I was recommended Roon by a fellow audio-nutball and figured i would give it a spin.
My house is currently decked out with Sonos gear, and while i thrive on its simplicity and convenience, music-discovery and audio reproduction have always frustrated me.
Supplementing this, i have a Deezer Elite subscription and Plex for my multimedia management and to continue consumption of media on the road. As i mentioned…this works great but it has its limitation / frustrations.
So, i downloaded Roon & signed up for a Tidal trial today to give it a spin and get a true experience of this service, and i am still getting to grips with its capabilities. However i had a few questions:
Is there any “end-point” that offers a Sonos like experience? (Always on, ready to play, integrated)
Tidal is a great service from what i see, especially when supplemented with my own library, i noticed that it “Syncs”. Is that sync two way or just one way? (e.g. if i create a playlist in Tidal -> Roon and also Visa-Versa. (are playlists edited also updated back to tidal (and visa-versa)
Mobile applications - Assuming i discover some great content, favourite songs and albums, build some great playlists…are these tied to my house? Is there any mobile application to enable me to continue that same experience “on the road” (i didnt see much in the app store).
Smart Playlists - Does Roon support the capability to build smart playlists? (e.g. Top 25 Tracks Played, Etc).
Many thanks for any help / guidance / assistance and, sorry in advanced for my newbie-style questions
Great to have you on board with Roon, hopefully your music discovery concerns might be over ! As to your questions:
Meridian devices best answer that description at the moment. AirPlay devices are also currently supported as network zones, but have the limitations of the AirPlay protocol. There will be many more integrated devices after release of the Roon Advanced Audio Transport (RAAT) SDK to manufacturers when firmware will be written for existing devices to become RoonReady.
Squeezebox and Raspberry Pi support are also intended with RoonSpeakers in the next major release, which is aimed for November.
Playlists written in Roon do not currently sync back to Tidal, because they may contain local content not in the Tidal library.
There is not yet a “mobile solution” for Roon. Some users have used VPN to establish long distance network connections to their Core, but bandwidth limitations are likely to prevent that being viable for mobile devices.
It is possible to Focus on, say Top 25 played tracks, save it as a bookmark and Play all with shuffle on. Roon has a lot of it’s smarts in Focus searches. Playlists consist of specified tracks, rather than a Focus search. You could use the bookmarked Focus search to create different playlists at different times as the relevant tracks change.
Edit: I’ve shifted your post to Roon Software, where it will attract more general discussion than in Support.
Although it is early days for me…well, more like early hours…the music discovery functionality of roon is miles ahead of Sonos. It is a shame that a i took our a trial at a time that it seems a major release is due in the month.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that some roon-compatible hardware comes out during my trial so i can really get a feel for how it functions, syncs rooms and the quality over sonos. I wish Roon was the controller to my Sonos speakers now, but i get that will never happen!
If anyone has any input to my other questions, i would be extremely grateful.
Hi Tom,
My post got larger as I saved it from time to time (editing on an iPad Mini !). Hopefully others can add anything I’ve missed, including any particular hardware likely to answer your description.
