This update was a disaster for me, breaking ZFS compatibility means Roon Core no longer works at all on my media server.
I’ve been unable to access my music since I updated, and unable to downgrade too since the iOS app won’t talk to 1.7.
Hard to imagine a worse outcome out of an update of a paid product.
I saw a reply from Roon on a support thread that it will be addressed. Still don’t know if I’ll renew. I haven’t even opened it since yesterday when it was locked up.
Begin rant… I’ll probably get off topic…
Silly. That’s why there are phone apps and tablet apps and computer apps. But it seems Roon is attempting to keep all apps the same, but we all know the phone app was never going to be a full representation of what Roon can be and is. But design and layout approach vary quite a bit for the apps as phone and tablets are touch based and computers for the most part are mouse based.
They basically have to design 3 interfaces because of the differences in architecture, but in trying to keep the flow the same… there is going to be some sacrifices somewhere along the line. That said, the phone app is just pure convenience… so the layout space on the other apps shouldn’t be affected because there’s a Phone app… the tablet and computer apps it’s game on!
There’s a lot of bits that need tweaking and fixing. Definitely think the release was pushed too soon. Should’ve thrown a few new goodies into the 1.7 mix and worked a bit more on what we have now and released it as the all new look, new goodies under the hood how do you like me now Roon 2.0!
At any rate… I’m wondering when the game is going to get started… almost feels like we’ve moved forward and backward at the same time.
Another thing kind of related to UI… I just don’t understand why the computer app is as laggy as it is. Even using the app on the host computer feels sluggish at times. This makes me think that there’s also something in the server code causing the slowdowns.
My OS, core and database now live on an extremely fast nvme drive and powered by an i7 desktop processor. All the audio files (which from my understanding, speed is not as important on the drives containing the audio) are on an external thunderbolt 3 enclosure raid10. which is also overkill.
So why is Roon still sluggish? I may try taking tidal and qobuz out of the loop and see if things change.
If you got this far, thanks for reading.
Rant over.
Yes you can - I just did that. You can focus on 3 genres even - I just did +Jazz +Classical +Avant Garde. Focus is very definitely not broken.
My understanding is that in the example you gave, Roon will only show albums that include all those genre tags. This is the behavior I’m seeing.
I believe what is considered “broken” is the fact if you Focus on, say, Jazz and Classical, it’s expected Roon will show all Classical albums and all Jazz albums, not just albums that include both.
@musickid Yes. I have Roon 1.8 installed on a Mac Pro M1, with no issues. Roon is not a native M1 program, but I haven’t noticed any difference. It’s certainly fast. I had 1.7 on here, and it had no issues. Now 1.8 is faster. Also, I use the Dragonfly Red. You need a short adapter for USB-to-Lightning on the Mac. Causes no problems. I get rates up to 192; it completely decodes and renders MQA. Absolutely no problems.
Re Stars: I think a part of the problem with 1.8 is it’s not clear what “front” is. On any album page, the stars are in a line below the genres that includes time, format, and date, along with stars (for classical). For nonclassical, they’re located to the right of the description.
Please don’t take this the wrong way. Yours is an obviously thoughtful post. But I sometimes think we must all be using different software and somehow we have arrived on this forum from alternative universes imagining we are talking the same language about the same topics. Here is an example.
I used to know how many versions of Beethoven’s 5th I have in my local library in 1.7 but I cannot tell you that anymore in 1.8 because roon no longer distinguishes the total for local and streamed content in my library. But the total versions of Beethoven’s 5th in my local library plus Qobuz I can tell you very precisely. Roon tells me it is 2,735 recordings of Beethoven’s 5th.
So now we have two issues to deal with. What version of Beethoven’s 5th will roon suggest for me when I do a search? The second problem is how in any meaningful way will roon present to me the 2,735 alternatives?
So from 2,735 possible Beethoven 5th’s what does roon suggest? Karajan, Bernstein, Abbado, Solti maybe. No! Lets go with a boyband. This literally amongst 2,735 alternatives is what roon’s Valance decided to give me.
Ok. So that’s a miss. You must get the frustration with that? I’d be interested to know that there is something unique about my library that amongst 2,735 possibilities this is the obvious Beethoven’s 5th for me. Incomprehensible.
Moving on, what else can I click on? Well this what I get:
This is the first 3 line items. There are 2,735 of them. Vertically scrolling to the bottom on my 15 inch laptop is about 20 meters. That takes about 40 mins a click at a time. Obviously no one in their right mind would do this. The point is, did anyone look at usability of the UI in terms of core Classical repertoire when scaled up to integration with a streaming partner? This is Beethoven’s 5th!
This is a lot of the reason why you are seeing such polarised views on the 1.8 release. Depending on genre and use case, 1.7 was already at the limits of usability for a significant number of roon users. Longstanding issues were not fixed and for many 1.8 is more clicks, more complexity, just to stand still.
To their credit roon appear to be bending over backwards to get 1.8 back to that borderline of 1.7 usability in the last couple of maintenance releases. Not really sure anymore where roon seem to be going. Time will tell I guess.
I’ve never considered that that is how focus works. If I choose +FLAC and +96kHz I don’t get (nor would I want) all albums that are in FLAC and all albums that are 96kHz, I get all albums that are FLAC and 96kHz.
I don’t really find problems with either. Shuffle works fine. I use it all the time. Most of the time, I’m content to sit back and listen. If you want to see the shuffled queue, click the triple-line-with-arrow symbol next to Back-Play-Fwd.
Focus also works fine. You can select more than one genre at a time. It currently uses an AND function to combine the genres selected. I agree that it needs an OR function. I’m sure they’ll get around to that soon. Doesn’t hinder me at all.
I guess there are cases for both. I can see what you are saying, but I also see a where one would want results as I described.
I hope Roon can provide an update that accommodates both scenarios.
(Edit: removed incorrect example)
One of the things I love the most about Roon is the ability to quickly review an artist’s discography by AMG five-star rating. This is no longer present. If not resolved, I will probably not renew. Otherwise, the update looks / sounds great, but this is a deal breaker for me.
Agreed - a more complex focus with the ability to specify AND, NOT, OR would be ideal. I have obviously not needed to do some of the things that appear to have disappeared but all the focus things that I use on a regular basis are still there and working in 1.8.
There’s a whole thread about it:
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/make-focus-an-or-operation-instead-of-and/
@oneofmany Thanks - fast scroll is a minor consolation but still nowhere near as user friendly (or fast) as the A-Z quick index jump feature. Operating without the A-Z quick index jump feature makes Roon 1.8 feel much more like a “computer” experience than before.
Roon - please bring back the A-Z quick index jump feature in artist and album views!
Just installed 1,8 core on my QNAP TVS-73, and on ioS and Windows 10 PC apps. Settings show that system is logged into TIDAL. However any attempt to play to any audio zone results in error “Track not available in Tidal” or “Too many failures - stopping playback”…needless to say, works fine in non-Roon settings like Tidal Connect or KEF Connect situations. Any ideas?
You won’t consider Popularity sorting at all?
The concern of the ratings is each rating was one single person opinion. The new popularity sorting is crowd sourced in some way.
I agree it would be frustrating to scroll thousands of albums. I clicked the icon to the right of the Focus icon and was able to toggle between tracks in my local library and those available on Qobuz. Does that functionality work for you? In addition, I can narrow down the Qobuz albums using Focus. (Agree on the hit or miss of the suggestions…I still don’t get their recommendations many times.)
So will add my two cents after using 1.8 for a few days now. First of all hats off to the development team. I’m liking most of what I’m seeing and using roon becomes more and more enjoyable… like the vertical scrolling.
Things I find would be better if they carried over from 1.7 are:
Star ratings on the album display page… it helps select which new album I fancy taking a punt on without having to click on it first
Old size waveform… this new smaller one makes it hard to be precise when playing with the position of the track
Roon Radio (Valence or whatever)… seems to play some weird selections now after my seed. For example after listening to a Sea and Cake album, which is pretty mellow stuff, I was served a Superchunk song which seemed totally out of place… was loud and jarring… I like Superchunk but not straight after being chilled out.
I’m sure there’s something else… 3 minor gripes didn’t seem like that much 
Overall, I’m a happy customer and will not be canceling my lifetime subscription 
whatever it is negative or positive feedback is fine.it should be a moment of pride for roon.i have never ever seen this level of engagement from audiophiles on any audio product software or hardware in any audio forums .1000’s of comments in one day on a single thread (the other 1.8 launch thread and this feedback thread.)
You may be right, thank you.
