Roon 1.8 (Build 748/756/763/764) Feedback

Could be just a me thing, but does anyone else find the purple on black (while using Dark theme) very hard to read? I like the Dark theme generally, but that part in particular is difficult to work with for me.

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I have had the same thought about the Home page many times! I’d love to see something that draws more upon what makes Roon so useful for me - something along the lines of Discovery might be nice. Roon is sooo good at finding things in my library!

In my opinion, this happens way too often in 1.8. …

This doesn’t look much better, if you ask me…

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user Flere has found a much better workaround/solution for this

Dirk

Overall, I like the upgraded look. Still digging into what “Valence” brings to the game- But upgrade went smoothly for all my devices and I’ve had no issues. Thanks for all the hard work to the Roon Labs team!

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See here for more of the same

@Ratbert and @Peterh, both of these suggestions require use of the keyboard. Previously the A-Z quick index jump allowed artist or album selection without the use of the keyboard. it was a very useful feature that should be brought back if possible.

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After using roon 1.8 for the first day, it’s starting to grow on me. There’s a lot to like, but as always some things not to ones taste. So a big thanks to the team at roonlabs for the new look and feel and all the work that went into it.

I’m using the iPadOS version on an iPad pro 10.5", so my comments relate to this version.

First the likes:

  • vertical scrolling
  • discography
  • revised focus feature
  • portrait mode - although i like the landscape view more
  • recent listening
  • limit roon radio to library

In the following some ideas/recommendations from my side regarding further improvement in an upcoming revision:

general:

  • I don’t like the serif font for artists, titles etc. and would like to see it replaced with a font more in line with the regular sans serif font
  • A Home-button in the navigation area to take you back to the Homescreen
  • scrolling is not smooth
  • hyperlinks should be ore obvious, for example artist names in now playing or individual album view

“Home”

  • Either to bring back the profile Picture or to rearrange the title section to take up less space.
  • Customization of show/hide and order of the different sections on the Homescreen (discover should be more prominently placed)

“Albums” \ " Artists " \ “Composers”

  • place the “play now” button next to “My …” to save on space

“Tracks” \ “Compositions”

  • Appearance is inconsistent to “Albums” and “Artists”, title and play now don’t disappear when scrolling, My Tracks in navigation bar missing

“Individual Album”

  • the album art is quite small in landscape mode / smaller than in portrait which results in lots of empty space on the right side with typical album title length. This could be improved by integrating the genre badges into the title section instead as a separate row underneath it to enable for a bigger/wider album artwork.
  • i liked the blurred version of the album artwork as background in 1.7. without it especially the dark mode looks a bit dull

“Individual Artist”

  • Albums in my Library should be on top
  • Again probably a customizable view (show/hide arrange sections)

“Now Playing”

  • Yes, the scrubbing bar is to small in landscape view for precise navigation. I understand the new version is more consistent as the controls keep place and size in all views, however there’s still some empty space to the left and right available.

BTW: Spund quality still is excellent to my ears, nothing to complain there.

Regards,

Roland

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Last night (day one) I upgraded my Andriod phone and IPAD then the NUC i5 ROCK core. No upgrade issues to report, everything came over nicely. I am getting used to the new GUI and features and will provide feedback at a later date. so far everything looks and feels great.

On an iPad, tablet or touchscreen pc the keyboard is on screen, what device are you using?

Purple on black in dark mode is almost illegible.
Still don’t like the purple.

And too much white in the light theme.

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A lot of thought went in the 1.8 build. Visually stunning, just beautiful. Vertical scrolling is so much faster for me visually. Recent listening is fantastic! Seeing the usage in four-week blocks provides a ton of information at a glance and is just cool. Had a hiccup with my display driver on my laptop, but the Roon community and Roon support resolved rapidly. Great to see new functions added based on community input. Roon team’s innovation and hard work is much appreciated.

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Too much space is used in the app for too little information.

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They should treat the MQA flag as a warning, rather than just an information :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Thanks, Chris. It has been so long since I set that, that I forgot! Still by closing the sidebar all that happens is my album art scales up. I can see only seven columns in two rows when before I could see 11 columns and 4 rows.

I have thousands of albums I need to merge. If I cannot see a lot at a time on a page, it is like playing the card game “memory.” Search sometimes helps, but not always for reasons outlined in my suggestion (1).

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I’ve spent some time with 1.8 now and got my eye in. I started off on the light theme, but now I’m used to it, it’s back to black.
Overall I like it, even the purple…
one issue is in Tracks. I often focus in on fav tracks and hit shuffle, now I have to select Shuffle from the drop list, which is a pain as this list is not customisable as far as I can see.

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I was also disappointed with the absence of the abc search but I’ve found that , on iPad , in album list view a grey scroll button can be found on the right hand side of the screen , which as you scroll down brings up letters of the alphabet in a blue circle as you travel down ( or up ) the page . It’s not as accurate as the old abc search but I find it better than typing in the search or filter fields

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I am actually liking the iPad portrait mode. I didn’t think I would.


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Yes, in that case you are right. (I’m a laptop user)

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Not sure if this is a 1.8 bug/feature/quirk, but Roon Radio always seems to go for a streamed version of a track (that’s not a library version) even when that track is in my local library at the exact same file resolution.

Not a huge deal, but it means my track stats and play counts aren’t updated. :man_shrugging:

I don’t want to restrict to local only. The mixture I had in 1.7 was good.

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