I’m thinking of taking the plunge and giving Roon a trial, I have a couple of questions before I dive in …
I’m a long time JRiver user and one feature I use a lot is being able to stream from my server in the garage to my phone or tablet wherever I can get an internet connection using their Gizmo app. I travel about a lot in my campervan and this means I can take my music with me wherever I go. I’ve searched the forums and the FAQs but can’t find mention of a similar feature. Is this possible with Roon?
My server, situated in the garage, is a fairly powerful PC (Intel Core i7, 12Gb RAM, Windows 10 Pro). I have another small fanless PC connected to a Korg DAC and then to my main hi-fi which again uses JRiver and also does sample rate conversion of everything to DSD128, (which to my ageing ears sounds great ). If I install Roon on the server, can it do the sample rate conversion there and stream that to my mini PC? What software would I need on the PC for it to appear as a Roon endpoint? Would I need any extra hardware like a network audio player?
So, mobile is a long-standing request. Lots of people want it in various different versions. Suffice it to say that there is nothing that today works unless you are a networking whiz & comfortable at setting up your own VPN. When you leave your home, you leave Roon behind; the App can’t connect to the core and so it is non-functional once you are not on your home network. There has been a lot of requesting over the years - but any suggestion that it’s on the roadmap for future development is, I believe, purely speculation. I personally believe eventually some parts of Roon will have to reach the cloud, but not sure that my opinion is worth very much.
As far as what you can use as a “Roon Endpoint”, you can definitely use another PC (running the Roon software) and the associated internal sound, but if you hang out here you’ll likely find that you want to get a different kind of endpoint - build your own RoPieee out of a Raspberry Pi and feed an external DAC/amp or something else that sounds exotic now. It’s worth it to consider that this community will set you on the path to considering all kinds of fun hobby-like stuff when you started on the path just to make music easier to enjoy. Most of us find that it achieves both goals
Yes, roon server can do the conversion and send it to your pc/dac connected to your main hi-fi. You install roon on the endpoint pc, it will detect the server (as long as they are both on the same network/subnet) and run itself in controller/playback mode as an endpoint. No, you do not need any other equipment for that.
See previous answer re. mobile. Roon does not have this feature.
My workaround is to keep Jriver around to maintain “mobile” playlists that I sync to my phone (lists and files) for to-go music.
But, if you go with roon there is a good chance you will end up subscribing to Tidal or Qobuz. Lately I’ve been using the Tidal mobile app instead of copying files and playlists to my phone. Tidal has 95% of everything in my library, plus tens of millions of other tracks that aren’t. And it (and Qobuz) integrate nicely with roon.
If I do go the Roon route after my trial, it’s no biggie to keep JRiver Media Server running for when I am away from home, there is no monthly fee involved and I probably wouldn’t need to upgrade it every year.
I was a long-time JMC user as well and can appreciate where you’re coming from. JRiver and Roon are very different applications/platforms, so it will take some time to adjust to how Roon does thing, but once you do, I think you’ll really enjoy the functionality that’s unique to Roon.
@John_Spink, if I’m understanding your current setup correctly, you probably only need to instal Roon Bridge on your endpoint pc - unless you want to run it as a control point also.
Edit - in addition to Roon on your server… (sorry - above could be ambiguous!)
I haven’t started the trial just yet so I’m not familiar with all the bits of software that go towards Roon, I’m sure it will be interesting to find out!
I assume you fanless PC is running Windows, if so all you need is Roon Bridge.
Roon’s transfer protocol is different to jriver, it RAAT, so you need software to read that off the network hence Roon Bridge. JRiver as you know uses DLNA Roon does not support DLNA
The RPi advice is based on using a Raspberry Pi computer to run Roon Bridge courtesy of Roipeee, software including a Linux OS to provide Roon Bridge so you already have that in your fanless renderer PC
ALl Roon software is downloadable and included in your trial/subscription
Roon has recently announced a monthly plan at $12.99 so you can easily extend your trial as you see fit
Beware as above treat Roon as an entity , it is almost impossible to compare Roon with JRMC they do everything differently.
I keep both servers running in parallel with no issues, any problems just shout there are quite a number of users using both systems
Well, it’s more than speculation - the Roonies have definitely stated that it’s on the roadmap; e.g. see this Feature Request thread where they comment on it, and have marked the thread with [On Roadmap]. However, it’s clearly a major challenge and priorities change - I see from that thread that they were hoping to have something ready in 2017, and here we are at the end of 2020.
I have started my trial now and managed to get Core installed on my server PC, reading my music files from a Qnap NAS.
I’ve installed Roon onto my main PC and from there configured my other devices using Roon Bridge and managed to get DSP upsampling to DSD working. This was the basic functionality I was hoping to get, so far so good!
I’ve also installed the control software on my Android tablet and it is working perfectly.
I now need to explore the library functions to see if I can configure views similar to what I have in JRiver. I have a custom tag in all my files called CATEGORY which can be, e.g. MP3 or V (for vinyl) etc. and I used this in JRiver to display all albums with a certain category. Any pointers on how I might achieve this would be most welcome!
The JRiver customized view does not exist as such , try the suggestion of Focus as @Geoff_Coupe suggests but tag and bookmark management are. Bit weak too
Depending on what music you listen you may have to rethink how you navigate, it is very different from JRiver
). If I install Roon on the server, can it do the sample rate conversion there and stream that to my mini PC? What software would I need on the PC for it to appear as a Roon endpoint? Would I need any extra hardware like a network audio player?