It’s also not helpful when people say things such as “one thing that doesn’t boil down to personal preference is the fact that dark purple on black is not an easy read for most people in middle to upper age groups.” So you think you speak for “most people in middle to upper age groups,” but when somebody points out that they aren’t “in the same boat” you find it “not particularly pleasant” and “not helpful”. You’re the one making assumptions with, as I noted earlier, no proof. I’m 67, I wear graduated lenses and reading glasses, and I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say it isn’t an easy read for MOST PEOPLE in middle to upper age groups. You also claim this is a FACT.
Yet earlier you posted: “ Of course I don’t have scientific proof. I was going by my own personal experience & the fairly obvious assumption that any dark colour such as dark blue or dark purple on a dark background is unlikely to be ideal.”
All I know, is even looking at a screen shot of the purple on dark black motif starts to make me nauseous and a headache start to come on. A screen shot! So there must be something actually neurologically wrong with ME and that type of color combo/contrast, but still, I can’t be that alone, can I…?
But I did post extracts from a couple of studies into ‘readability’ that specifically state that dark blue or purple text on a background is not an ideal combination, and something that should be avoided. I hesitated to label them as scientific proof, but I think they do give some weight to my argument.
Look - this is getting to be tedious and quite frankly ludicrous. I don’t want to do away with anyone’s favourite purple. I would just like the ability to select for myself an alternative colour that would allow me (and others it seems) to use our iPads comfortably with Roon.
Not really too much to ask for surely? Nor anything that anyone needs to feel defensive about!
I hope I can bow out now, and post a request in the support section of this forum asking for the ability to select an alternative text colour for use on a dark theme background. Others may feel free to object to my request , but goodness knows why they might feel the need!
I suffer a bit from light-induced migraines triggered by looking at something bright, often a sunlight reflection of a car mirror or similar. I’m currently 50/50 whether staring at the Roon screen while working late triggered one of these recently. The initial burnt image I couldn’t “shake” looked an awful lot like the Roon screen (dark theme on an iPad). I was tired at the time, which is also a factor, but I’m at least suspicious.
Like @hmack, I think the best solution is for a customisation option; you can’t please all of the people all of the time. The theming Roon thread seems to be a happy one.
Seems to have improved at last. But to answer your question, Roon Core is running on the QNAP where all my music files reside. Nothing else lives there - my Roon database information lives on the SSD direct connected via USB. 8GB of memory in the NAS. My Bluesound Node 2i gets a direct feed from my Pakedge RE-2 router - no switch in between.
If I’ve understood you correctly, that’s a performance bottleneck right there.
Well I have given it a month, I initially couldn’t understand everyone’s problem. Now I agree, I don’t like the new UI, if you’re going to use bizarre colours in your interface give us a choice of colours.
I have a weird flash in dark mode everytime I click on something on the windows app screen, very distracting.
Please for the love of god, or whoever, restore the album rating on the main screens, I have to go into the individual albums to see it. Why? There’s so much empty space on the screen to put it, this on Windows.
The android app is now very flaky and won’t work at all on my wifes phone.
As is increasingly becoming the case nowadays it’s a case of form over function, “look at our new interface, it’s buggy as hell, but a beta tester says it looks nice”.
That „flash from hell“ has been recognized by Roon as an issue for iOS devices. First time I hear it also happens on windows. Not sure this has been documented as a bug.
Do you have settings > general > customise album display > show album rating set?
Well I feel like a idiot now, thanks that sorted it. Why was it turned off by default when I had it enabled previously?
I’ll install the app on the family ipad and compare it. It doesn’t always happen on the windows app, but it’s quite distracting when it does.
Were you using a different remote or profile?
Probably an oversight? Had the same after installing 1.8 and my „Live“ badges all had disappeared…At least that one was easy to fix 
@BrianW no those settings were not fully taken over.
No, not at all. I installed the 1.8 update and the album ratings disappeared. I assumed it was intended. All fixed now thanks for your help. One less annoyance gone.
Thanks Brian!! I really appreciate your help on finding that setting!
Not sure how that would be a bottleneck, Evan. Music files, op sys, and dbase all live in separate folders in any configuration. Having the dbase folder be on an outboard drive - especially an SSD - shouldn’t result in the issues I’m having. Potential degradation in sound quality? Minor stutters? Ok. But severe dropouts and locks? I still think something else is going on. If you’ve got any technical reasons, I’m all ears. And if someone from Roon has stated somewhere that this is a horrible idea, then I will certainly reconsider my setup. This is how we are setup in our office, and it runs all day without a hitch - but for operator errors, of course
Roon Core and its database are typically located on the same storage. Popping that on a USB connection is going to present a performance bottleneck even if USB3. Some insight here, then Google usb performance and it should become clear:
There’s lots of research on appropriate color selection for user interface design.
You could look at the Air Force guide to user interfaces (due to their work with fighter pilot cockpit design they’re often thought to be the experts on this), which says:
Font color. Black text on a white or very light gray background is recommended for maximum contrast and legibility when viewed in office-like environments with normal ambient lighting. White text on a black background also provides high contrast but can reduce users’ reading speed (compared to black text on a white background).
When I was working for a large company with a great deal of experience in user interface design, our internal design guidelines specified at least 50% absolute difference between the luminance values of the foreground and background colors, and 70% was recommended for light-on-dark. I only remember this because I had to build a user interface design tool which enforced it.
Apple’s design guidelines have been a standard in the industry for years. Here’s what they say about color and contrast, specifically:
Use strongly contrasting colors to improve readability. Many factors affect the perception of color, including font size and weight, color brightness, screen resolution, and lighting conditions. When you increase color contrast of visual elements like text, glyphs, and controls, you can help more people use your app in more situations. To find out if the contrast of adjacent colors in your UI meets minimum acceptable levels, use an online color calculator based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) color contrast formula.
Here is such an online color calculator.
This list of open source accessibility checking tools is a good resource. Most are web page based, but mocking GUI pages as HTML is one approach I’ve had joy with. I’m not suggesting abandoning aesthetic judgement altogether but objective data should inform the design process.
Very interesting. The colour calculator is fascinating. Thanks