Is there support from people paid by ROON

@Wdw Do you have a problem you require assistance with, I see your question concerning turning the Radio function on and off has already been answered.

Russ (Roon user)

Like I said above, Roon staff is available on a daily basis in the support forum.

While I doubt that anyone from this community is ‘hanging around all the time’, with thousands and thousands of Roon users, there’s usually someone at hand.

We come here to exchange experiences, learn from other and heck – maybe even socialize a bit. And luckily, quite a few are not adverse to answer a few starter’s questions along the way.

8 Likes

OK but what sort of response time are you expecting, as far as I could see you where complaining about lack of response 26 minutes after posting a question. I charge people a lot more than Roon and only guarantee 24 hour response. Just remember where they are it may be 3 in the morning.

I see it that users are posting to assist other users and it helps to build a strong community with a sense of “ownership” … it’s a win - win in my book.

The majority of issues / questions can be solved this way … as it’s often a matter of user education / guidance rather than a bug in Roon.

For the more stubborn issues / potential bugs etc. Roon staff are at hand to step and collect detailed diagnostic information to help track down the root cause of the problem.

Does having a strong friendly helpful community aid RoonLab’s? Of course it does but look at it like this for each question that can be answered by the community means that a Roon guy can concentrate on that “bug fix” or “enhancing that next feature” (Roon is a very small software company, not a corporate giant like say Apple) so in turn we the users get a more stable / polished / better featured product sooner and cheaper.

As I said in my book it’s a win - win.

PS Just in case you missed it all Roon staff on here have the Roon icon as their logo, as per the replies you have previously received from the like of @Danny, @Mike, @Eric and @Joel in past topics.

PPS If you click on the forum’s about link you can see a list of the Roon staff and their activity on the forum.

2 Likes

Being “old school” isn’t an excuse for unreasonable expectations of others.

5 Likes

I understand your concern here, but I can assure you this isn’t some clever attempt to shirk responsibility for supporting our product. Myself, @Eric, @vova, and the rest of the team are here every day making sure questions are answered and problems are resolved.

Often, issues are resolved by members of the community before we even have a chance to respond, but you can always flag us directly by including @support in your post.

Furthermore, I’d put our record of resolving issues against any call center or email system out there – we’re a small team but we don’t take this lightly, @Wdw. If something hasn’t been addressed to your satisfaction, please let us know.

11 Likes

Remember that users have a much wider range of configurations (storage, servers, endpoints, DACs) than Roon Labs (or any other company) could have for testing, so users sometimes have first-hand knowledge that Roon Labs has no access to. How many users here with, say, a Synology NAS (with a particular software release and file layout), an Intel NUC running (a particular version of) Ubuntu desktop, a microRendu (with a particular software release) and a Schiit Bifrost Multibit (just one of my configurations)? I’m a lifetime member, but I gladly share my knowledge and experience with others here for free, within reason relative to the rest of my activities, of course. If I can help someone enjoy music more readily with my help, I consider that a net + for all.

4 Likes

Roon a ‘corporate entity’!

I know they have a CFO, CTO, etc but I’ve never thought of them as a corporate entity and long may that continue. :wink:

2 Likes

The entire company does support, and 3 people are pretty much dedicated to various forms of support. All support, other than billing support with sensitive information, is done via this community site.

This has nothing to do with millennials – it’s the reality of supporting a product like Roon with so many users for such a low cost.

We used to have dedicated hours of phone support when we were Sooloos, about 10 years ago, but that product was well over USD$10,000 – Roon is the price of a sandwich and coffee every month. The goal here was to bring this experience to everyone, not just the rich.

Also, as noted above, our community is full of members that are happy to help out fellow members, and the support you will get from many of them will be better than our any other support due to their experience with a very wide range of configurations and hardware.

Are you finding support ineffective?

Oh… when we launched, a few of us did some phone support for the first few days. It was totally not scalable. When we started redirecting users to the community site, the help was faster and more effective.

12 Likes

I know right ? You’d think at least a hat …

But more seriously, I initially came to the forum with a problem and another user helped me, so I thought I’d pay it forward. There are many helpful and knowledgable people here.

The Community contribution to the forum is complementary rather than in substitution for Support. The Support devs are working on the forum and you often see them analysing logs to help resolve difficult issues. We often flag threads for their attention.

Many of the problems people have, however, are familiarity issues or have been previously solved and often the Community can assist, meaning Support can handle more of the stuff we can’t do for each other.

2 Likes

Community-based support helps everyone. When someone answers a question on the community, that answer is available to everyone else for years. When a question is answered on the phones, only person who gets the answer.

3 Likes

I must add the Roon family (staff & members) is helpful and willing to spend time helping members solve problems. This is a great forum, and my favorite one of the audio boards. Conversations are respectful, and people chime in to get the problem or question worked out in a prompt fashion.

1 Like

Roon community is by far the best I have ever experienced when it comes to product support, both users and insiders are always there answering any questions that I might have. Sometimes I’ll just email Roon directly when my query is more personal, and I rarely had to wait for the following day to get a response. I don’t know how it could improve further.

All, I surrender! My inbox is stuffed with replies to my query. I am a life time subscriber so hold no malice to ROON.
Not a big fan with customer support handed off to web fora but, hey, these are different times. The passion expressed to me on this issue is exactly why a customer may wish to have contact with an informed customer support group rather than fanboys on a web forum as the discussion can quickly devolve into negatives.
I know that my time with Computer Audiophile has completely energized my understanding of that subject but you must acknowledge the dynamics of these type of sites.
A few very active guys start to assume ownership…my first query, some time ago, had some guy advising me to use the search function more effectively…of course with the smiley of redemption thingee…like I need or want that
Forum works tremendously, support also works.
End of this issue,
Best,
Warren

2 Likes

Warren, it’s entirely possible that this miraculous product just isn’t for you.

Buying something doesn’t give each customer the right to determine what they get.

Roon is quite clearly, a wonder. It does something the most valuable public company in the world hasn’t figured out how to do. It has not just a fabulous UI, but better sound. And the pace of revisions is terrific.

This tiny company manages to provide all of this for less than the cost of a dozen records.

I’d much rather have the team keep their promise and make ever better versions of the software than drop everything to answer one person’s question.

If Roon had made a different promise, the promise of, “we answer the phone on the first ring and give world-class support” then you’d be spot on. Most of the consumer-facing companies that make that promise stumble very badly as they grow, because that sort of support is getting harder to deliver.

Thanks, Roon team, for making magic.

7 Likes

Warren
The old school way had benefits but fast software releases would not be one of them if Roon had to spend more on support and less on development. We all win and one day, if you stick with this product, you will become a fan boy! (I hope)

Cheers
Tom

It so happens that I responded today in a different product forum to someone that didn’t like the idea of “forum” support. The relevant part of that post is below.

“Regarding forum support vs official support: Over the years I have lots of experience with official support channels from Apple, Microsoft, Dell Computer, cable TV companies, etc. Without a doubt, the official support was almost always useless rubbish (people who essentially know nothing reading from a script). In comparison, the help I can get from random, unofficial users just by googling my problem has helped me get specific, useful solutions. And the help I can get from dedicated product forums where there are experienced users is *always” useful."

I do understand what they are saying completely. Roon is Very expensive compared to any other library software. I think it is amazing in some ways, no doubt. But it does often feel like some kind of open source free project in the way it is presented, and of course it certainly isn’t. They undoubtedly have tried to create a helpful, 'audiophile ’ culture on this forum, which does work and people are very friendly, but it also handily saves them a lot of money employing extra people to answer questions. Like many other aspects of the ‘audiophile’ culture, it can appear to be exploitative as many people that are into their sound will spend thousands on hi-fi equipment, so everything associated with it is overpriced, and sometimes even mis-sold. I will probably be subscribing shortly, as I can afford it and It does form a bridge on my PC that is otherwise painful to set up with regards to bit depth and output to a DAC … but lets not kid ourselves here … it isn’t a community … it’s an LLC tech company based in New York, the CEO is Enno Vandermeer, who, with his partner/s, sold Sooloos to Meridian, became Executive Vice President of Meridian and has now done a deal to splinter away again with Roon. My point is … they are astute business men and i’m sure there will already be a plan in place for maximum profit. Social enterprise it is not folks.

But nice job and great software here on a positive note :slight_smile: [customary smiley face to negate any bad feeling instantly]

2 Likes

Roon is not expensive, nor is it like any other music library management/ playback software out there. It is, however, more expensive than lesser products, something I don’t think the Roon team need defend or be apologetic about.

4 Likes

Compared to other hi-end products out there with proprietary hardware/software Roon is very reasonably priced.
It is extremely adaptable and you’re not locked into using a closed system like some of the other servers out there.

3 Likes