looked much much better

[hmack]

@bbrip

At least the clusmy UI has been streamlined and sorted out to a fair extend.

I’m afraid I have to completely disagree!

From my perspective the existing, slick and aesthetically pleasing UI has been replaced by a far clumsier, clunky and aesthetically far less pleasing UI in 1.8.

When I first trialled Roon, it was the UI and the beautiful visual presentation of my music library that first won me over before I even begun to investigate Roon’s functionality. Visually and aesthetically, Roon (pre version 1.8) was just so much better than anything out there, and within a day I had signed up to Roon and ordered an Intel NUC on which to install Roon Rock.

Would I have chosen the same direction if I had been confronted with the UI of Roon version 1.8. Possibly, but I’m not sure. It would certainly have taken a much longer period of time to win me over.

Version 1.8 (from what I have seen so far) seems from a visual perspective to have focussed on phones and tablets and in particular on portrait view on these devices. The preferences of those of us using larger screens in order to appreciate the beauty of the visual impact of Roon and its UI (pre-version1.8) appear to have been more or less discarded.

A very, very disappointing outcome!

[chander_nagor]

In short: under the cover of a new UI/UX even more tricky than the old one, let’s take away some more features from Roon and above all, let’s take absolutely no account of the repeated requests that have been made for years, such as Roon mobile, the nightmarish title-by-title identification modification, or the possibility to add home-made editorial content. And more than a year of waiting for this thing…

Not to mention that Roon’s supposed new features (discography, prime years, etc.) only appear when logging in a Tidal or Qobuz account. Why do I need Roon if I already have all this using Qobuz, Deezer, Spotify or whatever? For multi-room use? There are plenty of other apps for that. For transport and listening quality? There are plenty of other apps for that. To improve my musical knowledge? Automatic recommendations and other “more popular” suggestions are just pathetic for a music lover, we flirt with the mainstream all the time and references for thousands of artists and albums just a little more obscure than David Bowie, Celine Dion or Mariah Carey are simply non-existent. Where are all the promises made to the so-called audiophile and passionate audience Roon was originally intended for? We are now very, very far away, what a pity!

[Nathan_Fowler]

@Paul_Williams, as far as I can tell the reviews and star ratings come from AllMusic so they do have some credibility. Wikipedia also rank them highest in their list of independent reviews for any given album.

Personally, I don’t always agree with AllMusic ratings or reviews, they have a bit of a US bias for sure, but it’s still the first place that I go to read an album review. I find it useful that Roon included their album ratings, I’ll have to look this up manually from now on if it’s gone.

I am yet to upgrade to Roon 1.8, and I have no idea how long I can continue using 1.7 but I may weight a while and see if some of the issues can be sorted out.

[mudeford (sean cavanagh)]

I’m not seeing any performance or stability issues.

ROCK on NUC. Linux / PI / Dragonfly end points and PSAudio DAC in the big rig.

IPad Air 4 and IPhone12 Max remotes in UK English.

Haven’t had chance to assess the UX yet, or the iMac install I use as remote in my office / studio (with an SSL audio interface) but given everything is working I’m not approaching it negatively.

[Michel_Goldsteen]

1. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
2. Lyrics in previous 1.7 version are still there, even with Greek songs in Greek typography and language.
   In short, there are, as always, shortcomings, but they can and will be corrected in next updates. It is the same as with updates from Apple with their Mac computers and tablets and phones.
   Be honest to hard working people who have one aim: to satisfy their customers.
   Michel G.