New user with major Tidal issues on day 1, cannot log in and big oversight on the part of Roon developers

Support
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Update: Solved the Tidal login loop problem. It appears that the Roon Nucleus cannot actually handle having a static IP address. I tried switching back to DHCP and the problem was fixed. How that relates to Tidal logins I have no idea as that is not intuitive to me but it is what it is so FWIW if someone else has this issue and you have your core on a static IP address, switch it to DHCP and restart the core and all your remotes and then try logging in again. For me, that was the solution.

But devs/Roon support staff: Please read below for feedback. I would REALLY like you to fix the issue I outlined below and I have seen posts about this for at least three years. Trust me, you are losing more customers over this that you think. I would like to see Roon survive. I am telling you it will remain a niche product and never go mainstream if it cannot separate the streaming services of each household member and their Roon user sub accounts.

Original post:

So I am new to Roon, just got it setup as I am setting up my home audio from scratch after being displaced by a home fire for 8 months. Got a Roon Nucleus and just got it setup yesterday. It is connected via ethernet cable to a router that is part of an ASUS AiMesh system although the router it is connected to has a physical backwire to the main router that is connected to our internet modem.

I got very excited about Roon for high quality audio streaming to endpoints throughout my home and will be connecting the Nucleus directly to a PrimaLuna tube DAC at my main stereo with streaming to an ELAC Z3 as well as a Pro-Ject Stream Box S2 Ultra and some various chromecasts throughout the home predominantly for displaying roon on screens for lyrics while enjoying the music through other speakers.

First I would like to point out a major oversight on the part of Roon and then I would like to see if I can get help with a serious technical issue.

The major oversight is not allowing for each profile for different users in a household to have and connect to their individual Tidal accounts and have that automatically switch within Roon whenever different users pick up the remote and listen to Roon in the house.

One of the major reasons I joined Roon was to have the very specific music recommendations I have heard so much about for discovering new artists I may enjoy and other members of my household were looking forward to that as well. So how is that supposed to work if each person has totally different musical tastes and different playlists on Tidal? If that all gets lumped together then the recommendations will be all messed up. That is a serious design flaw. If someone pays for a Tidal family account, each family member should be able to have Roon deal with them and their music and their recommendations separately. This is a common scenario and people who like music enough to invest in Roon will be super irritated that Roon cannot handle this. I know I am.

Now on to my technical problem:

Naively, I thought that you could do what I just said I wished you could do above. So when I first got Roon hooked up, I logged into Tidal with my account. I setup separate user profiles in Roon for my wife and daughter and son, and then I wanted to show Roon to my wife, so I logged out of Tidal in Roon when I figured out that it cannot handle having multiple Tidal accounts and assigning them to each Roon user because she will get annoyed much faster than me and decide Roon will never be useful for her if she is not logged into her own Tidal account.

The problem is, once I logged out of Tidal, nobody can log back into Tidal within Roon. We get stuck in a loop that won’t let us log in on any device. We have tried it on a Kindle Fire tablet we had purchased to function as a Roon remote, as well as on our iPhones and have the exact same problem on each.

We tried logging into our account online on a PC laptop running Windows via Chrome and it does not seem that there is a way to use that to log into our Tidal account so all the ways we seem to have to login to play music are broken.

Yes we tried restarting the router, and the Roon Nucleus, and our phones and the tablet remote. Yes the Roon Nucleus has updated and has the latest build.

Since we haven’t loaded any music onto the SSD I put into the Nucleus and formatted, Tidal is the only way we can use Roon at the moment, which means we cannot use Roon at all.

At the end of our free year we likely won’t be renewing if you don’t add the ability to separate users and their Tidal accounts so that music recommendations are individualized rather than all lumped together because our music tastes are all so different that it will defeat the purpose and there are other ways that do not require a subscription to stream high quality music in my home. I would really like to enjoy Roon but unfortunately my first impression is not favorable. Buggy, and I cannot do what I wanted to do with it at all.

For now I would appreciate some help getting logged back into at least one Tidal account so we can actually use Roon at all.

Thank you.

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

Roon Nucleus version 1.0 build 227

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

See above

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

The ELAC Z3 is attached via ethernet cable as will the Stream box, and the PrimaLuna tube DAC will be attached via USB

Description Of Issue

See above.

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My ROCK has a static IP address. Works perfectly.

I once had a problem with the static IP setup and had made a dumb mistake by misconfiguring the other IP settings (subnet mask, I think, is what I messed up).

PS - I set the static IP address via my router and the NUC’s MAC address.

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That’s not a static address it is a DHCP reservation.

A static IP address would be set via the ROCK web interface.

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Not really. I assign it to a region outside my dynamic DHCP range.

Either way, my problem was my mistake in the IP config (I first tried in in the ROCK config). Double check your DNS, subnet, etc settings.

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Yes really, don’t want to get into an argument but it’s a reservation.

If you set a static IP this is done on the client and it then doesn’t talk to the DHCP server, there is a risk that the DHCP server can allocate the same IP to a different client and you then have an IP conflict. Static addresses should be backed up with reservations on the DHCP or an address used outside the DHCP scope.

Reservations are managed on the DHCP server so the same address is always allocated to the same client using its MAC address to identify when it sends the DHCP request.

Getting these two mixed up or wrong can lead to issues and is why I may come across as being petty or pedantic.

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Yes, really. And @Lebowski is a network designer (big boy, hi-speed business networks stuff) so he sure as heck knows what he’s talking about!

I had an ASUS router a couple of years ago. If you set up a static IP on a device without a DHCP reservation in the router, the router would refuse to allow the device to connect to the network, even in the absence of an IP conflict…

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Hello @D_Andrew_White,

And a warm (and belated) welcome to the Roon community :wave: .

I’m sorry that it’s been so long until we got a chance to reply to your post. It’s not for lack of trying or lack of wanting. Our small team has been facing an unprecedented number of requests and, while we’re working as fast as we can to reply to everyone, it’s not as fast as we’d hope :pleading_face:.

We are grateful that you took the time to explain in such detail your context and the ways you’ve intended to use Roon - it is always helpful to know what is important to you, our subscriber. I can see how being able to connect each member’s TIDAL account in Roon would make for a beautiful music listening experience for each family member (you’ve highlighted how different your tastes in music are).

As you’ve touched on, this has been discussed on our community for quite some time. I believe you were referring to this post:

While I wish I had better news, just as much I wish that you can stay a Roon subscriber, at the moment, I cannot make any promises or share any timeline on this feature request.

I understand how important this is to you, so I can only hope this will be implemented before the time runs out :slightly_smiling_face:

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You didn’t say how you set up the static IP address. If it was definitely a static IP, given via the Nucleus interface, then you are likely to run into problems.

See my previous comments regarding Asus networking gear.

If you want to assign a “permanent” IP address to a device, then a DHCP reservation in the router config tied to the device’s MAC address is the way to go. You will never have any issues as the DHCP server remains in control of IP address assignment and you won’t have any collisions.

If you assign a static IP via the device’s interface, the DHCP server may also assign that address to another device (unless you have assigned an IP address outside of the DHCP server’s reservation pool) and you get a collision which results in packet loss and connectivity issues.

Static IP addresses are generally considered bad practice in networking. DHCP reservation is the preferred way to go about it.

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Thanks for taking the time to reply. Quite helpful details. Much appreciated.