Too soon?
Ah what the hell⌠try looped playback in 1.3 as the behavior has changed a bit. Selecting âplay from hereâ no longer eats all of the preceding tracks. Shuffle mode works correctly as well.
Itâs never too soon to ask for this feature as an option.
Iâll second that! Please, please, please add in next release!
Ditto. But Iâll try the new queue behavior.
But in looped playback tracks still do disappear from the queue eh?
I understand that Roon knows better than I do but, still, put me down for âas an optionâ.
Give it a try.
Brand-new Roon user here, still in my trial period.
So far, Iâve found a few minor issues, but nothing that would prevent my enjoying Roon a whole lotâŚ
âŚexcept the queue behavior.
I like to add a bunch of tracks/albums to a queue and have the freedom to skip around, skip back, play a track again, etc. If/when I reach the end of a set of tracks Iâve put together like this, I might play them again, or play them starting from some point in the list.
Over a listening session, I may even build up a little collection of tracks that I like enough to save it as a playlist to revisit in the future.
Roonâs queue behavior seems to prevent the sort of listening I most enjoy doing. Yes, I know that thereâs a History function, and that itâs possible to open the History view, tap a track, and Play From Here. Thatâs really not the same thing. Letâs say I add two albums to the queue. I play the first three tracks, then decide for whatever reason that I want to play the first track of the second album. If I do âPlay from hereâ, it throws away all the intervening tracks. If I do âPlay nowâ, it yanks that track up to my current queue position (and throws away the track I was listening to).
I guess the best way to characterize what I wish Roon would do is to offer the option to treat the queue as a sort of âprobationary playlistâ â let me add things to it, skip around in it, re-order it, remove things from it, etc, all as it continues to play. Let me save that playlist when/if I get it into a form that I like, and give me the option to clear it when play something new.
In short, I want it to be able to work the way many other players work. Most specifically, Iâd like it to work the way my Sonos worked before their latest redesign completely ruined the product.
I have never understood these requests.
Why isnât this a playlist?
Hi Anders!
Iâm still new to Roon, so perhaps Iâm missing something.
If I create a playlist, itâs a static entity. Sure, I can edit the playlist by adding and removing tracks, re-ordering tracks and so on, but I canât do that while the playlist is playing. In other words, changes I make to the queue donât affect my saved playlist, and vice-versa. What this loses is all of the dynamic interaction that I laid about above.
With my Sonos (before they ruined it), I used to sit in my listening room for hours, free-associating what I wanted to hear next, skipping around in the heap of songs that I had added to the queue, playing some again, moving them around, etc. All while that music is whatâs playing. Nothing was ever removed from that list without my explicitly removing it. Sometimes, that eveningâs listening would be the end of it, and I would start fresh next time. But sometimes, I ended up with a set of music I really liked, and I could then save that queue as a permanent playlist.
I saw where somebody else referred to this idea as a âsandboxâ. I called it a âprobationary playlistâ above.
I fully understand that some people donât listen to music this way. Maybe most people donât. Thatâs totally fine. Roon is amazingly flexible and customizable, though. Iâm already delighted and astonished with how fine-grained the control is over exactly how my music is organized. All Iâm wishing for (and asking for) is the ability to customize the listening experience to match what I and others seem to prefer.
The grab bars on the right of the queue enable you to reorder any track. The transport controls will scroll back through played tracks inserting them in the queue. History tracks can be selected and added to the Queue or made into a Playlist.
Sooloos had a persistent Queue and there was a clamour by users to change. One of the design aims of Roon is a consistent interface. Options dilute that. The devs have an understandable reluctance to change when it was user feedback that resulted in the current implementation.
Iâm yet to see a use case that canât be implemented in Roon under the current UI. âNot what Iâm used toâ or âNot how software X does itâ are not good reasons to change of themselves.
Iâm not intrinsically opposed to change, but I would question whether it is the best use of scarce resources. I would vastly prefer a mobile solution âŚ
I could also just go back into my library, find the tracks again, and re-insert them into the queue. The question is not whether itâs possible to do this, but whether itâs an easy and intuitive operation that doesnât get in the way of listening to music.
This may be part of the disconnect here when people discuss this feature request. I think some people see the request as: âI am in state A and I want to get to state Bâ, and they rightly reply by saying that there are certainly actions that can be taken that will get you from A to B, as if it is a task that need to be completed.
In fact, though, the request is: âI want to be in state A[*] all the time, unless I change it.â But, just having music playing constantly changes state A into state B, state C, state D and so on, creating work for me as a listener to restore the state that I want.
[*] âŚwhere âstate Aâ in my second example is defined as having a little sandbox or playpen or probationary playlist of music that Iâve added to the pile for this eveningâs listening, that I can move around in freely.
I am certainly very much in favor of the exploratory mode, have written extensively about this.
But I didnât really know how playlists behave in that scenario. I did some experimentation, and I see your point, playlists do not accommodate ad hoc exploration very well (at all, actually). Maybe thatâs why I never use themâŚ
That said, I agree with @andybob: Sooloos had a persistent queue and it was extremely annoying. If I was playing an album, and wanted to abandon it and play another, which is the equivalent of putting on another disc, I had to 1. Go to the queue, 2. Clear queue, 3. Confirm (because it is a destructive operation), 4. Go back to the other album (which might involve complex navigation and search because Sooloos didnât have a Back function), 5. Play, and 6. I think there was even a final step like in Roon even though the queue was empty. Hated it! Wrote extensively about a new action, Clear Queue and Play.
Persisting the queue has some value, but playing another album must be the the simplest operation.
Remember all the people who even object to the two-click Play.
A tricky balance.
Gosh, yes, that Sooloos behavior does sound overly conservative.
I think the current Roon behavior is pretty good in terms of starting something new playing. Play Now seems to do exactly what it sounds like you wanted from Sooloos, and theyâve included an âUndoâ feature in case you chose the wrong option. That all works great as far as Iâm concerned.
As far as I can tell, that behavior would be 100% compatible with having items remain in the queue once theyâre played. Youâd still get a clean queue when you do Play Now.
I agree with you that itâs tricky to strike a balance. I do consumer electronics user interface for a living, actually, so Iâm very familiar with this conundrum. We strive to avoid modes and preferences whenever we possibly can, but at some point, you do have to recognize that all of your users arenât the same, and some accommodation of preference is really valuable.
A question Iâve been mulling over since yesterday: what task or listening style is made easier or clearer by the queueâs current auto-deleting behavior? I couldnât think of one, but as a new user, I may be missing something important.
AndersVinbergâs post was the first Iâd read of the Solos persistent queue behavior. Thatâs awful and not what Iâm requesting at all. As Michael_Koob said, you should always âget a clean queue when you do Play Nowâ.
Michael_Kobb has stated the views of us users who want a non-destructive queue very effectively. What I would like to add is that this functionality is very important to those of us that wish Roon had it.
Anyone who doesnât see why this is a big deal, simply listens to music differently than âweâ do. That doesnât make anybody wrong, but I hope the Roon team will accommodate the users that feel strongly about this with an option to simply leave songs in the queue once theyâve played.
We have a solution that will make most people happy⌠I hope! No schedule to give you, but the hardest part is done (the design).
Very excited to see these threads popping up tonight. Not that any of them were deal breakers at all, although destructive queue is the one thing I most hoped to see tweaked. Most of all Iâm just excited for this next leap forward. Glad to be on board
1,000 thank youâs for putting this on the roadmap!!
I hope the solution Danny noted will address the destructive queue which is by far my most frustrating issue with Roon.
Awesome. With that happy news, I have allowed my trial period to convert to paid membership.
I will post some other feedback and thoughts in the next couple of days.