Is Roon fun without your own music files?

Hi,

I red a lot about Roon, but everyone has tons of their own music files. I don’t have even one. Listen to lots of music but only via Spotify or own vinyl. Never bought digital music (40 yrs old here). Did I miss something? :slight_smile:

My question: Is Roon fun without your own music files?

I’m about to subscribe to Qobuz.

Thanks!
Joep

Roon is great with Tidal, Qobuz, or both.

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You missed load by using Spotify as MP3 is not the best way to enjoy music. IMHO
You can enjoy Roon with Just Tidal or quobuz. I like to have a hard CD copy of my most precious music.

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If you are excited about exploring new releases, connections to legacy artists, and have both Qobuz and Tidal, I think it is a great interface. I use the Qobuz app at work and explore new releases all the time. At home, Roon shows me far more new releases than the Qobuz app and just a pleasure to use. I say get a trial of all three at once, dedicate some time to play around with it, add a bunch of stuff that you like to stream to your library, and see if it is for you.

I use Roon mainly for my own ripped library, so the new release feature is how I interact with Qobuz and Tidal via Roon the most.

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Although I do have my own files, and that is why I got Roon in the first place, I now find the richness of the streaming experience from within Roon to be the greatest benefit. I must say that I now listen to streaming content more than 75% of the time as I discover connections and new music. Highly recommended.

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Clearly, yes. Highly recommended…

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Thanks!! Roon and Qobuz both gained a new subscriber today. Will spend my sunday figuring it out. The Roon community seems alive and kicking, that’s very Nice!

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They should if they want to stay future proof. The new generation hasn’t even seen a CD in their life, while the older generation still don’t want to believe CD is allready braindead as a medium. Personally I like to keep a copy of my music on a waxroll.

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The Roon folks will deny it, but just about everything you see from Roon these days is geared toward people who use Qobuz or Tidal. I would go so far as to say Roon is focused on customers that use Qobuz and Tidal exclusively or almost exclusively.

Has there been a new featured added in the last 18 months that benefits people with mostly local libraries?

I would put it this way: if you don’t have a single locally stored music file you care about, then Roon is only a significant improvement over a streaming service’s own interface IF you want to manage your streaming favorites like they are a local “collection.” IF not, you are paying quite a bit for just an alternative interface to a single set of content. Now, if you plan to use both Tidal and Qobuz, then again those integration features of Roon are nice.

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Of the 3K albums in my library, about 1K are from Qobuz. You don’t really need a local library for Roon to be of benefit.

Roon has a great Discover feature, which I like because it highlights all sorts of things from my library.

Qobuz does not have a recommendation tool based on play history (like Spotify and Apple Music have), and that is a huge drawback for me when I just use the Qobuz app at work. I use the Qobuz app at work, listen to stuff, then click on the heart to add it to my favorites. By the time I get home, those favorites have been added to my library in Roon! I then play them to see if I like how they sound on the main system and purchase accordingly.

Other than the discover tab though I think Roon pops up with reccomendations (as Jim_F mentioned in recent previous comments) I am wondering if this only happens if you use Tidal with Roon.

Maybe Qobuz with Roon does not give reccomendations like that, because I am not getting these reccomendation pop ups.

Yes discover tab in Roon for sure works with both Tidal and Qobuz.

I lovingly ripped all my CDs to Apple lossless audio files, thinking my own carefully and slowly-collected audio history would comprise much of my Roon library.
In practise I would say 90% of it was available on Qobuz, sometime in a higher-res format, or newer, better recordings, so I used Qobuz’s versions preferentially as they were also better indexed, labelled and artwork’d.
And, as others have noted, one of the joys of Qobuz/Roon is that you are led towards interesting new music as well as have a vast archive for free within your subscription of old stuff.
It takes a while to lose the concept of ‘owning’ music and music being tied to some unique physical or digital format. Once you take that step, it’s a joy to stop concerning yourself with formats and start enjoying the music again. Though I appreciate that there is beauty in a vinyl gatefold sleeve or some 78’s as historic records.

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I could hardly disagree more with your view. I can’t comment on Qobuz since I don’t have a subscription, but with Tidal I have listened to more new music in the last 2 years of Roon than in my previous 50. Broadened my horizons massively, and I already have a very large, eclectic music collection of my own.

But with Roon? My God, the wealth of information, the reviews, the links to related artists, producers, composers, band members, genres, history, and much more. It’s astonishing. It opens new avenues everytime I listen (usually several hours every night), and the new recommendations function is terrific.

Roon has helped me dispense with many of my prejudices about music genres, bands, performers, composers, orchestras, and more, with various reviewers giving me a very different perspective on them.

Honestly, I think it’s misleading for a new listener and thoroughly diminishes the value of Roon by suggesting it is just an alternative interface.

I say this with the greatest of respect, of course! Anyone who has bought into the Roon experience and is still here listening to that thing we all love, great music, deserves respect. :sunglasses:

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I have to back Gafflyns statement up.

I have a few, maybe a hundred, cd’s of my own, and about the same number of records, and I have used Tidal as well as Qubuz (not at the same time) for some time. But what has opened my eyes is Roons search facilities, their wealth of information about the music. So I wouldn’t miss it again, as I have almost the hole world of (my kind of) music at my feet, when using Qobus through Roon :raised_hands::grin:

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Hey, you guys are as free to love Roon as much as you want. I’m an annual subscriber and just had my sub renewed, so obviously I think it is worth it, despite being waaaaay more expensive than anything else on the market. But I have 5000 local CDs, hi res downloads, etc., and I stream to many endpoints and thus leverage Roon much more than as a single streamer front-end.

All I’d say is the Roon metadata does tend to feel stale after a while, as it does not really refresh with respect to existing content. They’ve changed and refreshed images, but artist bios and album reviews seem pretty static. So eventually you either have to dig deeper or you’ll feel like you’re reading some repeats. That’s one reason I have supported the idea of aggregating reviews and bios from more than one source and allowing people to add their own.

I will still hold to my point. You get some metadata and connections out of Tidal and Qobuz. If all Roon is is a different front end for a single streaming provider, I don’t think it is worth nearly doubling a month’s subscription fees. Reasonable minds may differ.

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This was beautifully written and this was the reason why I purchased Roon, in hopes to discover new music through a wonderful interface.

I used to think Roon was overpriced and serves really no purpose, but the overwhelming amount of reviews towards it made me reconsider and look into it again.

With that said though, I stay firm on my stance that Lumin APP on Lumin streamer sounding better than Roon.

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Difficult questions to answer mate. Is it fun? Sure it can be, if you have a basic setup that requires some serious bit-rate manipulation… Though if you have a decent ‘system’ with adequate DAC capabilities, such as, Simaudio or better (as in my case) - then it’s quite the opposite.

The only purpose I find for Roon (with my Simaudio system) using Tidal and Qobuz is the ‘Radio’ function.
Unfortunately, this feature is far from fun. The ‘Radio’ song suggestions are wild, wacky, and have zero relevance to one another. So in my experience - Roon is extremely frustrating without music files.