There are people who say they are satisfied but do not own the Roon software in the first place or are using a trial, these surveys aren’t a perfect prediction but you can see that a statistically significant amount of people both dislike and like roon 1.8, about ~60% to ~40% not regarding margin of error.
Here is a partial list of things the “complainers” liked about 1.7 that are broken in, missing from or made harder to use in 1.8. I’m referring to the desktop experience, as it appears that the app has now been optimized for phones and tablets.
- The waveform is too small to be used as waveform. It’s just a progress bar now.
- The sidebar with album recommendations and the artist discography is gone. You have to scroll or go to a different page to find that information.
- The album title font is both strange and needlessly gigantic. The first song on the album is at the bottom of the page. This focus on massive headers is literal form over function.
- The song titles, which you actually need to read, are too small. In fact, most of the buttons and text are smaller, but there’s a huge amount of empty space everywhere.
- The current song title and artist information on the bottom left of the playback bar often has to be truncated because it shares space with the too small waveform.
- Album covers are too big, showing too few albums on the screen, once you scroll past the huge headers.
- Tagging is much more difficult to use.
- Shuffle is limited to 5,000 tracks, which means it’s broken.
- Focus uses “AND” for criteria instead of “OR”, which it should not do and did not do before, so bookmarks are broken. Focusing on “Jazz” and “Blues” eliminates all albums that are not marked as both.
- Album star ratings have been removed from where they were most helpful.
- The indication of whether a song has been added to a playlist has been removed.
- Albums are shown based on “popularity” criteria, which has rarely has anything to do with the quality of their content.
- The dark mode is too dark and the light mode is too light. Small white text on a fully black background is headache inducing. Especially when it’s interrupted by flashes of Electric Purple.
- The “queue” button has been moved too close to the transport controls.
- The album title (and other text) exhibits weird line breaks. Pat Metheny’s album called “Day Trip” puts “Day” on one line and “Trip” on another. For what reason, I’ll never know.
- The distinction between albums you own and albums from streaming services has been made less clear.
- Half of the home screen says “Hi Keith” and prominently features a huge graphical display of time usage stats. I don’t know who that’s important to.
- Dates for albums: We used to get date recorded, date released and date added. That was great, given how many reissues and remasters there are. Now we just get one ambiguous date.
- On multi-disc albums, you used to have individual links for each disc. Now they’re in a menu. So more clicks.
- There’s a startling lack of symmetry and congruence to the visual design. It’s nice to have a mostly fixed place for things to be. A good analogy would a dashboard in a car. Roon 1.8 it’s just messy. Depending on the metadata received, the arrangement of items on the album screen changes radically. There are square images, big round images, small round images, huge round circles with artists initials in them. Orange backgrounds. Blue backgrounds. And did I mention the purple?
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Ok, but previously there was tab which showed the available versions, which would include a library version, and any Tidal/Qobuz versions. That function no longer exists. I preferred the older method.
The album art encroaching on the text is another issue. This screen shot is from my iPad, scrolling was all over place , never could finish reading the bio.
Versions is still there. You see it on every album page (if there are multiple versions). If the bio is jumping, it’s a bug, tell support. The album location is a design choice. It obscures a portion of 3 lines of text so you scroll a tiny bit more. Some will like some won’t, you clearly don’t but it’s your opinion but it’s hardly a big deal.
An excellent compilation of issues, well said. This has made Roon considerably less functional, which was a strong point previously.
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i thought my music sounded a bit different too. for the better. maybe i’m not crazy. contrary to many on the forum, i’m delighted at the upgrade. except the periwinkle color.
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Maybe post this list separately , it will get lost here
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Completely disagree with this conclusion. Per the poll, almost 70% of users either strongly like, somewhat like or are neutral. That’s 2x+ of those that have issues. Within that group, most believe, including me, that while there are still some rough edges to sand, 1.8 is vastly more usable.
While I appreciate the care that @k6davis took in creating his list, many on it were issues users didn’t like in 1.7 (waveform too small, too much space, etc), many are just minor style opinions (too light, too dark, don’t like the fonts), many are just design decisions that most like (recommendations in a different place), and some are just confusion about how 1.8 is doing things (not clear about owned albums vs tidal/Qobuz albums in your library). There are only a couple on the list that IMHO deserve serious thought (like AND vs OR in focus). If this is the best list of the biggest problems in 1.8, the Roon team did a fantastic job with this release. Of course this is my opinion…
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Yes, of course. Your complaints are actually summed up in my post.
These are minor issues, they are just mainly display, UI bugs, not the design issues, and can be fixed in no time by Roon devs IMO, and I think there is no need to blow things up.
To the people who say that the things in my long list of “complaints” are minor or just a matter of style, I salute you. I find it odd that all of those things are insignificant to you, but different strokes for different folks.
My silver lining is knowing that so many of you are pleased.
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The opposite of that is true.
Eliminating the sidebar, and thus hiding recommendations at the bottom of the screen is not a display UI bug. It is a design issue.
Shrinking the waveform is not a display UI bug. It is a design issue.
Making tagging more difficult is not…
I could go on, but you get the point. Most of my “complaints” are not bugs. In fact, I had no issues with the software working. I dislike the design choices they made.
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Sorry, I cannot answer this poll. I would rather give my opinion on 3 items:
Technical - Very negative
Cosmetics - Very positive
Functional - Somewhat positive
Keith’s wife / significant other?
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It is an interesting result - with a clear majority given positive feedback (I voted “somewhat positive”) as typically self selected polls such as this attract those with negative views and those who are either happy or couldn’t care not bothering to vote. .
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Thinking… how result will change when you make second round for people voted in the D-Day?
If “very positive” get chance to find all the issues with basic functions and change the vote. As someone mentioned, with the additional, second option: age or albums qty.
There is potential for PhD paper!
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I wholeheartedly agree. When I look at the credits for who played on a track or album, Seeing giant icons of initials (due to incomplete images in the metadata) or the same faces over and over instead of the name and instrument is difficult to digest. This gets in the way of my interacting with my music. It is splashy, sure, but it is like using a star swipe transition for every usage.
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Personally, I CANNOT read more than a line or two text in a paragraph without the text starting to swim off the page and making me feel dizzy and sick. To me, that is a MAJOR thing on the list (perhaps number one) that deserves attention as it totally defeats the discovery and learning intention of the software’s creators. Perhaps you haven’t actually tried to read something yet (esp in dark mode)? I can see how many are initially okay or happy with the glossy new veneer of 1.8, but once one actually delves in and tries to use it, it’s broken in so many ways.
I think @k6davis list is one of the better summaries I’ve seen so far.
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The person(s) who developed and wrote the code for the fancy usage pie charts and ugly headers is about the only person(s) who that stuff is important to, imo.
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Very good summary!
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Very negative to the point that i probably not will renew my subscription.