Hi there, I am a new Roon fan and have been playing with extensively over the past few days. Here is a few suggestions related to the Now Playing screen which I had displayed all night long last Saturday for a big party at home.
First and foremost, this is a fantastic product and we all had a great deal of fun with it. So there it goes.
Now Playing should be defaulted to full screen upon entering it. Perhaps a user setting.
Radio starts in⌠is taking a lot of screen real estate. Just the toggle, conveniently placed somewhere else on the screen, would be enough I believe. Perhaphs next to Toggle shuffle or since it basically display the same info than âQueue X tracks remaining in h:mm:ssâ then just at the end of that countdown?
For UX consistency, replace the âToggle full screenâ to the far right with the centered arrow weâre used to on so many app screens. This will also fix the other inconsistency of having a âToglle full screenâ at the right but the âClose full screenâ counter action at the top left corner.
âView queueâ icon in the play bar doesnât refresh its look when I am in the Queue viewing screen but its behavior does! When clicking on it from the queue it brings us to the album view. Great, but icon and tooltip should be updated accordingly to better reflect the expected behavior.
âUp Nextâ should be displayed at beginning of song, when we move our mouse, and towards the end of the song.
Music controls, all controls in fact, should disappear while in fullscreen and reappear upon moving the mouse.
Last, Iâm certain other people have requested it and that you have that in your laundry list: artists pictures and/or a link to a user folder of pictures of his choice (app level, not artist level)would be a nice option to the album cover instead of the blurred duplicate as of now. Could be a user parameter.
The media gallery is a great feature - sadly not a lot of my library has extra media, and Tidal doesnât have any. But Iâd like to see Roon compile a âvirtual bookletâ of things like images, credits, lyrics etc and let you swipe through them during playback. They almost have that with the share options - where you compile a graphic to share. And have the media gallery already (a bit like the Kindle overview)⌠so put them together :). It also means as a user you can be listening and think, âhey, I like the sax, who was that?â Bring up the credits, tap on the name and be able to see related acts. Moves the relationships into the listening experience, rather than before it.
Most of these requests exist in the product today, although not in the exact graphical representation you want.
Now Playing shows the queue. If I want to learn more about the current album, I touch the album picture and look at reviews, pdf, etc. To learn about artists, I touch them, see other albums they play on, maybe add them to the queue, and off we go, navigating the graph.
Agreed. The roon website suggests it exists because LPs had rich media and modern players donât. I was suggesting getting back to a more sensory experience.
Most features exist in roon in many areas. I largely care about experience (and by extension UI)
Tried the Tidal app today for the first time, and noticed their playback screen. Like Amazon âLook Insideâ the cover invites you to click on it - where it gives you a pretty rubbish link to credits. Roon can do so much more than Tidal, and the roon Share UI is great where you can customise it). Tap the cover, get a âbooklet of thumnailsâ with things like lyrics etc.
