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

[SonicYouth95]

In general on all screens: to much space, less information than before, more clicks necessary.

[Eng-Joo_Gay]

@hmack

Please - if we’re stuck with the new clumsy looking interface, can we please get rid of that horrible jarring purple colour that has replaced light blue - or at least give us the option of selecting our preferred colour.

Agree on this. I prefer the previous color over purple. Roon should work on allowing us some customization on the skin of the interface.

[Adam_Arczynski (Adam Arczyński)]

After initial hype with new focus, which is great, I am getting disappointed due to removal of features that I liked a lot. Links in album view to playlists are gone. They helped me to find out what I have in playlists and what I don’t. Also I cannot understand removal of covers miniatures in mobile playlist view. I have one composed of 200+ songs and images helped a lot to navigate through long list. Now I am forced to read titles and artists on a mobile screen. Not happy about it.

[rDin (Mark Harding)]

The discography functionality, pulling in Qobuz/Tidal and library is terrific, but where are the album ratings on the album images? Presenting 50 albums for an artist with no rating context makes for a pretty useless portal to exploring that artist.

[Alexander_Bashlaev]

Roon 1.8 minuses

Ok. Just to make it clear. Once again. Let’s get it all together. All the things that ruined my user experience with Roon.

1. No more tags and playlists information about tracks in an album view.
2. Broken “Add to tag” modal menu — no more checkboxes.
3. No more “OR” logic with tags in Focus. Ability to use “AND” is good. But bring back also “OR”. Because half of bookmarks are broken now.
4. No more track numbers in playlists.
5. No more working shuffle feature — just instant adding of first 5000 tracks from an album list to the queue. It’s useless in so many cases. Let’s say “play all 1970s”. Now I can’t do that. It was so good before when it worked like a radio limited to library but without relevance — pick one track, then another and so on. And except the disability to take into account all chosen albums, that’s totally inconvenient to have 5000 tracks in a queue.
6. Ruined box set view. Before I could select the desired CD (let’s say “Disc 11”) with just one click and after that press “play now”, “add next” or “queue” just for this disc.
7. No more “albums by this artist in my library” in an album view. “Selected discography” is not the same.
8. Irrelevant release dates options (1920s, 1930s, etc.) in Focus menu when everything else is filtered. And much more slower Focus feature in general. 15-20 seconds after opening, really? And 20-30 seconds of waiting every time I open “Focus on tags”?

Is there anything I forgot?

New design and exploring possibilities are fine. But it seems that so many disadvantages in basic everyday functionality overwhelms all good. Very frustrating. Unfortunately this release (with all the hype around it) will be remembered and will remain in history not as a great breakthrough, but as an epic fail in UX.

[James_Neilson2 (James Neilson)]

@support can you confirm that this new “limited” shuffle is a permanent fixture . Its really a step back- being able to get a random selection from a large library was my preferred way to consume. Limiting to the “first” 5000 in any list is very restrictive.

[Ryan_Herrera]

That is strange, it should.

[maky100 (Manfred)]

I am using my own tagged genres. In genre overview I have some few genres which are not mine like RAP or Children Music. None of mine albums are included in this genre, that is correct because I do not have albums with this genre, so it seems it is one more bug to show this genres.

[DanMtsn (Dan Matiesanu)]

I don’t think it was designed for tablets, gesture control is non-existent. You still have to tap arrows and “X” buttons to navigate. It was designed with no consideration for either touch or keyboard/mouse.

[Ratbert]

@SonicYouth95 Can you not turn on track numbers in settings, general, show track numbers?

[DanMtsn (Dan Matiesanu)]

it used to pop on and off, never found a cause or a solution. I haven’t seen it for a while until I updated last night. now I don’t see it anymore

[DanMtsn (Dan Matiesanu)]

oops, “new releases for you” is back
looks like it’s still evolving… let’s hope the other useful things will come back, like the list of recommended albums that used to show on the right hand side (don’t know how that was called)

[Duncan_Andison]

@Alexander_Bashlaev

Roon 1.8 minuses

Ok. Just to make it clear. Once again. Let’s get it all together. All the things that ruined my user experience with Roon.

1. No more tags and playlists information about tracks in an album view.
2. Broken “Add to tag” modal menu — no more checkboxes.
3. No more “OR” logic with tags in Focus. Ability to use “AND” is good. But bring back also “OR”. Because half of bookmarks are broken now.
4. No more track numbers in playlists.
5. No more working shuffle feature — just instant adding of first 5000 tracks from an album list to the queue. It’s useless in so many cases. Let’s say “play all 1970s”. Now I can’t do that. It was so good before when it worked like a radio limited to library but without relevance — pick one track, then another and so on. And except the disability to take into account all chosen albums, that’s totally inconvenient to have 5000 tracks in a queue.
6. Ruined box set view. Before I could select the desired CD (let’s say “Disc 11”) with just one click and after that press “play now”, “add next” or “queue” just for this disc.
7. No more “albums by this artist in my library” in an album view. “Selected discography” is not the same.
8. Irrelevant release dates options (1920s, 1930s, etc.) in Focus menu when everything else is filtered. And much more slower Focus feature in general. 15-20 seconds after opening, really? And 20-30 seconds of waiting every time I open “Focus on tags”?

Is there anything I forgot?

New design and exploring possibilities are fine. But it seems that so many disadvantages in basic everyday functionality overwhelms all good. Very frustrating. Unfortunately this release (with all the hype around it) will be remembered and will remain in history not as a great breakthrough, but as an epic fail in UX.

Pretty much sums it up. Especially 1,2,3 & 5.

[Flere]

Thanks a lot.
Rebooting the Nucleus and restarting the download worked.

1.8 is now up and running.

[cereal_killer]

Look in settings to add tack numbers. The option is there!

[Weirdomusic (You fanboys crack me up.)]

@Henri

Settings/General/show track numbers on album page/ Yes

This was already a setting on 1.7.
Nothing to do with the changes in 1.8

Yes it has to do with the changes: the option is gone on the iPhone app.

[Alexander_Bashlaev]

@DanMtsn

the list of recommended albums that used to show on the right hand side

It’s back. But there is no “albums by this artist in my library” now. Just the whole “selected discography”.

[danny2]

@Alexander_Bashlaev

No more working shuffle feature — just instant adding of first 5000 tracks from an album list to the queue. It’s useless in so many cases. Let’s say “play all 1970s”. Now I can’t do that. It was so good before when it worked like a radio limited to library but without relevance — pick one track, then another and so on. And except the disability to take into account all chosen albums, that’s totally inconvenient to have 5000 tracks in a queue.

Agree 100%. Let us pick tracks
Give an option for limiting playlist to 20, 50, or 100 tracks…

[Powered_Two_Wheeler]

Much of want I wanted and so much more that I imagined.
I am more excited about exploring music more than ever.
There’s more work to do of course, but this release is significant. The Roon experience is actually akin to entering a world class museum and learning by exploring. I get Roon now because I appreciate the vision. I will stop now at the risk of sounding overly evangelic.

[DaveNightmare]

Fully agree. I truly believe that this is a LANDMARK moment for Roon. They have opened the door to the competition with this failed release. Either they will spend many months of hard work rectifying and correcting 70% of 1.8 or they will begin hemorrhaging customers by the thousands and go bankrupt.

They obviously did not plan, test, check, verify, beta-test and user acceptance check this release as it has problems on practically every single aspect from UI to UX, from remote clients to server with nearly nothing being stable.

Personally, looking at 1.8 for a few hours now, I have literally lost all confidence in Roon. Not interested in being indulgent for the next several months as they try and save the sinking ship.

My music is too important for me.