Roon has lots of credits metadata about every track and it’s generally hidden. With all the real estate on the now playing screen I think it can be redesigned and enhanced to show you everything that Roon knows about the track, who’s on strings, backing vocals, guitar etc. You get the idea.
How about it, it’ll be the one place in Roon where you can find all info about the current track without having to do anything to uncover the data …
Yes, a very good suggestion! The default could be what @evand suggests, but let us also be able to choose what we want to see (or not) on now playing, like as large cover art as possible, track type (sample rate, bit depth…). And very important: a direct link to now playing on all (or most) other pages and an option to jump directly to now playing after you’ve selected what to play.
I’ve requested a configurable Now Playing screen (mostly to look good on my 75 inch TV) many times… I do’n’t recall any feedback from Roon on those requests unfortunately. Seems they have better things to focus on…
I’ve taken matters into my own hands on the “10 foot interface” feature request – this is what “Now Playing” looks like on my 4K TV:
It’s a fork of the awesome Roon Web Controller project; code is here if anyone wants to play with it.
A good idea. it could do with some more info on the screen.
I don’t use the now playing screen at the moment. I prefer to have the album listing with the associated review and information on display as I listen.
I like the minimalistic now playing screen as it is!
Can’t please everybody I guess.
No, too many different requirements/use cases. The way forward is to provide a set of ‘Preset’ views that one can select from as ‘Profile default’ (just as we can select light and dark themes now or tweak the Play actions) but make them tweakable within limits. Doing all this to suit all the different platforms/device variants Roon Remote can run on is not trivial…However, I thought Roon was due a UI overhauled release version soon anyway?
Even if it is I’d still get great utility from an informative Now Playing screen.
I prefer the minimal approach, as is, with information available if wanted.
There could easily be a toggle in a corner of the now playing screen to switch between various levels of information. It could default to the last one you viewed.
Here’s an example … partial screenshot from allmusic.com, only in Roon’s case the data would be made to look a lot prettier and it would be track based, or perhaps you could toggle the view between the track and the album.
and whilst we’re at it…
Let’s make Bass, Vocals, Harmony Vocals, Producer, Slide Guitar, Drums, Percussion etc. selectable things. The data points are already there. Damn, it’d be nice be be able to find all tracks where somebody or a particular slide guitarist is doing their thing.
“Soon” is probably pushing it. It will arrive when it’s done. Roon Labs don’t like to give fixed timescales, preferring to get it right rather than shipping to meet a deadline. And I’m saying this as a customer, not associated with Roon Labs in any way…
The information is all there, but personally, I like the minimalistic approach. So long as this stuff is optional, then fine…
It’s all hidden, no harm in an option to keep it so.
I have to agree that the Now Playing screen is under-utilized. It would be nice to have options to add more information to the display.
I really like the idea of making the Now Playing screen more interesting. It’s always a bit annoying to go through a few clicks to get to credits, reviews, etc from the current screen.
One of the things that makes Roon so attractive is the uncluttered and relatively minimalist user interface, big transparent buttons and all information available at request. I really hope Roon don’t go in a direction where “real estate” is filled with information.
I would absolutely use a configurable Now Playing screen. For example, I always want to see the year of release for the album from which the current track is playing. I also feel that the “Performed By” section currently shows too much information for me, rather than simply the artist name from my tag. Thanks in advance for inclusion in a future update!
