My (mostly positive) experience so far

I’ve been using Roon for a week or so now, trying to put the trial through it’s paces before committing. Currently running 1.8.988.

There are lots of reports in forums about stability - but I have had no issues. This is in contrast to using Spotify, Tidal, SiriusXM, and others talking to a remote player, AirPlay, Chromecast, DLNA, etc. Songs can be juggled around in the queue/playlist without getting “out of sync”, or losing connection.

The user interface to browse music is great, on other platforms it was way too easy to accidentally start playing a song, interrupting the current song you were listening to, and wiping out your current queue of music.

Identification and ordering of music is great. The newly added feature to manage multiple versions of the same album a welcome addition. My music library is a mix of owned CDs that I’ve ripped, digital downloads from HDTracks, Octave Records, etc, as well as plenty of “acquired” content. Roon runs through the library and identifies it all quickly and easily.

There are a few issues with the library, not sure if this is the fault of Roon, or the music database provider they use, but a few albums have details mis-identified. For instance a Dave Mathews album is identified as “David Matthews”, an entirely different artist. Two Queensryche albums are listed as different artists, one with the umlaut over the y, and one without. Interestingly the following day they were merged in to the same artist. It would be nice if there was a menu option on these albums to report them for reclassification, or allow the user to rename/group/merge.

Album/artist art is missing for mainstream artists that you’d expect to be complete. AC/DC, Erykah Badu, Soundgarden, Taj Mahal, Ted Nugent, all lack images.

I have a few user-interface complaints:

Why are the icons for artists and albums so damn big? I don’t have sausage fingers, nor am I three years old. Why can’t I have a list view to scroll through the artists/albums instead of only fitting four or so on the screen at once?

When using the display feature via Chromecast or a web browser, the progress bar for the song shows the waveform, why can’t the mobile client do this?

When viewing the queue, there is a bar at the bottom to toggle radio on/off. Why does this need to be here? All it does is take up screen real estate. If I want to turn it on/off I’ll go in to the settings.

Amazing stuff? As mentioned above, identification and management of music (especially multiple versions), audio quality (no messing around with the audio, unless you ask it to), support for multiple file formats, including DSD (although ISO support would be nice), the signal path view, showing what transcoding/dsp/lossy decompression is happening.

Finally - as a Linux user - why isn’t there a Linux client, or at least a web client? Managing everything from my phone is “good enough”, but sometimes I’d like to be able to use my laptop or desktop to manage a longer playlist.



Some of the stuff you want like merging artists only appears on a full client, ie not a phone
There are artist photos for ac/DC etc so need to look at that.
Try a main client on tablet, windows or Mac.
No Linux cos it’s got near zero market share. (There’s endless arguments about this on this very forum)

Don’t have a tablet, a Windows machine, or a Mac. If there are endless arguments about it, that seems to indicate it is something that there is demand for. If there is no interest in a dedicated Linux client, fine, give us a reasonable web interface to the RoonServer.

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Post your suggestions for features in the Feature Suggestions category. Over time, Roon may or may not implement some of them, but Roon will not respond. Other users can agree or disagree there.

The best Roon user experience is with a laptop. Large tablet would be next best. Phone is the worst.

You won’t get the full experience without a full client.
Even a cheap fire HD 8 plus will give you access to the full interface.

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Couple of reasons for this, I think.

Sometimes one wants Roon Radio and sometimes not. To go into Settings each time would be a PITA many people would immediately complain about.

Roon Radio is by zone, so in a system with multiple zones putting the switch in Settings would be clumsy.

Agree that there doesn’t need to take up the entire width of the screen. OTOH, what would you replace it with?

Why not put it in the dropdown at the top right? Only adds one tap and gives you back valuable screen real estate.

See, the problem with suggestions like this is, if the switch were moved to where you want (for example) there would immediately be a whole raft of people who would have their reasons why this isn’t a good place and why was it moved, etc., etc. Still, as @Jim_F says, there is always a Feature Suggestion section.

Glad you like Roon. Welcome to the forum. :slightly_smiling_face:

Fair enough, just place a check box on it to disable it, or swipe it to the side, whatever.

Agree with others that you should consider getting an inexpensive tablet to see the full capabilities of the interface. It is basically (exactly?) like the windows/mac desktop app.

Roon on mobile isn’t giving you the full feature set. I use it for most use, but always refer to pc for library maintenance and creating more focused searches.

If you hang around you will find that the roon team are a little bit my way or the highway around certain features and directions of the software. Sometimes that leads to good things, sometimes they ignore what seem like obvious issues or underdeveloped parts of the software. It certainly leads to lively discussion :grinning:

That attitude would be a bit frustrating when spending money every month on the software.

Depends on whether you like the direction that they are taking or not… :grinning:

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I did say it lead to lively discussion :sweat_smile:

And if every customer must have his own way or no way, developing Roon would be not only a frustrating but near impossible proposition; wouldn’t you agree?

Use Roon if it now is good enough for what your needs are, not for what you think it could be if only pushing hard enough. Anyway, it’s not a relationship till death do us part

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I’ve been involved in software development and deployments for decades, I get it. At the moment Roon seems to be in early days (it is) and missing some features, everything I’ve suggested could be fixed/implemented without changing the look and feel of the app, in fact, most of those features already exist in other products, including a few that are completely free, yet this paid product doesn’t have them figured out yet.

Like I said roon see it differently, as do some users.
Everyone has opinions, some get adopted - as in the latest release, some get ignored.
As @Andreas_Philipp1 said, best to get in with it or it can drive you mad :crazy_face:
Playlists as an example haven’t essentially improved since V1.

Maybe Roon is not for you.