Learning curve for release 1.8

@support Does the development team for the upcoming 1.8 release have any idea of what, if any, learning curve there may be for experienced Roon users for the revised user interface? I’ve been using Roon for just over two years and once 1.8 is installed I fear that I may be back to square one when using Roon.

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There are a number of v1.8 videos on YouTube. I think you’ll learn everything you need from those. There are some differences, but nothing that you’ll have trouble picking up if you are already familiar with v1.7

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=roon+1.8

That’s the same video that was posted (via a link) to this forum several days ago. It really doesn’t give one a good feel for just how release 1.8 differs from the current 1.7 release in day to day use. Hopefully you are correct and I will quickly become a Roon 1.8 wiz!

You’ll be fine. Biggest difference is how Focus works. If you were not a big user of Focus before, there won’t be much new to learn. If you were, you may want to take a day off of work next week since you’ll probably be up late discovering albums and artists and having all kinds of fun. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Can’t say that’s happened to me so far.

Don’t worry doesnt take long, its not fundamentally that much different to 1.7 for most basic playback needs.

I’m guessing that @David_Snyder and @CrystalGipsy are both beta testers and I thank you for your responses and reassurances. I feel better now! Looking forward to Tuesday’s release.

By the way, since I have lots of Grateful Dead live recording in my collection I do tend to use Focus but I’ve been very frustrated with Focus’ many limitations so hopefully 1.8 will improve upon Focus so that it becomes the useful tool it should have always been.

Now if Roon would only be able to identify more recordings I would be super happy. Oh and better metadata is also on the wish list, e.g. the credits for “The James Clown Quartet” should be four names and not “The James Clown Quartet”. That tells me nothing.

Metadata is only as good as the sources, which is limited really.

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Yeah. The main benefit to the new Focus is that you can use it on the Discography page of an artist. For example, with my TIDAL account active, I see 166 main albums under the Grateful Dead’s discography page. With Focus on v1.8, you’ll be able to filter on record label (eg., Rhino), producer (eg., Bob Weir), format (eg., MQA) and then sort the results by popularity, as calculated by Valence. And all of this works even for albums that are not currently in your library. This is a pretty powerful discovery that I’ve not seen anywhere else.

Edit: Of course, for this magic to work, the albums (local or on streaming) must be identified.

Easy out for Roon. An excuse I’m really really really tried of hearing. Even something simple like the lyrics function is completely broken in Roon.

I worked for over 30 years as an engineer in the construction trade and Roon is the equivalent to a General Contractor (GC). As far as the owner is concerned any problems with the job are to be resolved by the GC and the resolution is between the GC and the subcontractors. So if the third party metadata provider is providing bad metadata then Roon needs to fix the problem and not just lay blame on these providers. As I’ve stated many many times before I pay Roon, not the metadata providers and so as far as I’m concerned it’s Roon’s problem and Roon needs to fix it.

Okay end of rant. Back to the original topic.

Thanks again for the explanation. And yes, identifying recordings is kind of important. By the way I don’t expect Roon to identify most bootleg* or radio recordings but lots of legitimate releases remain unidentified by Roon.

  • The Grateful Dead being an exception since there is a whole database of live Grateful Dead recordings called Deadbase that Roon could parse metadata from and thus identify any live Grateful Dead recording.
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