New to Roon, and I’m already tinkering!

Tinkering
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Hello all!

So, my journey only started this week, after a couple of weeks hearing about ‘Roon’. I wanted to dip my toe (so to speak) in the audio world. I’ve always been interested in music and the highres/lossless world and signed up to Tidal in the last year, and most recently Qobuz (I have a 3 month trial currently).

I explored some YouTube videos and came across Darko (which I’m sure many know), and he was talking about the Schiit products and it looked perfect for my needs. Not wanting to go crazy I purchased some Schiit, namely the; Schiit Modi 3 & Schiit Magni 3. I now realised I need a DAC after all to appreciate the higher quality audio both services offer. After exploring his channel more, I kept hearing the name ‘Roon’, and not having the slightest clue about it, I took an interest. Well, that of course has lead me to sign up yesterday for a trial and become a member on the community today.

I downloaded and installed Roon Core on to my MacMini 2018 and had a snoop around. After a couple of hours I realised it was something that I’ve actually been looking for, but not looking for at the same time. In the last couple of years I’ve moved away from Windows after being a loyal user for the last 20+ years which made me give up MusicBee as my organiser and tagger.

That setup lasted all of 4 hours… I didn’t want to keep my Mac on all the time just to browse and listen to music. I looked around on the forums and the main site and saw that you could setup ROCK. After reading the guides I thought about getting a NUC, but looking at the costs it’s something to which I can save and put towards the Roon subscription.

This is when I remembered that I have a Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF which hosts an old Windows XP Pro install for all my old games laying around. As it’s not really being used, I decided to take out the old HDD and install an SSD. I read up on guide to install a ROCK as a ‘MOCK’, and within 15 minutes I was setup and running (thanks to the backup feature). It seems (to me) that this is a good choice as it gives me a DVD drive to which I can rip CD’s directly (which I have done today).

I host all my music on my Synology unit, and it’s been an absolute breeze to connect it to my Roon core.

I’m very impressed, being able to access my own library and tidal in one place is just superb.

My only complaint so far is the radio suggestion popup… How can I thumb up or thumb down the next song in the queue if I’ve never heard it before? Surely, it would make more sense to suggest the song to me, have the pop up come up during the song to which I can say if I liked it or not. I’ve found out since that I have to click the song artwork and click the thumbs up to tell the system that I liked the song. I do hope that changes…

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Welcome to the community, down the rabbit hole and get ready for your wallet to want to divorce you :sweat_smile:

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The thumbs up down in the queue is so you can build up a queue from the suggested tracks if you know them or fancy a punt; or don’t like and reject.
If you skip a track whilst it’s playing then that’s the same as a thumbs down and a pop up asks why you skipped it. If you play all the way through that’s the same as thumbs up.

What you accept or reject in radio counts toward your likes but not as much as when you explicitly press play on a track you’ve selected.

The radio plays are based on the aggregates of what all users reacted to.

In my experience your roon radio experience hinges on what you start from. It’s a bit pants when on the path less travelled.

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The amount of music I discovered when letting radio take over is vast. It’s one of Roon’s best features.

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I agree @RBO, I’m already finding new music. It’s exactly what I used to do on Deezer, their FLOW is excellent. While it takes some time, (I found this with Tidal too) the recommendations got pretty spot on.

Thanks @ged_hickman1, that’s helped.

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To be honest it’s as clear as mud how it all works but that’s the best I can do :relaxed:

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Never used Deezer but heard good things.

I subscribe to both Tidal and Qobuz (much love for the little guy) and to me, Tidal has the best user experience by a mile - beating Apple and Spotify in my opinion. Tidal’s new music feed, recommendations/discovery/mixes are excellent.

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What sort of music do you listen to @RBO ?

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Mostly metal but don’t mind some cheeky Taylor Swift every once in a while :laughing:

I listen to pretty much everything else apart from classical. This is something I was never able to get into - to my father’s disappointment.

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I almost answered for you.
It was going to be heavy metal and Taylor Swift :rofl:

You should try the Symphony to end all war’s by Sabaton. That might make your dad proud.

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I need to get that symphonic metal list again as I’ve lost the thread. (My wife would say I lost it years ago :joy::joy:)

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@RBO can give you some good recommendations as well. He has excellent taste in music :+1:

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I’m not a huge metal fan but @Michael_Harris is guiding me to the more symphonic end.

I actually listened to my first Taylor Swift song this week.

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As another metal fanz Taylor swift is a real talent and I have most of her albums as well
She clearly has broad appeal

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You know me :sweat_smile:

@Formula Sorry for hijacking your post :beers:

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There is a lot of love for symphonic metal especially with female operatic vocals on the music threads.
My favorite metal sub genre.

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Yes you naughty boy🤣
Back to tinkering ( autocorrect inserted Tinkerbell there😀).

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:joy: :fairy:

We’re only being friendly and as always, welcoming.

That’s what she said.

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I really like Taylor Swift. Been listening to this all afternoon streaming from Apple Music via bluetooth to my Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones.

RoonShareImage-637936763367852386

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Nothing wrong with a bit of Taytay :smiling_imp:

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