Roon 1.6 Feedback Thread

[EAu]

I am an user from Hong Kong. I have abandoned the use of Artist view since the start of using Roon software because Roon will just either translate some of the Artist’s Chinese name to English name itself while some will not. This messed up my overall experience which artists are never sorted properly and looking at the Chinese artists’ English name looks weird.

Library view is what I will only use with. However, with the new Search function now, the Artist view will show up topmost which I never use and now it keeps annoying me…

Normally, I will prefer to use simply the tag I entered to the media file inside so that I can have full control to the artist information.

If Roon team assumes this view design is the best for most users, it is fine, but I hope at the same time kind of customization capabilities can be done on let me skip seeing the Artist view somehow. Or, if someone is in the Artist view, the Search should focus on Artist list itself while if someone is in the Album view, the Search should focus on only Album list. This makes more sense to me.

While I am also not a fan to streaming and radio service which seems this release has improved a lot, I am in the “disappointed” camp as well.

[Antonio_Bendezu]

I’m trying to figure out the benefits of using a Tidal login that does not allow playback. I guess it may allow for a different Roon Radio experience playing local content which may be better for some than the old Roon Radio.

That’s it exactly. Plus the benefit of not having to pay $20/month. The Roon Radio experience without the subscription seems to be no different than the pre-1.6 experience. The new Roon Radio (with a Tidal/Qobuz account linked) asks me to tell it why I skipped a track or thumbed one down. Without the linked account, no questions. As such, it appears that a user’s Roon Radio experience benefits from the touted “machine learning” only if an account is linked.

I think I figured out what happens with a linked unpaid account. I started Roon Radio with a local track (Shiny Shiny Pimpmobile, by East River Pipe). It played that track. I didn’t add any tracks to the queue (no thumbs up, or down - I just listened). The next track it tried to play was not a local track, and playback stopped. The track it tried to play was still on the queue as the currently playing track. I hit the Play button. Roon gave the message “Track currently unavailable from Tidal.” Roon played a different local track. Interesting.

Seems lame to me, but I understand the common response to such complaints: the update to 1.6 was free - quit your whining. My response: it’s not free, if I have to pay Tidal or Qobuz for the improved Roon Radio functionality. Booooo!!! The next question: is Roon Labs getting additional revenue from Tidal/Qobuz linked accounts?

[Gigatoaster]

I second that.

The Roon Radio also works with TIDAL & quobuz because it uses Cloud ML algorithms “in the cloud” but we don’t know which one or which APIs. It is a way to upsell subscriptions to streaming service.

It is although mentioned in the Release Notes that this new Radio feature works only in use with streaming services and it was mentioned earlier I think that developing such algorithms on a “local library” is “complicated”.

It is clearly a business choice and a way to add value to streaming services working in harmony with Roon.

EDIT: just to clarify, this is not a criticism. I just don’t know what ML model & algorithms are used so I am just making assumption.

[anon97951896]

@Antonio_Bendezu

Sorry to hear the current Roon Radio implementation stops when it hits a Tidal track it does not have access to.

I guess there is a benefit to saving $20 per month or $10 if you go with their Premium plan as long as you already own all the music you ever want to listen to. That would be how it would have to be for me because I retired last year and while I decided to start listening to a lot more music I’m not interested in spending hundreds of dollars per month purchasing music.

In my case I started with Roon last May and only had about 80 local albums. I signed up for Tidal at the same time and now have 532 albums in my library due to all the Tidal albums I have added. I’ve paid $160 so far to Tidal to listen to all those albums which works out to about $0.36 per album. I know that cost will go up over time but I’m hoping the album count will go up faster

The new Roon Radio now means I will be listening to Tidal tracks not currently in my library and even offers an easy way to add an album to my library if I like what I am hearing.

Something else I really like about having a Tidal subscription is the ability to read about an album on this forum or elsewhere on the Internet and listen to it or add it to my library instantly with no incremental cost.

Tim

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

The Roon Radio also works with TIDAL & quobuz because it uses Cloud ML algorithms “in the cloud” but we don’t know which one or which APIs. It is a way to upsell subscriptions to streaming service.
…
It is clearly a business choice and a way to add value to streaming services working in harmony with Roon.

These assumptions don’t resemble the truth–allow me to clarify–

First–the machine learning models and radio algorithm are 100% ours, based on our data assets, our IP, our development work, and our expertise. We’re not using someone else’s API’s to implement the radio stream or trying to sell streaming services.

The choice to make Roon Radio require a streaming service was a product/technical decision, not a business decision. There were no business guys in the room, and business was not a motivating factor. I know this because I am the person who made the decision.

The only reason I care if you have a streaming service subscription is so that you can get more out of Roon, because having access to all of the music on earth makes Roon a more compelling experience. There is nothing else in it for us. It’s not like we are getting a cut of your TIDAL subscription.

Having everyone pick tracks against the same “all the music on earth” library was a huge enabler for making the radio experience good. All of a sudden, we could have clear discussions with people about what was going wrong, replicate the problems ourselves, and fix them. That is impossible when everyone’s individual library is forcing them into a slightly (or wildly) different result.

We fought through a lot of this while building the old in-library radio feature two years ago. It’s a real struggle to make good picks when you have to filter it through the contents of a library. Stuff that worked well in house failed in the field all the time. The old in-libray radio feature works best within a certain band of library sizes/compositions and performance falls off outside of that. It’s almost inevitable–if there isn’t a good variety of good picks to be made without just playing the same 1-2 albums that match the seed in a small library, the algorithm is going to have to start making crappy picks or it’s gonna have to repeat itself a lot!

We did briefly try using the new algorithm for in-library radio. I don’t think it made it past internal testing into alpha/beta, even, because it was so bad. After filtering down the picks from the new algorithm through all but the largest few libraries (1% of people), the experience was garbage. It turned out to be better to just leave the old implementation for that case, since it was already doing a decent job, and reserve the new stuff for the situations where it performed the best. So that’s what we did.

Hope that clears things up.

[Gigatoaster]

Hi @brian

Thanks for the clarification. I am very impressed that you are using your own algorithm. Even for NLU and NLP nothing like what is already available on the market at AWS, Google Cloud Platform or Azure? Very nice!

I understand by what you are saying that the choice of the algorithm is technical, not business. And thanks for clarifying the point on the cut of the TIDAL subscription.

So that means because it is your own model and that you own the technology, we could see in the future this algorithm applied to local library, right?

I am asking this question because maybe I am confused but I have “a feeling” that the Radio function lacks some “randomness”. I have experienced that today again with 1.6 and I am glad you ran some tests with a “local library”. I just wonder why your tests were inconclusive as many AI models have now features to avoid or mitigate such possible bias. If you willing to share, would you like to tell us more about it?

I can see the value of Roon specifically with the screen in mind of “This artist–>collaborated with that one—> and that one is inspired by that other one” so here is the basis of the algorithm, no?

I know this is hypothetical and not real life but I wonder what is your opinion on this “lack of randomness” in Roon.

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

There is very little NLP involved here. The algorithm is primarily backed by a vector-space model of metadata objects learned from usage data. A small part does have its basis in text processing, since there is an LSI model based on the metadata text in the mix, but this is not the main ingredient.

I can see some potential applications of the underlying models to library-only cases. The radio algorithm as-is doesn’t scale there so well, so probably not for that specific application. We have a series of features mapped out that will leverage the same infrastructure for non-radio purposes.

As far as the new algorithm goes–there is a lot of business logic related to controlling repetitiveness. We surveyed several competing products to find out what was normal before tweaking the knobs, and our tuning allows significantly less repetition than every level than our analysis of Spotify and Pandora’s behavior.

To be clear, though–the thread you posted last month does not relate to the new algorithm or any of this machine learning investment. We just released that stuff 2 days ago with Roon 1.6.

If you are taking the same steps that you described in that thread with 1.6, you are also not activating the new radio function–since that can only be kicked off in 1.6 using a single artist, album, track, or genre, not a focused browser. It sounds like you may be using shuffle play or something else, but I’m not totally sure–it would be good to get to the bottom of that before guessing (in the other thread, please).

Also–no, radio is not based on the editorial “collaborated with”/etc lists that you see on the artist page.

[Vectra]

Seems local w/o a streaming subscription the intelligence is limited to 1.5 which makes sense for small libraries but I was thinking my 20,000 albums would be big enough (perhaps that is not common). I like the idea of an evolving AI playlist although I have enjoyed sorts and shuffles as well.

If I got a $10 320 Qobuz subscription linked could I hear my HiRez files for songs selected by the logic vs. the lower rez streamer versions of the same title the AI selects? If a track was selected not in my library then I could play it in 320. Or, would it end up mostly playing the Qobuz 320 files even though I have a CD or SACD/HDtrack of many of the same songs?

[David_Hammond]

Totally agree, I use Dark Mode and up to version 1.6 Roon on my 27" iMac Roon looked great now in Version 1.6 I have an ugly 1" high grey bar at the bottom.

[Peter_Weghofer]

Where has the “Switch Zones” button gone?

[wizardofoz (Mr Fix It aka The Wiz)]

Under Volume icon or right click the zone icon

[pl_svn (paolo)]

as reported yesterday: edited my Qobuz playlists (names) and deleted all my Tidal’s but one

changes have been (almost) immediately reflected in Qobuz and Tidal “Roon’s sections” but not (… yet?) in my Roon’s playlist. also tried logging out/in of my streaming accounts to no avail

[anp]

I have had a Qobuz subscription for the last year with a Bluesound set-up. I have enjoyed it but somehow I had a nagging feeling I wasn’t using it as much as I could. The main problem was when I found something on the Qobuz search I had to then mark it as a Favourite to get it to go over to the Bluesound app. ( I had no Roon)
Two days ago I installed Roon and it has changed things for the better massively! I had two high quality computer audio systems that I can now include with my Bluesound speakers so I have music everywhere…and the search system is perfect. I search, I find it and I play it with a whole bunch of extra metadata.

I tried Roon a couple of years ago and Tidal just didn’t do it for me, it just seemed like the wrong partner to be honest.

Qobuz… it’s just better, more eclectic and esoteric. And based in Europe. I like it it. And now Roon integration. Good times listening to John Dowland as I type.
Cheers.

[Tim_Woodward]

Second that, as a newbie brought on board by Qobuz integration in this release it actually took me five minutes to realise that the reasons I only had a page pf albums was the main album and library pages force horizontal scrolling - a side swipe is hard work compared to two finger up and down mousepad on the Mac and far less intuitive than scrolling up and down like we are used to from other apps - like Qobuz, Lightning DS etc.

[Christian_DEPLANTE]

… well. Given that the 1.6 sound is not exactly as good in my setting, as explained in the other feedback thread on 1.6, I will keep 1.5 until 1.6.x implements the required changes.

If the database collapses and even the backups don’t work, Roon would be to blame for NOT warning the users before u-grading by letting them know before going into irreversible process without a safety net:

“This upgrade cannot be reversed, and former database backups cannot be used. Are you sure you want to continue ?”

Don’t you think that would be fair ? We users do many upgrades of many apps all the time and we are not supposed to remember by heart which are dangerous to revert from. By the way most of the time they aren’t.

[Nyquist]

There is no difference in the playback engine between 1.5 and 1.6 so how is it supposed to sound that much worse you want to revert to the old version? It’s s snowing and freezing here wich means dry air and low air pressure. That makes more of a difference in sound then I have ever heard from a software up or downgrade or any cable swap I ever did in my system. Are you really sure it’s the software? Really?

Apart from that, since Roon is not just a software package but also a data service so it works partly cloud based. In order to ensure compatibility between your local.software and the database Roon has choosen a way to provide only service to one release at the time. Older releases might get into compatibilty problems very soon. If reversabilty was supported it would mean maintainance to how many versions? One, two, hey I might even liked version 1.0 the best but I would like it to be compatible with the new radio function. This a problem many software companies are facing.My only hope is that Roon at least stays compatible with my hardware for a long time. In this day and age where we all need to step back a little to save the environment I don’t want to buy new hardware every 3-4 years for the sake of compatibilty.

[ged_hickman1]

Roonhave got plans to update the UI so this isn’t the end point

[anon55914447]

It’s the classic “Switch in an empty box” effect. You’d see it every time a new version of LMS was released for Squeezebox. People would swear blind they heard a difference. No measurements ever provided. No evidence at all apart from someone’s shaky anecdote.

[Joe_Strain]

It’s likely the whiskey or wine causing any perceived differences for some!
“A new software release? Let’s settle in, celebrate a little, and give it a whirl!”

[Michael_van_der_Wal]

@brian: I’d like to say thank you for being so transparent and patient! Even when some of us seem to end up in rants that are (imho) not warranted at all. So thanks!