Just Started my free trial, here are my honest thoughts

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Hi All,

A new Roon user here, with my honest thoughts on day one! of my free trial!

So, Hello all, I’m Chris, and I’m in the UK, and after about 3 months of researching Roon I took the plunge and started my free 14 day trial.

Why take the plunge? When Roon is a simple download to a laptop?

Well, because I knew if I was to become a happy Roon user I would need a dedicated server, so for me, taking the plunge was not simply a software download, but picking hardware and configurating it for a happy Roon experience.

So I’m completely new to Roon, so I’m still learning, so please take that into account, but I wanted to share my experience with you all, and hopefully, pass somethings back to Roon themselves to help improve their products and service.

So I have chosen to go down the route of a dedicated server, whilst I would have loved to buy a Roon NUCLEUS ONE, it was simply beyond my financial means :frowning:

So I went down the Mini PC route, and this is where I started to despair slightly with Roon, let my explain…

So Roon have a list of recommend and supported NUC’s on their website, but when I went searching for those, I found that they where hard to find, as it was old hardware and out of stock!

I looked for a ASUS NUC13Pro, but the price!!! Crumbs, I’m not made of money Roon, do you really want more people to join your service, because at those prices it isn’t going to happen!

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So I read the Roon forums, and saw a completely confusing picture of what hardware could work, it was very of putting, all I wanted to do is get started with Roon on a dedicated server that I could afford.

So I read the forums, I googled, and I watched the very limited number of YouTube videos, and then arrived at a decision of a server…

I got a Beelink EQI 12 i5 model, which cost me £259 from Amazon which I intended to put Roon Rock on,

So here is where my problems start and here is where I think Roon needs to up its game!

First of, just booting into the Bios, everywhere on the forums anything to do with Roon it says press F2 on boot up to enter the Bios, NO, on Beelink, it’s F7!!! That’s 10 minutes of my life I will never get back :frowning:

And this is my point, Roon… I realise you can’t support every bit of hardware out there, but seriously? The big sellers on Amazon like Beelink, if you just updated your page to clarify things like F7 for Beelink, F2 for Intel NUC’s and so on, seriously, it’s not that much work!!!

Adding ffmpeg codec!!! Crumbs, that went bad, following the instructions on the official Roon webpage I could not find the data folder, Roon, no one is going to take out a subscription until they have that ffmpeg file copied into the Roon server data folder, so please, give some thought and guidance around that.

The instructions for Windows Explorer say type \Roon\ that didn’t work for me! Only but after spending 20 minutes searching the internet did I find a suggestion to type \Roon\Data\

Then that did work for me!!! But crumbs Roon, seriously, how effort are you putting into updating your guidance pages to try and ensure as many people who would like to join your service can without difficulty.

I get that you can’t test every hardware configuration out there, but I feel you aren’t even trying, your list of recommended NUC’s is out of date, and you are not even trying to recommended one or two mini PC’s from major brands like Beelink, it feels like to are not expanding the business, and are trending water…

If you where expanding the business I would have expected by now that you would have introduced a “Roon Certified” sicker for companies like Beelink to put on their products, it would be NO work for you, you just give them the criteria to apply the sticker and maybe a website for them to connect to and test stuff, but NO, picking a NUC or MINI PC for Roon is a nightmare, and this is from someone who is trying to give you money for a yearly subscription!

Roon, you need to up your game!

So, my last moan is Roon Arc!!!

On my phone its’s slow and buggy, and my phone runs everything else just fine.

When I first installed it I kept getting “Something has gone wrong” prompts! I had about 4 of them, I don’t think anything was going wrong, it just looked like the software was loading data and syntonising, but it stressed my out and put me off the platform, Roon, you need to fix that.

Roon Arc on my phone is slow… so slow, just scrolling is slow and jerkily , I think its NOT a true app, but an app that just directs to a website, which would explain the poor performance, Roon, seriously ??? Sort it out.

So… is anyone still reading this post at his point? :slight_smile:

I bought a Beelink EQI 12 I5
I installed Roon Rock
My end points are Wiim Pro Plus
I run the Roon app on a Lenovo Tablet and Roon Arc on a Android OnePlus Phone

Do I recommend Roon? NO I DON’T I think Roon needs to up it’s game and give far better hardware guidance and support.

Will I be taking out a subscription when my free trial ends, YES I will, because the user interface and music discovery is amazing and I don’t know of any other service that offers that same.

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If Roon would like to contact me directly and speak to me about my experience then please do!

Anyhow, I wish you all the best!

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I’m just another fellow user here, so welcome to the community!

Roon staff so read Feedback , which is where I have moved your post. My only comment is that you should have reached out to the community straightaway as there is a lot of community knowledge and people willing to walk you through the kinds is problems you experienced.

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But even that you don’t know as a new user, don’t you?

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Not a good way to get started with Roon. Good luck going forward if you choose to do so.

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Hi All,

Thank you to the forum members who replied to my post, I’m still learning about Roon and all that it has to offer, and where I feel it needs to improve.

I just wanted to update my first post with how things are going right now, I have 7 days left of my free trial, however I can say now that I intend to take out a one year subscription.

However, and I really do hope Roon people read these Feedback posts, there are things I’m still not convinced about regarding Roon, but especially Roon Rock.

The good news is my choice of Mini PC seems to be working great, I don’t think I’m stressing it out too much, but it’s doing great so far, however, I can’t help feeling that Roon Rock and it’s deployment on Mini PC’s might not have the focus from Roon that it once did.

Let me explain, so I choice Roon Rock for one main reason, because it offered a lightweight Linux environment combined with the Roon Server code, so no Windows updates, no Linux configuration exercises, just install, and both the Linux and Roon Server code get updated as and when needed, perfect!!!

When you install Roon Rock your Mini PC becomes “Headless”, which means the only way to access it is through an IP address in a browser that then brings up information and details about the server.

Great, and I mean great!

However, the “Headless” information returned is very basic, and I mean very basic, which makes me wonder if Roon Rock is a core focus for the company… let me explain, remember, Roon Rock turns your Mini PC into a “Headless” device, so the only way you can communicate and read your device is through a browser using the IP address provided.

  1. Roon Rock doesn’t even report the name of my device.
  2. I would have loved to have seen a CPU temperature report.
  3. A basic CPU utilisation indication would have been nice.

All these things are basic to the performance of Roon Rock on a Mini PC so would kind of nice to be seen.

Anyhow, it’s all about the music at the end of the day!

Take care all, Chris

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Roon ROCK turns your NUC into a music appliance (just like the Nucleus). It’s designed that way. Just like you wouldn’t expect your microwave to report on its CPU temperature and utilisation.

If you don’t want an appliance, just install Roon on a standard Linux distribution.

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Thanks for your quick reply, but I’m not sure you understand what I mean.

I also own a NAS, and that is a Headless device, but it gives me a basic Dashboard reporting data that relates to the job it’s going.

Roon Rock to me seem TOO basic.

You say that its been designed that way, okay, fair enough, however, that statement has actually now put me of Roon

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There’s nothing to stop you running Roon on a general purpose PC/Mac, or on a NAS…

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That is not what I’m saying, crumbs, this is becoming irritating, good bye Roon!