I tried ROON a couple years ago and had a lot of problems, so much so that I didn’t stay with it. The idea of what it does is appealing to me so I was thinking of trying it again and maybe some of those bugs have been worked out at this point.
I have about 10K albums in my iTunes and also now use TIDAL for most of my new music I listen to.
Can ROON play my ITunes files as well as TIDAL files through airplay the same way that iTunes does? I have 4 systems and I like to be able to play music at any of them so this is a really important feature for me. Sometimes I have all 4 playing at once so I’m hoping ROON would be able to play to any and all airplay sources at the same time. TIDAL only lets you play to one at a time.
Is there an iPhone Remote control to control ROON similar to the one in iTunes?
Can you drag files out to portable players such as the iPhone the way you can in iTunes?
If ROON works as good as iTunes and integrates TIDAL I’m a happy camper. I can’t stand the GUI in TIDAL, they are really lacking in many areas. iTunes from 10 years ago works better than TIDAL ever has.
Thanks for the answers. I poked around a little bit but didn’t find any obvious answers to my questions.
Yes to the first part but it depends upon what your systems are. I think any Airplay device is compatible. https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_What_audio_outputs_or_devices_are_supported_by_Roon%3F
I am not a tidal user so someone else will have to answer that part of the question. Sounds like you are asking about grouping endpoints together or is it about playing four different tunes to four different endpoints?
Yes. Roon is controlled from a Remote application. This can run on iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac or Windows.
No, don’t think so. Roon will import your music from wherever it is stored but this needs to be an internal or external disc drive or NAS storage. Just point Roon Core to where the music is stored (called a ‘Watched’ folder).
Asking for something to work ‘as good as iTunes’ is setting the bar pretty low…
Trying another 14 day trial would be the best way forward. Plenty of helpful people on here to answer any questions that arise. Lots of answers here: https://kb.roonlabs.com
Filling the gap in @Anthony_B’s reply … Yes, Roon will play your Tidal albums and tracks and integrates your Tidal favorites with your local library better, IMO, than any other solution out there.
You can’t drag selections out to iOS devices from Roon, but you’ll still be able to do that from iTunes, if you want.
So there is no solution to portable with Roon? I have always used iTunes and iPods hand in hand. I can’t always listen from my main system so getting to hear new music via iPod or iPhone has been a way to keep in touch with my collection. TIDAL has slightly ruined that symbiosis. Will there ever be a solution with ROON to be able to export music to a portable player. If you could do that and it worked without glitches and you could create randomly shuffled playlists (so as to be sure you don’t keep hearing the same things over and over) ROON would be a perfect product in my eyes. iTunes gets a lot of crap but the way is works basically being able to get to the music you want create playlists and send them to your iPod is still more intuitive and glitch free function than anything else I’ve tried.
There is no current portable solution with Roon in the way that you describe. Roon is currently server/client software that requires a network connection to a Core in order to work. You can currently:
Run a Roon Core on a sufficiently powerful portable device such as a laptop. Neither iPhones, iPads or iPods are (currently) powerful enough to do this;
Use a VPN or port-forwarding to establish a network connection between a portable device and a Roon Core at your home. People have tried this with varying degrees of success (search the forum under VPN) depending on available bandwidth (in Australia the upload bandwidth is pitiable). Some people can listen to music, others can only browse their library. This kind of use is not officially supported by Roon because it is not a robust solution and depends greatly on network considerations outside Roon’s control. If you can set it up on your own and it works for you then great.
A portable solution is certainly ultimately intended by Roon, but I would regard it as a long term goal rather than basing a buying decision on that capability.
For the moment Roon users can use the Tidal app for streaming Roon/Tidal content (adding Tidal albums to the Roon library makes them favourites in Tidal) but must use other solutions to play their own files on portable devices that can’t run a Core.
One approach I use is to have Roon also installed on my laptop along with a backup of my music library on a small, portable harddrive that is powered from my USB 3.0 port. It is then quite easy to port my Roon license between my home system and my laptop. It’s a perfect solution for when we head out of town for the weekend or on vacation.
