I’ve been a loooong time Squeezebox user and fan. Finally I decided to make the switch today. So as of now I’m running Roon in stead of LMS, with my ol’ Squeezebox Touch as endpoint.
So I’ve decided to write down the why and how; maybe this can be of use to others and/or the Roon team.
This is my setup: audio catalog (a modest 900 albums) located on a Synology NAS (DS214+) in RAID1 configuration. LMS is running on the NAS. On the other end there’s a Squeezebox Touch, connected via coax to a Rega DAC which is hooked up to a Rega AMP. And at the end of the chain there’s a beautiful set of PMC 23’s.
For me it was clear that I would never ever go from a Squeezebox solution to a UPnP/DLNA based solution, because that’s a step backwards wrt usability. So when Roon popped up this got me seriously interested, up to that I took a trial period before the 1.2 release.
However, in the end it wasn’t good enough: no support to run on a NAS (I really don’t want to run the server on a computer), no support for Linux (I don’t run windows machines). But with the 1.2 release this all changed, and after testing this through the weekend I took the step. Still not able to run on my NAS, but at least I could run it on linux. The server is now running on a Samsung Chromebox with openSUSE running (@Not_Roon: tested and confirmed, so you can add openSUSE to the list with supported distro’s).
So i’ve made a short list with what I like, and what could be better. Purely personal of course, but maybe this is interesting for the Roon team.
What I like:
- it runs on Linux!
- it runs on Linux!
- how it handles more versions of the same album: I’m slowly getting high res versions of the same albums, and Roon shows that there are more versions and makes the high-res version the ‘primary’. Awesome!
- meta data handling: although I know this is a heavily debated topic, I find the ‘default-out-of-the-box’ metadata very good (disclaimer: I’ve got all my files properly tagged).
What I don’t like (that much):
- vertical scrolling on the Android tablet remote app and the Mac OS X remote. This feels just counter intuitive.
- squeezebox touch: the display during playing. I’d rather see a nice Roon logo in stead of data missing (position and timing).
- squeezebox touch: when it’s hooked up to LMS it automatically switches to 'ON" when I start playing music. Connected to Roon this doesn’t work.
- no web interface: I’ve read the response from the team (about generic UI and frameworks etc.), but I’m looking for a very simple web interface. Or even better: a Chrome extension that just provides play-pause-next etc. No need for the Roon team to develop that themselves; just expose a simple API and the community will do the rest.
- no social media sharing: I sometimes want to share (facebook etc.) which music I’m currently listening to. This is also a very nice marketing channel for Roon!
But for the rest: just plain awesome. Thanks @Not_Roon for this product!
Best regards,
