So now that we bothered them all with notifications, a big shout out to all of them and many thanks.
So 36 under the title, 9 of our quite active volunteers. Thatās a lot of humans with their own unique personalities and experiences.
Without writing another novel I will say that I think that overall they keep the forum in a healthy positive state. I have had some one on one conversations with a couple of the mods and feel that they can be fair but firm, and the best part is that they donāt seem to hold any grudges.
I think that some of these most recent comments in this thread have to do with the Titan CES announcement, I had poked fun at the flowery wording in the copy. I would like to publicly apologize to the marketing department if this felt disrespectful. It was only meant in jest. Many of the comments about the viability of this new product were a bit rough after all itās just a CES press release so far. We should all be hopeful that Harman-Roon will be successful.
Letās all have a good new year and be kind to one another
Rob
Laughing at flowery language in a marketing release isnāt disrespectful IMO, it was flowery and I cringe when I read stuff like that.
People should point that out and point out other things, they need to see that feedback.
I donāt want to see a sterile forum, full of yes people singing kumbaya. Weāre paying to use the service afterall.
My original remarks were because someone mentioned abuse specifically, criticism done constructively is fair game and I genuinely did laugh out loud at the marketing blurb.
I hope Roon sell millions of them, I wish Iād thought of it.
It did. Not just change posts but delete them and then hide a thread where I explained what happened. Not the modsā¦Roon staff (Kevin IIRC).
Caused me to withdraw from the community for about 6 months and since then Iāve not felt the same about the community.
Here was the thread, which was (is?) hidden but not deleted:
To be clear, Kevin did PM me. But he effectively took control over what I could post on that matter and covered his and my tracks.
I believe you. Itās just that Iām always cautious with such things that I havenāt seen with my own eyes. I fell for something similar in the past and it turned out to be wrong. (Not saying that it is wrong here, itās just a matter of principle).
Thanks for posting the reference. I am in principle OK with editing posts if deemed necessary, but it should be marked as such
I agree that moderation is a necessary part of a forum. But not that posts should be edited except to delete rules violations. Deleting my objection is what really lit my fuse. Iām over itā¦
In my opinion they should delete the post rather than edit it.
Editing can totally change the post
I donāt think there is a hard rule. 90% of a post can be fine, informative, etc., and the last paragraph turns into a rant calling Roon or other users names. It happens, and itās not always best to delete it completely
I think it depends on the edit, Iāve seen mods edit a post to remove an email address in view, thatās acceptable and desirable IMO.
I get your point tho, if itās removing text in a conversation it should never happen, if done in an underhand way that is not brought to the attention of the author or readers it borders on deceit, particularly when the meaning of the post changes.
Terrible behaviour.
Just happened to meā¦ I find it disingenuous for support to suddenly engage with customers telling them that their unidentified albums are to blame for bad server performance, and that Roon wasnāt designed as a āfile management systemāā¦ That Roon isnāt a file management system we all know, and most of us donāt even know exactly how many albums are non-identifiable, nor why this is suddenly to be considered as a problematic edge case for performance. I responded as much, and the post was deleted by, I believe, a support person.
Itās quite obvious that this forumās tolerance for negative feedback is ever less, and in the whole I feel that itās vastly better to simply stay away from this place. If it is not possible to say that a support personās response is perceived as not quite ok, itās better to remain wholly silent.
I sense a growing disenchantment of many long-time users, and this will not be reigned-in by heavy-handed forum moderation.
Which is a shame because you have a lot to offer this community.
I sometimes feel tempted to respond, especially in the Audio Gear Talk of the forum, but as this was a place to discuss audio gear it nowadays feels more like a battlefield. It seems very polarized and even people in the middle that want to share experiences are being bullied away. I personally donāt think that manufacturers of high-end gear are only in the business for the money and to rip us off, and even if this was so, I just donāt want to believe this because that does not make me happy. Roon and Arc do make me very happy. Time for me to unsubscribe from this forum, but I canāt figure out how to do that.
I never fell in love with any kind of forum .
B2B forums may behave differently than B2C, but in general itās for sure a matter of luck to find or get the exact information or solution to your specific issue. Yes, things repeat quite often here but I think itās not different somewhere else.
Forums live on sharing thoughts publicly about a specific topic. Totally voluntary, with a minimum of brusqueness, without any guarantee of liking, understanding or solution.
Yes, the mechanism of transferring official issue tickets right into the forum is somewhat a bit disturbing. But we know why they do so. And the future will tell us if there will be a significant change.
But, what I do believe, a much more compact and constantly updated source of relevant information would be great. But we all know thatās not for free.
This forum is also over-moderated at times, and that can get a little frustrating. Not that I am declaring the end of the world, but sometimes I think that the moderatorsā mission of keeping threads organized results in a sort of āno fun policeā type of undertone here.
I do understand that certain threads have topics that are useful as user references and there is a legitimate reason to keep them organized. Then there are other threads that would never have that value, so why try to keep them on topic? In that scenario the legitimate moderating would be to avoid a flame war.
For example: there was the beginning of a āheated debateā on sampling rates (/s) and because of a few posts that werenāt even flaming each other, it was put on slow mode. Kill the fun and the mood:
I appreciate what the mods do. But that doesnāt mean that it isnāt over-done at times. I donāt mean to single out the above thread or modā¦I posted this after a cumulation of that type of moderating.
Agree. At times itās ASR all over again. With all the āwe know the truthā kind of comments that treat everyone else as idiots and the whole audio industry as criminals. Itās not that Iām not aware of a lot of snake oil and magical thinking, let alone the noise of YouTube reviewers, thatās an important part of the audio world, but if one takes this (aggressive) attitude and opinions too seriously, then all audio companies should be shut down (well, not topping and SMSL, I guess) and these people would tell the world how to make the perfect audio gear because they know it all. Itās amazing how the Roon forum is becoming this toxic environment, even though itās populated by older people (like me). Well, I guess thatās how things work these days. Peace
Agreed. I also donāt like the fact that when you post it initially is with your full name, you have to request to have that changed.
I very much value my privacy and post nothing online using my name.
Amen! Wasnāt even heated.
Important? How? A large part, sure, but Iām not seeing the importance of it. It disturbs me to see fantasy masquerading as fact. I guess we all have our various irritations.
One might alternatively argue the problem is that the companies which are doing things, and promoting ideas, harmful to society, are not criminals. Because we donāt have the necessary laws in place to protect the susceptible from predatory vendors and their followers.
Well said, every time Iāve made an attempt to comment on something and provide some first hand experienced response in the subjects such as GASPā¦ digital cables making a difference or such, you get dog piled by a handful of very loud, very opinionated responses about how itās impossible blah blah and case closed. To make matters worse, any evidentiary info provided is suspect in some way or another.
No one simply just doesnāt comment; Instead apparently thereās an obligation to provide regurgitated third hand rebuttals with zero real world experience. There are billions combinations of gear, in a billion combinations of environments then factor a varied degree of skillet in actually listening but the outcome is always predetermined one side is myth the other is fact. Moderation here is indeed heavy handed and from what Iāve perceived usually unilaterally applied hence the topics always end the same.
God forbid someone spend a few dollars on a decent DDC and a good power supply. LOL
Anyway, enough for one evening. Goodnight everybody. Iāll remain an infrequent member here, coming in a couple of times a year to figure out if and when a Roon upgrade goes very sideways.
Iād say thereās plenty of blame to go around in terms of the lack of civility in some posts. Both sides should be able to state their case without attacking the other. Iāve seen that happen but itās the exception more than the rule.
The fact is, if youāre going to post something that is contrary to science and engineering, that is going to invite skepticism. Opinions may vary, but my observation is that if someone posts it humbly as their experience and is willing to explore why and open to discussion on the merits of that experience, that is less likely to attract a condescending response than those who baldly post that X router and Y non-spec ethernet cable sound so much better due to non-science possible reasons. Itās partly in the tone of the claimant that triggers the tone of the respondent. Then it swirls downhill from there.
As one who has often posted a science and engineering based response, I can tell you that my motive is always the same - someone who is relatively new to digital audio needs to have access to a balance of opinions or they are going to think they canāt get digital to sound good unless they buy these products. But Iām not super strict - I mean, here I am listening to a tube preamp and appreciating the sound of the 1950s Amperex 6922s thinking theyāre so much sweeter than the Sovteks I had in there before.
There are different cultures in the audio hobby and they tend to collect around certain forums. To me ASR is a bit strict ā Iām pretty sure my DACs sound different from each other, albeit I believe thatās mostly due to their analog side ā but then again look at AudiophileStyle where itās mostly the digital tweakers and they gang up on those presenting science and engineering based thoughtsā¦going so far as to having rules that scientific rebuttals are prohibited in some sections of the forum.
In terms of here at the Roon forum, because itās a relatively complex software product, I believe the culture here leans toward the science and engineering crowd because it takes some of that knowledge to use Roon well. People understand IP based networking and how packets work. And the Roon team themselves tend to favor that side because they know that you donāt need a $10,000 server to feed the same packets as an old laptop to a streamer on the other end of the network.
Itās not the contrary opinion that is the problem. Itās the fact that people canāt maintain an even tone. Humans are just a lot more emotional than they themselves want to believe, and have trouble disengaging that side of themselves when presented with contrary viewpoints. At least we donāt have that in politics or government