It’s a little too expensive for me

Why is Roon overkill?
There is more to Roon than zones. If this is your thought then you may not have used Roon to the full and enjoyed the extensive possibilities to explore your library and the fascinating inter connections possible. Or you may not wish to, which is OK but Roon is so much more than a simple music player.

3 Likes

Exactly. We have two Roon setups (one at our holiday home), each only has one zone, with local ripped files and Qobuz. Not overkill at all.

Michael

2 Likes

Seriously check out Audirvana before you buy a license,

I have tried it and prematurely bought a license, I have really struggled to make it Work across my network, . I just gave up !! The remote struggles to hold a connection

+1 for people not liking Audirvana. I purchased TWO licenses (one Mac, one Windows – never heard back from the developer when I asked if I could switch the first license to the other platform), and found it horrible and never use it. Not disputing @David_Snyder liking it – just saying that I didn’t.

1 Like

Haha…I thought my statement might be a little controversial when I wrote it, but please hear me out.

First, I totally agree with @Chrislayeruk that, “Roon is so much more than a simple music player.” However, I see many people in this forum who only want a simple music player and find that Roon is “a little too expensive” for them. For these people, Audirvana is likely a better fit for their needs and cost expectations than Roon, much as it pains me to say this.

The user interface that Roon provides is miles ahead of Audirvana, and Roon’s licensed, enhanced metadata layers provide multiple views into one’s music collection that are superior to what Audirvana offers. Roon offers live radio stations and much better music discovery tools and DSP. However, both Roon and Audirvana integrate with TIDAL, Quboz and a local library, and they perform the same basic functions for a simple “laptop + USB DAC” setup.

In a simple “laptop + USB DAC” setup, Audirvana sounds better. Depending on the laptop and DAC, it can sound quite a bit better. I almost didn’t buy a Roon subscription because of this. As anyone here who has taken the time to read Roon’s KB article on Sound Quality knows, the reason for this is that “Roon works differently from other software.”

To get the most out of Roon, one must be able/willing to run Core, Outputs, and Controls on physically separate, networked devices. While one can undoubtedly deploy Roon this way for a single zone, many (most?) single-zone folks don’t go to the trouble, and then they hop on this forum and complain that they don’t like how Roon sounds or they object to the price.

I have two music setups. One is for my workplace (which I’ve actually not visited since March) and is composed of a MacBook Pro with USB attached DAC/amp and hard drive with a complete copy of my digital music library. For this system, Audirvana works beautifully. I can stream TIDAL and listen to any music that I own, and it all sounds great. I never use Roon at the office because Audirvana sounds better and because I don’t own the network there, so I can’t deploy Roon properly.

At home, I never use Audirvana. Roon Core runs on a dedicated Intel NUC with a wired network connection. My local library is on a Synology NAS, and, depending on what’s powered on, I have as many as ten different zones, including Sonos devices, Allo USBridge Signature, Raspberry Pi’s running VitOS, DietPi, HiFiBerryOS, and RoPieee, and even a little NanoPi NEO2. Set up properly, Roon looks and sounds better than Audirvana in every way.

At home, Roon is the right tool for the job. At my workplace, it isn’t. Audirvana is a better fit there.

I see lots of threads in this forum started by people who complain about the price or sound quality of Roon relative to alternatives, like Audirvana. If someone has an “Audirvana”-sized use case, Roon is probably never going to be a great fit. They should just buy Audirvana and be happy rather than banging their heads against Roon’s very different paradigm. That’s really all I was trying to say, in far fewer words. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

It’s true that I found Audirvana Ok (and much better than iTunes) when I used it for already-tagged AIFF stereo. It was when I tried adding in ripped multichannel music that it was completely unable to catalog anything, get album art, get tracks in the right order… And I wasn’t willing to massage metadata/album art, as Roon just handled everything…

1 Like

Totally. Depending on how wonky the metadata is, sometimes even Roon struggles with identifying local files. But Roon tries harder than any other software I’ve tried.

High quality embedded track metadata is not a universally solved problem, sadly. For example, dBpoweramp does a pretty good job, but tools like DVD Audio Extractor (for ripping multi-channel music from DVD-A and Blu-ray discs) leave adding embedded album art and track metadata to the user.

I’ve occasionally found PerfectTUNES (from the dBpoweramp folks) handy for identifying/fixing albums with missing album art and for doing lite track metadata editing.

Don’t laugh, but I still use MediaMonkey to perform bulk metadata edits. Under the “Music” tab, there’s a “Files to Edit” view that’s great for finding tracks in my library that have missing metadata. Although Roon can present a nicer view when metadata is missing, I think track metadata grooming is worth the effort.

4 Likes

@David_Snyder – thanks for those tips/resources.

I’ll add/edit metadata (a little) when adding a small number of new discs, but I’ve always shied away from messing with metadata en masse, felt too daunting. Perhaps I should look into the tools you mention, as well as others such as Yate that keep coming up… But time is short, metadata stuff is tedious (to me) and so if Roon handles it well enough for my low-ish standards, that seems to suffice for me, at least so far…

1 Like

How much is too much? Is $900 too much for a Roon Core appliance?

Try Audirvana 3 months with 3 email, I try so hard to love, but Roon better. $3000 streamer better $300 streamer, my brain telling me.

In your experience and I would argue that the issue is the Laptop. With a full Desktop computer and USB DAC, Roon sounds great. Better than Audirvana. imho, and with my gear.

Perhaps, but many others have reported the same experience. It would be interesting to do a poll, but my hypothesis is that your experience is less common (Roon sounding better than Audirvana in a simple Windows/macOS computer + USB DAC setup).

Edit: I also wonder if Audirvana’s “SysOptimizer” implementation for macOS gives it the edge in sound quality vs Roon on a MacBook Pro laptop. I’ve not tried Audirvana on Windows, but I know the macOS implementation is more mature.

I never argued with Audirvana sound but my use is a network one , Server Renderer etc , on Win 10.

I have speakers on my PC (Logitech reasonable computer type) but I don’t listen there other than casually when doing other stuff

The iOS control app simply won’t stay connected

JRiver on the other hand “just works” to my Cambridge Audio CXN as does Roon through an RPi

Nice job on your reply — good info!

This is a great example of being in an echo chamber! :ear: :ear:

The majority of Roon users do not have a separate Core.

The majority of Roon users start with 1 active zone and then get more. Dedicated Cores come much later.

And now the echo: the majority (by a lot) of Roon users have never used this forum (or least not logged in or visited it from the browser they created their Roon account with).

4 Likes

This is stunning! They are missing up on a lot good sound. Thanks for sharing

This makes me sad. What do you think about having the Roon UI ask users who have been running an all-in-one system for more than a month or two if they would like to have Roon install Roon Server for them and migrate their database automatically? The dialog could include a sentence or two explaining the benefits along with a link to the knowledgebase (and this community) for more information.

I have found the same to be true…that something like 80% of Roon users have never moved past the “first install experience”. There’s so much more unexplored territory that subscribers are completely missing out on.

1 Like

Well, many do continue to use more Roon features over time… But our growth of new users is quite high as well, so that changes the dynamics of who does what and when.

You’d be surprised how many people use Roon with the built-in DAC on their computer or with a Sonos or Apple TV. Even on the forums here I’ve seen someone go from very expensive Meridian systems to Sonos and be happier for it. I’ve also seen someone who wouldn’t buy a DragonFly end up with a dCS Rossini after a few years.

I wouldn’t be sad for anyone using Roon. Everyone has a journey to take and not everyone’s priorities are the same as yours (or mine). Joy can be found across many dimensions, especially with the variety we have with audio, music, ears, and gear.

The users I find to be the luckiest are the ones that gave up on new music and forgot about the old. A Nucleus + 12.9" iPad is usually a life changing experience for them, regardless of audio device.

8 Likes

Wow. This sounds like when you hear many Excel users only use it for summing figures!

But I get this, when I first got Roon I just ran it on my iMac and listened on the built in speakers. And then as I explored Roon and read what members here had to say about SQ, DACs, DSD128, MQA, ethernet vs USB, I got the audio bug big-time. Just for that road to Damascus moment, Billie Holiday in front of me in my room, Mahlers 6th the orchestra tearing the walls down, Joy Divisions drums like industrial thunder, Johnny Marrs chiming guitar, Martha Wainwright’s soft voice right next to you!

But as you say joy can be found in many dimensions, except perhaps mp3! :wink::wink::wink:

Cheers
H

4 Likes

Maybe we ought to do a poll of Roon users and ask what is your income and networth and how much have you or will you spend on your music playback system. I’m just kidding, of course, but I suspect a lot of new Roon customers come here with little more than a desktop or laptop computer and pair of inexpensive headphones.

1 Like