Over 400 reports of corrupted and dead Roon systems is not “rather rare” in my book

I have resigned myself to that fact and are putting in time to bring a fresh database back to how I had it before, i.e. number of albums reported has to match how my library is scanned & indexed by a UPnP server just based on the metadata, less than 100 out of 7,000 albums not identified, no duplicates, etc. but the time investment required to do this is huge. And some elements are just lost forever.

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Is it 250000 or 2500000?

This is how threads can get totally blown out of proportion and misconstrued.

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What’s an order of magnitude between friends :wink:

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This is the thing. If your DB was corrupt, until 880, you didn’t know. One day, some event would touch this corruption, and you’d be smoked - with a call for support where the solution would be “delete your corrupted DB and start over”. Kinda sucks, but I think this is where we’re at for those unlucky 400 users.

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Indeed backup every time on removable media before any update, and always update all the clients first, core last, one incident that Roon released core update faster than approval from Google App Store and Apple App Store, all the clients can’t see and operate on new core version for a short while until new version of remote became available.

Where did 250,000 customers come from, looking back through threads Roon said in 2019 they have a target of 100,000 for 2020. What HiFi did a review of Roon in 2020 where they also put the number at 100,000.

With a turnover of $5 million that would suggest 50,000 subscribers and possibly another 50,000 who purchased lifetime licences.

Back in February, @danny wrote this:

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So, 880 will be judged as a huge success… I’m thinking there’s really no need to participate in “echo chamber” discussions, as they’re just ignored along with the feature requests.

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My new motto!

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Semantics… When I say then it is unacceptable, I mean, as you probably well know, that a software provider should not implement a process or update that completely kills what had been a perfectly satisfactorily (for that particular user) working system that had many of that user’s configured and curated customisations applied, possibly over many years of detailed work, and then say that it is hard luck, nothing can be done, all is lost, start over again from the beginning. This was entirely an unnecessary outcome that can have been mitigated by having the database integrity check performed in such a way that the upgrade process was halted and the user warned of the issue and left with the pre update working system, whist something could be done to resolve the situation. Not just kill the system. That behaviour by the software provider in this instance is unacceptable.

I am not proposing there is a method of not accepting it, other than holding off upgrading if you are lucky enough to be able to, as there is none. That does not mean the this behaviour is therefore acceptable, because it is not. Maybe I should have used deplorable, or intolerable instead of unacceptable, but then guess you would have come back with How do you propose we do not tolerate it?

I love and have supported Roon, and still do, but that does not mean that if they get something so badly wrong as this, that they they should not be held to account. And bickering over semantics is simply being obtuse.

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It’s not a matter of acceptability. Software that costs as much as this should really not be sent out if it is this buggy.
I am fairly new to Roon and already Roon is unusable. Support has not gotten back to me from about 4 or 5 days ago but I thought it was something wrong on my system. I think you’ll find that this is a bigger issue than 400 users

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Welcome Gabe!

What a rough experience to come onboard to a new piece of expensive software. Good luck, and hope that you end up with a better experience. I and a lot of folks think it’s worth perserverence (I had a rough time a year ago but smooth recently) but ymmv!

John

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No, I was actually just curious. If he calls it “unacceptable”, what’s he going to do to refuse it? Burn a Nucleus at midnight in Times Square? Unionize the workforce and take them out on strike? Convince a judge to issue an injunction against continued release of B882? That is, what can “unacceptable” mean, outside of bombast?

Sorry, my mind does tend to wander.

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Thanks for explaining. Apologies for the way my mind wanders. Sometimes I think too hard about what people actually say, instead of what they mean.

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The first entry in my (Oxford Dictionary, printed copy, many years old) for the definition of Unacceptable is “unsatisfactory”, which indeed by any measure, the breaking of some peoples Roon setups by this upgrade most certainly is. Nothing along the preposterous lines you state, and certainly nothing bombastic.

Oppss… cross posted as Bill was apologising. Apology accepted, and we can move on…

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Here people work with their mistakes and limitations and only about 20 people make mighty noise as if you were absolutely error-free even in the per mille range. Many seek support for problems right here in a civilized manner. A good community is characterized by helpfulness and understanding. This also applies to the team!

I am not so much disappointed in Roon, but in about 20 people. Where was the own data backup strategy? Where the learning curve, what alternatives to create in such situations?

Especially those who insist that Roon has never done anything right and does not cover their own needs properly, should look for it intensively in other forums and not serve one frustration thread after another here.

Those who really seek help will also get it from the community. Roon is not always fast enough, but the error rate is within technically manageable expectations.

There were objectively systems with Windows 7, old .Net or other self-made problems in the game and who does not maintain or maintain his system, runs without data backup in the problems that were described. Data backup is not a problem of Roon, but a general requirement for any overall system that must be rebuilt in an emergency. Of the 400 out of 250,000 mentioned, who has really done that? Who will do it now?

It is not enough to just be angry at other people all the time. the anger needs to be resolved more productively in one’s own actions as well.

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Not entirely fair, dot net for example is not updated by default in win 10. Early versions of win10 shipped with .Net 4.6 and the current version is 4.8

I suspect that the 880 update was only tested with new version of win10 that have .Net 4.8

It’s not difficult to include a .Net upgrade within your app when rolling it out (it just checks .net version and gets the installer from MS and installs it as part of the process)

It’s easy to blame users for these issues but the vast majority of users are not that computer savvy.

Far better would have been for Roon to get the 880 package right and include dependancy updates.

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Sorry, my Roon Core runs on ROCK with a NUC on the supported list. Have been running ROCK ‘as is’ since its release in 2017, though my database was migrated over from a Win7 based core, which back in 2015-2017 was a supported platform.
I take Roon Core database backups over 4-days and maintain 10 images deep on a NAS running a RAID1 volume. I then take a rsync based backup of these images, once a week, to a further NAS with a JBOD arrangement. So the database exists on one SSD in the NUC, is then backed up to 3 HDDs.
My library runs on a NAS with a RAID1 volume, backed up daily to another NAS unit also with a RAID1 volume. This isolates the library from disk and hardware failure.
All NAS, networking infrastructure and the ROCK server is on a UPS.
I have a backup NUC as a standby ROCK server, in case of hardware failure here also.
Unfortunately all of my Roon Core backup images fail with B880/B882.
The year old image on the backup ROCK server also fails with B880/882
So despite all my efforts to undertake a robust backup strategy using the tools provided, I have no choice but to start afresh and build a Roon Core image from scratch.

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Didn’t read a better description of how Roon let down users who apparently did everything right, to their best knowledge and to considerable monetary expense. But even so, Roon failed to make sure backups were consistent and safe, and this responsibility cannot be pushed over to the user implying that the culprit is probably ‘failed hardware’. Yes, hardware fails, but that is when you depend upon reliable backups. And Roon’s backups up to now were not reliable.

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Condolences, Simon. That truly sucks.

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