Here’s my part.
The interface is not intuitive. This, i think is a big, very big deal. My listening experience is frequently interrupted because i have to concentrate on the new roon 1.8 interace. Check out Dieter Rams on design rules!
Also mentioned before, but repeating:
Roon welcomes me with a big white flash (on ipad), which is very intrusive in a darkened listening room.
Scrolling in for example an album is weirdly edgy because of the blue flashing bars on my ipad when touching the screen to scroll.
Roon feels slower then before with a library of 8.8k albums, 125k tracks running on 2018 32GB i7 mac mini.
Hope this post can contribute to beter a Roon experience for us all.
(made it a new topic, very interested in comments)
In other words use something else or a turntable? Not sure how one is supposed to just play music via Roon (or any other software) without interfacing with it. Trite homilies like ‘just play music’ aren’t too helpful when the whole concept behind Roon is to become immersed in it discovering new music (while playing said music at the same time).
To me, the 1.8 UX has very much a student project feel to it - lets put this here and here and duplicate this function just because, and look at the crazy fonts and colors I came up with! Thankfully I use it mostly on a desktop/laptop so at least was able to change colors and fonts. I’ll be handing off my laptop here in bit to my bookkeeper for a week or two (oh coronavirus) so will resort to an iPad. Not looking forward to the experience.
New GUI and new 1.8 mode of action makes 1.8 a friendly and thoughtful environment to listen to the music and I hope Roon doesn’t screw this up after such individual statements.
Obviously i don’t agree with the interface part.
I do like Roon as software package to listen to music very, very much! And will not part with it.
An example.
Making a playlist of about 50 songs takes approximately 5 minutes in Plexamp with PlexServer backend.
The same thing in Roon cost me 30 minuten.
(Both on the same mac mini server, same library files, both via ipad interface.)
I think it’s a workflow thing. Plexamp interfaces more intuitive than Roon does.
That white flash is horrid. I’m not using my iPad or iPhone much to control roon because of this and when I do I close my eyes for a couple of seconds during launch/switch, can still see it though!
Happens on iPad pro and iPhone 11 pro latest iOS. Quite a few other people are seeing it. Happens on launch and when switching apps. It’s with the dark theme in iOS dark mode, not tried it in normal iOS light mode.
Edit: here’s a video. I’ve not got access to my core but it’s the same white screen but in this case it lasts a lot longer and doesn’t happen on first launch, only on switching to the roon app.
Do you get the stuttery, janky scrolling when browsing around the app? It’s strange how some people neither have the stuttering or the white flash, I’m wondering if they’re linked in some way.
Tick on the search icon and type. If there’s text from the previous search I cannot remove it with the cross ( think this is a bug).
After i typed in what i like to find, i hit enter.
i scroll down to the tracks section if not on top of the list of the results.
In the track section when i tick on the (very small) letters of the band, it goes to the band. I have to go back. when i hit the letters of the album i go to the album. I have to go back. Touch besides the name opens a little menu, but still no playlist option.
I figured i have touch longer to select.
At the top of the screen pops up a blue option to play the song, with again a choice to pul down a little menu, which is the same as described above.
In a circle with three dots a more options: add to playlist.
I select that option a then select the playlist of choice.
Next track.
I use various sources for playlists: suggestions from friends, websites (Darko for example), lists from forum, etc…
So i switch between multiple apps and The Roon app. Problem with this is that Roon need time to think everytime i switch to it, most of the times with a big white flash. it sort ‘resets’.
I am obviously doing something very wrong here. Building a playlist this way is horrible. Is there a better way?
@ SimplicityCompass That doesn’t look too bad. The home page for me is a lot worse. I’ll do a video once I have my ipad in front of me. I’ve rebooted but can’t remember whether I cleared all open apps since updating to the latest version.
If your adding tracks from your Roon library then I would not use global search but the tracks section and use the funnel on track name or album for filtering which is a lot quicker for searching. If your looking for material not in your library then you don’t have much choice but to use general search. This is slower than Plex but its also looking at your stuff and whats in Tidal and Qobuz. I don’t have Tidal so cant compare how quick this is in PlexAmp across Tidal and your own. The more info you give Roons search the more narrowed down it will be though.
I don’t use iOS so don’t have issues with clearing the text , the X has never cleared text it closes the box. If I return to the filter after a search all text is already selected in blue so it’s removed by backspace or delete no need to click on it to delete. This works on pc/Mac and Android not sure why its different on iOS.
Not much you can do about adding to playlists though. Its a shame you can’t just right click and add to playlist as this does get tedious having to do it in 4 clicks rather than 3 clicks that is in PlexAmp.
