Roon 1.3 : Top Priorities

The fact is that even the devs don’t know for sure when 1.3 will be released. They have hopes as Danny has expressed in the quotes above, but such hopes have run into realities exposed by testing in the past. All we really know is that they are working hard on it and are as motivated to get it out as we are to receive it.

+1 on no white text on black background in light theme. That’s the reason for me Why I went away from Spotify (besides sound quality) and all other ‘modern’ black background interfaces, just too hard on the eyes. The darker Tidal section background in the Roon interface is o.k. But plain text reading in this high contrast is straining my eyes a bit too much

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My top 1.3 priorities would go along way for me turning my current trial into a membership…

  1. DR ratings
  2. Ability to use Roon in multiple locations without having to de-authorise home core every time!
  3. Chromecast as an endpoint - with the advent of products like the ifi SPDIF purifier this little budget device really can now be taking more seriously

Suspect am probably too late with these suggestions! Maybe they are already in hand.

Expectations must be pretty high if this release is taking so much work!

A lot of what’s being done in 1.3 is not trivial, hence it takes time regardless of our expectations.

Although there are no promises from what has been said elsewhere on the forum it looks like all three of these are on the roadmap. However I don’t think they will be in 1.3 which is largely focused on metadata improvements.

Go for the lifetime anyway, Roon with a Tidal Hi-Fi subscription is still the best bargain in high end audio and you will very likely get these things before too long and you will be able to enjoy Roon between now and then for free!

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34 posts were merged into an existing topic: Dynamic Range Metering

Repeating myself: all the features and operational improvements to the current functionality are immaterial compared to mobility. Specifically, allowing the value of Roon to be disconnected from one room, one LAN, one building. This means allowing my library to be used in multiple locations, both permanent locations like a vacation hone or office, and temporary locations like a hotel. And supporting my library in a mobile device, a phone or tablet or music player. And a car (Apple CarPlay?). And lots of cloud support etc.

All else is gilding the lily. Roon is already great. Improvements are certainly welcome, as discussed at length here. But to me, they do not change the world.

But mobility does. Several perspectives:

Personal value: I am happy with Roon when I have it but there are many times when I don’t have it. If 1.2 is worth $10 and a hypothetical perfect Roon is worth $20, and an improved 1.3 is worth $12, there are many times when I have $0 because I am away. So $12 for 60% of the time and $0 for 40% is a total of $7.20, while 1.2 for 100% of the time is $10.

Strategic: the world is going mobile. The central computing device for most people is becoming a “phone” (it’s strange how we name a powerful computer for its poorest app). Windows vs. iPhone or Android. iPhone vs, Mac, for that matter. How do most people listen to music? The stats are clear, not just headphones but Beats. And it’s not just low quality stuff: both my Astell & Kern and my iPad with the Audeze Lightning DAC/amp are outstanding, but neither has Roon value.

Demographic: there has been lots of discussion about how the industry, through both product design or demo music, are appealing to well-to-do middle-aged white men. I’m one of them, but we are not a long-term bet. Near-term revenue may be appealing, but I have seen many appealing products and companies spiraling into irrelevance. Sure you can put young music in a Roon library, but without mobility it won’t appeal to young customers.

Yes, I’ve said this before and I know the guys unspderstand it. And I don’t imagine I’ll redirect 1.3 at this point. And of course I’ll appreciate metadata editing. I’m just keeping the fires stoked.

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Even my relatively small lossless library (8775 tracks) cannot fit on any available mobile device (even devices that take 2 microSD cards like the iBasso DX90 would not do). My only choice is to preselect tracks that I want to carry and copy them to the device I’m traveling with. The music I like for travel is quite different from what I listen to at home, so any automatic popularity-based selection would fail miserably. What’s the point of mobile disconnected Roon then? There’s no reason every product needs to be a mass-market product to be sustainable. No high-quality audio product is. Well-run high-quality audio businesses are possible without gouging the customer.

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These issues have been discussed at length before, but in brief:

Think cloud. Think connection to your home. The device can contain a subset of your library, which you can select manually or based on an automatic algorithm or a combination, you pick some stuff and the device is automatically filled up. These are available without connectivity. When you have network, which is increasingly ubiquitous (LTE or wifi), your own library is available from the cloud copy or your home server, and Tidal is available. You can play over the cloud, or download and keep.

This is how a Kindle works. The library browser can show local content or cloud content, and you can bring things down, either from the device in pull mode, or you can send things down to it.

The main point is that it is all fluid, due to cloud.

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I’m pretty familiar with cloud and mobile networking given my day job. That’s why I said what I said. LTE or wifi are not satisfactory for lossless except in the best circumstances. Tidal doesn’t have much of what I keep in my server. Those “solutions” serve mass-market, lossy, popular music listening, with low willingness to pay, which is also a big, unsustainable financial drag on streaming providers including Tidal. That’s not Roon’s market.

Some info here on the differences…

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Dynamic_Range

Honestly, R128 makes more sense in a technical sense as it eliminates the biggest peaks & troughs to come up with it’s figure, but DR seems far more widely used and is therefore arguably more relevant. I think a lot of us could immediately get a feel for the level of dynamic compression to expect when given a DR figure, but not so much R128. Perhaps I’m wrong, would be interested to know if others disagree.

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The reason to use R128 is not to display the dynamic range, it is the base for an accurate volume leveling which also correspond with the volume information from TIDAL, so we get a constant volume level on all playlists, even mixed lists between TIDAL and local tracks.

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I have suggested that the right architecture could meet several needs.
If the system supports sync among my Roon environments, of library metadata and of all or part of the content, and if it supports sync to/from my cloud repository, and if it has self-contained mobile versions, it could meet several needs:

  • Let me play my content in multiple locations, using normal, full-quality, full library size Roon systems

  • Let me play local content on mobile devices, using the manual content selection for downloading that you are asking for, like we do today with various devices but the consistent Roon interface and benefits

  • Let me walk around the house, or out on the deck or in the garden, with mobile Roon (see my note about the Audeze Lightning cable/DAC/amp with the EL-8 cans ).

At the same time, if/when you have adequate networking capabilities, the same solution supports

  • Streaming of your own content, or Tidal or other services

  • If streaming is undesirable or inadequate, you can download content that you forgot to bring

I contend that adequate bandwidth is frequently available today and is rapidly becoming more ubiquitous.

These are all benefits for the high-end demographic you talk about. I’m a member, and I have an altar to the high-end with clean power and ludicrously expensive gear and sometimes I go there to listen. But that’s not the only place that I listen.

If it also appeals to younger people, that’s cool too…

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I don’t think Roon appeals to younger people. Then it would have to be free.
Young people use either the free Spotify or Youtube.

Personally I do not miss offline or Cloud streaming my Roon library.
I find Tidal is sufficient for on the move streaming.

I would rather see the iPhone/iPad as an endpoint first just like you can with iPeng.
That would also be useful for you and let you walk round the house with your “Audeze Lightning cable/DAC/amp with the EL-8 cans” :wink:

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I’d at least like to be able to use the Roon UI and stream what is available from Tidal while mobile. Trying to support reliable streaming from residential broadband connections is going to be a world of hurt for multiple reasons. Supporting streaming from a service like AWS cloud storage ($60/yr unlimited) would make far more sense.

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@rune @Fernando_Pereira
Depends on what we mean by young. How about somebody in their 50s :slight_smile:?
It isn’t about years, it’s about lifestyle. I’m talking about somebody who doesn’t listen only at home, somebody with an active lifestyle.
Sure, @rune, with an iPad endpoint and the Audezes I can walk all around my home, but I can’t walk around in a second home, or a boat, or a resort, or an Airbnb, or when visiting friends or family, or in a car or airplane or office. And I do those things a lot.

Today I can use other devices and services. But it’s a pain. They have different user interfaces. The original metadata problem that first drove us to Sooloos and Roon, if the different systems sort and classify things differently. “Shifting Grace”: Roon sorts it under Michele Rabbia, a mobile device under Marilyn Crispell, both are known and favorite artists, but another tool sorts it under Vincent Courtois whom I never heard of, and yet another sorts it under “Vincent Courtois/Michele Rabbia/Marilyn Crispell” which means it doesn’t show up under any of those artists. And car and A&K portsble have hundreds of GB and 600+ CD quality albums, so if things are mis-sorted I never find them.

Is it possible? Sure. But it is not good.

And managing space when copying selected music to the devices. And different formats and sample rates and bit depths. Gaah!

The reason I keep harping on this is that sync is a hard problem (as we have discussed with @Danny), especially multi-master. Imagine I have a home system and an office system. I once copied my home library to the office. Now I edit the metadata and buy some new albums and edit their metadata in the office. I can sync by copying the new albums and the entire database over to home. But what if I am not so tidy that I bring the entire database with me and resync every day? I do some more edits and buy some albums at home? How do I merge those databases? Merge with conflict resolution requires not just sophisticated database technology but semantic awareness. At home, I edit the artist for an album; at the office, I give it five stars. If I just copy one database over I lose one update. If the system understands the semantics it can keep both because they don’t conflict. But if I gave it five stars in one place and three stars in the other, which edit wins?

Practical issues: I delete an album from my mobile device to make room, how do we sync? Delete it from the other devices? NOOO, I still want the album. Copy it back to the device where it us missing? NOOO, then I can’t use a small device. Accept the album is missing in some devices as long as it is on the others? Sounds ok, but one day you delete the copy on the last device because delete was a non-risky operation, but oops… Treat the home system as the master, never sync from the others to the master? Too rigid, means I can’t download a new album when I’m traveling, that’s no good.

Hacking about with a mess of different and uncoordinated devices is cumbersome and errorprone.

In my mind, fixing this changes my life. I’m going to be happy when I get metadata editing, but it won’t change my life.

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I would be happy with outside the house options, all of them available to those that need/want, be it onboard stored / downloaded tracks, remote streamed tidal or even streamed remote from my NAS via whatever connectivity I have…granted if it doesnt meet speed needs its going to be unusable. I have all that now on my NAS via DS Audio (Synology) and I use it a lot.

Whilst I understand peoples desire to have access to Roon anytime, anyplace, anywhere I am not fussed at all.
Luckily I live in the UK where we have some of the best Radio in the world via the BBC.
I work for myself and listen to a lot of talk radio. BBC Radio 4 including ‘The Archers’, BBC Radio 4 extra, BBC Radio 5 Live and the many BBC High quality music station.
Not having Roon available is great as this becomes my dedicated radio listening time with no other options.
I can get all this free (Save the bargain of the license fee) and easily via FM or DAB. When asked about my education I explain I have a degree in life via Radio 4.
The audio quality is not relevant as the content is so strong. If your lost in a radio drama, what more could you need.
If your following a discussion or listening to a knowledgable speaker on her subject, clarity is all that’s required.
What am I trying to say? Nothing really other than, Lucky Me!

Thoughts, Chris :sunglasses:

Banking off of the northeast winds
Sailing on a summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone

One day we will do this with Roon, but I’m not betting on 1.3. Sounds like the kind of thing that might need a 2 in front of it.

I “desperately need” mobile offline use of my Roon database and music. Note that this is not just to do with phones (although I have the biggest iPhone 7 which would work pretty well) but also to do with laptops.

I spend much of my life on the move with my 1Tb MBP and would be able to fit a good subset on that.

Not only a matter of getting access to the music (I can do that with export, as I currently do) but of being able to use and edit tags and metadata in a seamless manner. And of course play counts.

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