Making good

Feedback
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Some will know me as @menzies , a former lifetime user who gave everything up with Roon due to issues that affected my use of their product. Issues that didn’t seem to take priority. I’m still happy I did this, but still love the full concept of Roon.

At the beginning of the year, In a brief exchange of messages between the current day to day head at Roon it was mentioned they were focussing on fixing issues. Longstanding issues and in my mind, making the core rock solid (pun intended).

Rightly or wrongly I took this as Roon increasing staff levels across the board on support through to the developers. In part that seems true.

I have seen a number of issues get fixed over the past 9 months, but most of these were for newly created bugs when another fix was implemented. That does seem to be the Roon way. Some bugs reported in EA made it through to production. Why?! How?!

There should be a point to feedback, and my point is that Roon is still failing in my eyes :pensive_face:

Basic select, play etc works, but there are issues that affect some differently than it does to others.

Over a month ago (exact timeframe unknown, around Nov 3rd) it became impossible to use the share function with unidentified albums. It was reported on the 3rd. Roon wrote on Nov 5th words to the effect that a fix it would be rolled out shortly in EA. There have been several EA releases in this time. No fix yet. Is this timeframe too long. I think so.

On the Nov 3rd Jamie dropped the dangling carrot of a new feature. The donkey has bolted now and the interest with it I feel.

To some, fixing the share function is more important than introducing support for Nugs.net. A feature request that was started 5 years ago and only got 18 votes. I appreciate new features could help boost Roon user numbers, but for long time users of Roon, their patience is wearing thin.

I created a thread the other day because the original thread created on Nov 3rd had closed for the share issue. Roon did not update the thread for over 30 days and it closed automatically. Granted, it’s marked [ticket in]. There are a good number of threads marked as this. Some are several years old.

There are more

So when some (longstanding) issues go without an update by Roon, users could be left wondering “What’s the point of using Roon?”

Back to my new thread reporting, confirming the share function is broken. You get a reply like the below from Roon support. I appreciate English may not be Vadim’s native language, but the use of clearly placed bold type, the wording and punctuation really annoyed me.

Usually these situations would see the original thread reopened and a merge of threads take place.

A message to Roon, @danny @Jeff_P @brian

Fix the stuff that’s reported (and reproduced) as broken quicker. Bugs from more than 6 months ago must be made a priority. These issues should be targeted before new features hit the top of the pile.

We know you’re passionate about Roon and music. We also know you’re in this to make a few $’s so you can live and feed your families. Your customers are spending their money for that to be possible.

It’s been over 30 days since the new feature hint was dropped. Either something has gone wrong, the deal isn’t finalised or something else, so put that to the side for now. Focus on fixing some big bugs before the holidays. A new feature now will likely bring new bugs, resurrect old bugs and all during the festive holidays when the Roon support and dev teams are having a well deserved special time with their loved ones.

Please take stock of things.

This forum used to be a thriving music loving community. A mix of users sharing musical experience, what they’re listening to and battling head to head. The past year there has been a decline to the spirit of the community. Even Roon staff have dropped off the radar and reduced the amount they take part in community discussions.

I’ll leave it there.

I finish work today and have 16 days of festive family time ahead.

Happy holidays everyone :christmas_tree::santa_claus:

Peace and love to you all :dove::heart:

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So the big News here is @Mr.Flibble is the same person as @menzies … just WOW :hushed_face:

As for bugs and issues, I fully understand why you left Roon to begin with. For me I feel like it has gotten a bit better this year, but if you are suffering from the bugs in features you use then not good.

Have a great Christmas break and enjoy the music

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You didn’t know that? I thought it was obvious.

Anyway, I love Roon and have no issues. I suggest we let Roon do their thing and if it doesn’t meet your needs, find something that does. Feedback is good, but bashing on Roon because they don’t respond to your satisfaction seems like frustration for you and them.

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Indeed, Jim. The signs were clearly there. Back in July, I wrote this as part of a reply to Mr.Flibble:

AJ

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To clarify, I’m not a disgruntled user. Roon have a feedback section for users to explain if they’re unhappy with the product. I’m not happy with the product.

If you buy a car and you’re not happy as something broke on it, you’d go back to the dealer to get it sorted. Roon is the car dealer here, but the forum is the only way to contact them.

I got fed up with the lack of fixes to my issue back then. The issues that affected me were reported for several months prior to my departure and weren’t fixed until a few months later. I very much doubt that my cancellation aided the progress, but it’d be good to feel feedback given helped.

There are still a number of issues that were reported years ago that affect my use. They affect everyone if they use those features. If you don’t use those features, or careless, then Roon isn’t broken for you.

Since then I’ve installed and removed Roon several times (at my cost) and was at a point happy with progress. They have made good progress in areas that affected me, but also new issues crept in. Minor ones, but ones that have impacted my use.

I’ve no axe to grind. If it isn’t working for me, I move on. The power of choice.

Roon has always been a funny beast. Some don’t have the issues some do, vice versa on occasions.

@Jim_F I do sincerely hope you’re well and I’m really glad Roon is trouble free for you.

@WiWavelength you were correct, well done, but sorry there isn’t a prize for that :wink:

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I’m pretty sure that these guys don’t work at Roon.

@danny and @brian may still hang around but I don’t think they’ve been active since they were forced to implement folder browsing. @Jeff_P may still be nominally running the company but he doesn’t engage with users and has never really expressed much interest in understanding the user base and its needs and concerns. The rest of the company seems to be slowly disintegrating. It also remains to be seen, for example, if @jamie is still an employee or if he fell victim to the nugs drama (debacle?).

The regular cast of Roon defenders will surely find fault with your posts and mine and continue to explain how Roon works great for them but, for the rest of us, it continues to have a variety of issues that come and go and Roon appears strangely willing to allow the known issues to sit and percolate in release builds for extended periods of time.

Roon is the best music system of its kind in the marketplace. It deserves energetic, proactive, engaged management that can manage through the complex issues it faces in retaining its leadership position: architectural investments, bug fixes, user-delighting features, marketing, business partnerships, retention and growth, addressing the goals of its new-ish owners. I think that’s what @Mr.Flibble wants and its certainly what I want. It’s never too late, @Jeff_P - you’re always welcome to show up here with energy and humility and say, “Hi! I know I can be doing a better job of listening and engaging with this community - you folks are the lifeblood of Roon and I want you to know me and know that I’m doing everything I can to make Roon better than its ever been.”

Just imagine, @Jeff_P how successful this product could be if your users were telling their colleagues and friends “You’ve got to try Roon - it’s awesome” instead of “I use this thing called Roon but it’s hard to recommend because it’s actually pretty hard to use and has issues”.

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A strong, firm but equally fair post there @gTunes :+1:

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I was aiming for irony :roll_eyes:

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Reading a comment like this from support goes against all best practices in support.

The comment discourages users from reporting issues they encounter if they have been reported before. As a result, the true scale of an issue cannot be assessed correctly. Support will never know if an issues occurs once, dozens, hundreds or thousands of times. So how can you prioritize?

I’ve mentioned ITIL before and will do so again. For Roon support, Incident and Problem management are areas that are well worth investigating.

Another question I ask myself is: why is it that while this community is positioned as the primary, if not only, support channel for Roon, the person who, according to LinkedIn is “Customer Support & Success Manager” at RoonLabs does not appear to be active on this community?

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The LinkedIn profile relates to @beka , and I’ve always found her to be a very helpful Roon employee :+1:

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Thanks for clarifying that.

Apologies to @beka

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Are you sure? Remember when the Feedback section was near the top of the page and had more allocated space to feature subject titles?

Not sure feedback is really desired. I’m not even allowed to post without approval.

That said, it has gotten a little more stable for me in the past year although introducing new ways to confound usage. I’ve just decided for now to live with what it is and ETM (enjoy the music).

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You may have a point. I never see any Feedback topics showing up in the “Latest” tab. They do show up under “New”, as well as “Unread”, but never under “Latest”.

Perhaps it’s my user settings / preferences, but I’ve gone through all menus can can’t seem to find anything that may be causing it. I have muted the Support category (under Preferences > Navigation) so they don’t show, but Feedback is not muted and is not showing either.

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This is simply how the category is setup in the forum. Roon staff do monitor this category and Support.

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Roon staff do indeed monitor Feedback, but there was a deliberate decision (a few years ago now) to stop replies appearing in the “Latest” section. This was explained as an attempt to declutter. It did, however, look like an attempt to reduce the visibility of brand criticism. Of course I might be being overly cynical.

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