Not impressed so far

Roon Software Discussion
1

Finally got around to trying Roon (v1.3).

Rather than go all out, I copied 20 albums from four artists (Albert King, The Blues Band, Billy Perry, Billy Branch).

Yes its all blues … cause thats what I listen to.

Roon got 5 of the album covers wrong and didnt find three Albert King albums at all. Strangely the ones it didnt find were all live albums.

So in a sample of 20 albums, Roon got 40% of them wrong.

If I extrapolate that across my many 1000’s of albums, aint no way I will have the patience to fix these up.

Also Billy Branch was with his band The Sons of the Blues… so Roon created three artists (Billy Branch, The Sons of the Blues and Billy Branch and The Sons of the Blues). Maybe there is some option to stop this but for me its not helpful and I can see this being a real pain when browsing my full collection.

As far as the interface goes, I had a quick play around and found it a real chore to navigate.

What I would personally like to have is a text list of artists (no photos) so it means I can see maybe 100’s artists per page then drill down from there with the album art etc.

Maybe Roon needs to provide several templates (with bitmap examples) and configurable display options UPFRONT during the install (and also accessible after the fact) to save having to bugger around trying different settings options hoping it will help (one did)

There were some other navigation/interface design elements that I found clunky to operate (having been programming GUI interfaces for 35 years… starting with X11 on Unix back in the day) but wont bother discussing here.

Whatever else Roon brings to the table that many people love, it upfront isnt appealing to me.

And no I am not trolling.

Regards,

Peter

2

Hi Peter,

It may be a redundant question, but what was the source of the albums that were not recognised? Are the CD rips or LP Vinyl recordings?

3

With regard to GUI, I am with you. I had Roon for over a year now but I still searching for that 1 click play button as an option.

4

CD rips and also hi-rez downloads from places such as HD-Tracks.

my files are organized by subdir (genre/artist/title).

As an example (being one that failed): “Blues/Albert King/Thursday Night in San Francisco”

It discovered 12 other Albert King allbums but not three of his live albums.

As another example, it didnt find his “Live Wire/Blues Power” (noting due to the slash it was named “Live Wire Blues Power”) but the filtering should be smart enough to find it.

Their were other anomalies that appeared with my limited test set of 20 albums across for artists.

Question: What does it use as the key for discover (artist/title or does it drill down into track name or something more esoteric)?

I also found the interface very busy and it would have been great to be able to remove “panes” that I am not interested in.

Hence my comment about having templates with different levels of info and also different list detail levels

Being able to tailor the GUI at a granular level may exist but having a dig around didnt throw up anything obvious. I could see additive options but not subtractive.

Thanks,

Peter

5

You know, being in a bit of a blue funk I purchased and download that album, 4 minutes ago. Dropped the download into my watched folder and less than 2 seconds I get this…

albert king.JPG1691×762 147 KB

So, Roon is picking the album up just fine. If the album doesn’t show up it could be for other issues. For example, Sometimes you will rip a CD and think it is correct but file header information will be corrupted. Other players will just ignore the error and play it anyway. Roon will not. Instead it will tell you that there is an error. You can check by going to Settings/Storage/Skipped Files.

6

In my simple view, who would name an album something other than what it is, so I would imagine (if properly programmed) that Roon would have some kind of hierarchy with respect to identifying an album.

If its called “Albert King/Thursday Night in San Francisco” then Roon should believe that the name is correct cause whats the point of naming Hound Dog Taylor’s “Beware of the dog” as Albert King’s Thursday Night in San Francisco?

Maybe if its paranoid it could check number of tracks and then if needed track names but to start looking at cd rip checksum’s is kinda stupid if the dataum above that level matches.

I would rather have an album found even if cd rip checksum dont match (but other elements do) then to have it fall out completely.

If Roon needs cd rip checksum’s at the exclusion of all else, just so its metadata can be completely filled out then that in my opinion is self defeating.

And why where all three of Albert King’s live albums not found but all his studio albums were?

There we several other anomalies such as albums by “The Blues Band” (a UK band) where three of the five albums had correct covers but two had album art from artists that didnt have “blues” or “band” in their name or in the album title.

As I say, from my sample of 20 albums, I had a 40% failure rate.

Peter

7

I believe in “settings> library” you can tell roon use its own discovery or the path to albums and tracks. Though to be honest it sounds like jriver would be a closer fit to your needs than roon. Jriver has had 19 years to hone itself rather than roon 1.

8

Ok

But it should allow for AUTOMATIC matching, starting at artist name/album name , all the way down to checksums and use the deepest match it finds. That way its gonna find a match in 99.99% of cases.

Being one or the other is self defeating… it is after all software.

It should also allow for custom masks to be specified if someone spent the time to say name their artists as “last name, first name” (not that I have but I know people who do)

Peter

9

No, I think foobar2k with a minimal skin would better suit his needs.

10

Well,

I am a Slimdevices Transporter user… I am not into PC’s as a “direct” platform for music delivery.

The Slimdevices Transporter allows me to replay my WAV files, gives me Tidal and Deezer playback, all with a minimal foot print in my music room.

The plan was to have Roon running on a PC outside of my music room and have it stream to the Transporter.

My house is newish and is fully wired with CAT6 into a 64 port patch panel residing in a large server closet (I am a work from home programmer) so would use HDMI over ethernet to display ROON on the LED TV in my room.

Roon, like most software today is just a “blast” of “stuff” with no real configurability as to what you really want to see or what features you might want to use and what ones you consider redundant (hence my comment about configurable “panes”)

I did look at foobar and tried the album art plugin but it sucked big time.

Which is why I was excited about Roon.

So if that option noted by Ged does work , then that’s one step further down the road…but the GUI is still a problem for me.

Yes I am a grumpy old man that doesnt like his cheese being moved and I do like an interface that I can customize down to a minimalistic level

Peter

11

Then keep the Slimdevice if that’s what works for you. No need to come to a forum and tell other people how terrible the software is after using it for a few hours. Seems not worthwhile to do so.

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12

I just installed Roon 1.3 it analyzed 62,000 songs and didn’t miss a single album cover.

Is this a little programmer envy I am hearing.

Roon team has turned out an awesome UI.

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13

No, pretty certain that if it lives under a bridge and eats goats it’s a troll

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14

I think 1.3 is simply magnificent :grinning:

Schermafbeelding.png866×1340 175 KB

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15

I am not knocking Roon or the people that use it and like it nor am I am troll.

I am just relating my experience, seeking answers to a problem and suggesting that potentially there are some users that might not need or want the “full experience” and that maybe some simple changes such as being able to select what panes are displayed, maybe some different “skins”, different ways of drilling down and maybe providing guidance during the install to the most common/important “stuff” (such as being able to decide upfront how you want Roon to search) could be an enhancements.

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16

Ok, you tested 20 albums and got a failure rate of 40% that means 8 albums failed to be identified.

If you have 1000’s of albums that is quite impressive and the question is if you have walked the mile and ripped every album.
If so it is quick to test how well roon performs on the whole bunch. My guess is that the failure rate will go down significantly.

I added all master tracks from tidal recently and ended up with almost 1000 albums. Having around 400 artists with many just having one album was more than what I could handle as I had not selected what was available in master quality.

You talk about multiple thousand of album and it is clear that the user interface is important. Search and focus become important with this many albums. There are good tools to use if you know where to look. As a sidenote if you want to search tidal the tidal application is usually best.

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17

Do you test drive a car and then suggest how it could be improved in order for it to suit your needs?
Do Mercedes often initiate changes from these suggestions?

Perhaps you are not a troll but you certainly are audacious.

Roon works for loads here, it appears your metadata may not be up to scratch judging from your 40% failure rate as obviously if this occurred across the board there would be no Roon any more and no Roon forum.

What your trial has shown is that Roon is not for you, treat it like your Mercedes test drive and move on to a Kia.

.sjb

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18

Other makes of car are available

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19

I guess your albums have incorrect metadata as Roon normally does a great job identifying albums.
Of the 14 unidentified albums in my collection 1 is from bandcamp and the other are childrens music from my daughter :slight_smile:

Schermafbeelding.png2498×252 27.9 KB

20

I don’t own any of Albert King, my CD collection is like <20 significant albums not found on TIDAL.

I found this album at TIDAL:
Albert King/Wednesday Night In San Francisco (Live)

I greatly doubt there is a Thursday Night in San Francisco as well so your albums are not perfectly tagged.

roon doesn’t care about the details of tagging but identifying using the right artist and album name is important for it to do it’s magic.

I have lots of tracks just named “talk” in an album but with roon identifying the album all the talk are replaced appropriately.