Hi there…I’m totally new to Roon software but I’ve been reading a lot about it and without even downloading it I’m sold by its features of discovery, radio and the magazine concept built upon your music…this really seems great and lots of fun to discover new music. I came across Roon because I have just bought a Naim Atom and turntable to play my records and accidentally I learned about Roon.
My question to you guys is even though i don’t own a large digital nor CDs music collection if it is still worth Roon for me?. I’m not sure if I will take full advantage of te discovery, radio features and really immerse me in that journey that many of you have mentioned. Also I’m user of Spotify not Tidal so another thing to consider, but I would move to Tidal with no problem if would help with experience…but as I don’t have albums and play list in Tidal, I’m not sure will take advantage of it.
Say more about this… do you have any digital music files? What percentage of your music listening is your own digital files vs. Spotify. vs. CDs or vinyl? Do you have a multi room setup?
My initial reaction is probably not. Roon’s value, in my opinion comes from (1) combining your own library of digital music files with Tidal’s library and adding robust metadata and an amazing user interface; and (2) managing and streaming to multiple rooms/playback devices.
That said, I would definitely encourage you to give the free trial a spin and see what you think. Ultimately, only you can decide if it’s right for you. It is a pretty amazing piece of software!!
Thanks Ed. Yes I have almost 40GB of music but in MP3!..and also some 150 CDs and CD singles but mainly from two bands that I love (yes I’m a crazy fan)…so that is…and then I have Some vinyls that I’m staring to rediscover but is a totally different story…I mainly consume Digital music through Spotify. Last but not least, I bought the Naim Atom and the turntable and QAciustic 40 speakers to arm my music room so to sit and listen and enjoy the music like old times… reading the album art work included.
Is there a way to at least “teach” Roon what I like?..like Apple Music ask you what are your preferred bands when you are setting it up.
Of course I will try the trial but I was just wanting to understand if there is a fastest path to enjoy Roon when you don’t have that large collection of music.
First, MP3 is fine. Roon is not hung up on the highest quality music. Of course the team (and the users) want the system not to hold back the quality. It’s about the music and the music lover, not the technology.
And specifically, your MP3 library can help guide your Tidal listening. I very often use Roon and Tidal this way: I look at an album I have, I click on one of the artists (Roon usually finds all performers, not just the “album artist”), and find other albums with that artist that Tidal has. And from there, I go on, I notice the great drummer that I don’t know before, I click and find other albums, with other band members…
Tidal vs. Spotify: I have used Tidal with Roon, I got a Spotify subscription because everybody says they have a bigger library, after six months I found I never used it and cancelled it. But it depends on the music you listen to…
Maybe with Naim you get a free trial of a longer period…try and see if you think its worth dropping the annual cost on or if you really cant live without it get the lifetime.
There are services to convert your Spotify playlists into Tidal versions - https://soundiiz.com/ .
I have Spotify and Tidal - Tidal specifically because of the roon tie-in and spotify for playlists and more depth of albums for the artist types I am mainly interested in.
If you are interested in exploring music then try the combo of roon and Tidal as you can go clicking down a discovery chain as AndersVinberg said. The only problem with that is you can find yourself paying too much attention to the screen and not enough to the music!
One problem you may have, depending on how your mp3s were created, is that it sounds like you have every track created by a few artists - roon may have difficulty recognizing really obscure or poorly tagged files. So a trial definitely sounds like it would be worthwhile.
It does, i have sonos and roon endpoints.
2 thoughts.
some people do have issues with the sonos in that it goes a bit odd now and then and you may have to restart the queue now and then - though this seems to be getting better
the sonos devices aren’t the same as true roon end points so you can’t stream to a group of sonos and true roon endpoints in synch.
Thanks again to all. This one might be off topic, but wanted to know your opinion of what Hardware to use for the trial period. I can use my MacBook Pro knowing that will not be always connected and the other one is to recycle an old MacBook Air circa 2010 with just 2 mega ram and 128GB ssd storage, but I’m not sure will be enough to handle the core at least for the trial period with 40 to 60 Gb of music.
