Unfortunately Roon has become indispensable for me so I will be using it even if this doesn’t change. But that doesn’t stop me from opining politely (mostly). I have been a lifetime subscriber since July 2015.
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I own Audirvana 3.50 and it works fine. But my fallback is MinimServer + dCS Mosaic.
In that case, you can get Audirvana Origin lifetime for $90. Audirvana 3.5 sucks IMHO. I seriously doubt Roon is going to waver on this.
I think 3.50 is just fine. And like I said, I don’t use it at all except for some cursory library checks.
I agree. They’ve built 2.0 around the need for internet access. Changes to the search function is just the start. Early Access is putting album and artist info into the cloud already. No doubt more changes of this nature will come.
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All I can say is…they’d better consider it if they want to keep customers. As it is, once support for Legacy 1.8 ends, and changes aren’t made to 2.0, they’ve lost me as a customer. For what we pay for this software, we deserve better.
In writing up an article to be published elsewhere about this trainwreck, here are all of the possible failure points in requiring access all the time:
- Roon is assuming we all have 100% perfect Internet. In the real world, that doesn’t happen.
- The Internet backbone, plus the connection to Roon’s servers, also needs to have 100% uptime with no routing issues that slow down access.
- Whichever provider Roon uses for cloud service also needs to be running efficiently. Any outage there will kick us all offline.
- Likewise, Roon’s own code has to run perfectly or again, we’ll lose access.
- There are a handful of users who pick up their Roon Server and attached hard drive and take it with them on vacation to a remote area that doesn’t have Internet access. So now, these customers are denied using the product as well.
Roon does a lot well, but pushing more and more processing, and our data, to the cloud is not a winning combination here. For that matter, some of us would be happy with a Roon Lite. Just give me access to my own library (a simple artist/album/track search is all we need), skip the recommendations/discovery/reviews, and let me retrieve metadata in case my own tags are incomplete. A lot of software offers different subscription levels and, having coded similar applications myself, it’s not that difficult. Honestly, I’m sick and tired of the developers being on the offensive when paying customers are clearly telling them here that 2.0 is deeply flawed, and we’re basically being given the middle finger.
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And this is why I am puzzled with people who suggest ARC for this kind of scenario. They really don’t understand audiophile. We take audio seriously.
I could only have less latency than currently offered by roon, having the server in my house is going to be less latency than a server in a server farm hundreds of miles away
If I had to guess some of the core principles the Roon team is striving for, they would be:
- Appliance-like robustness
- Customer-focused experience: Beautiful interface; fast search; worry-free experience
- Continuous improvement of the Valence engine by learning from customer content and interaction
I can see how a cursory analysis could lead the Roon team to “simplify” by adhering to a not-fault-tolerant cloud-native API paradigm. But I would argue 1 & 2 can get destroyed if this calculus is ever so slightly off. And it is. Even in Manhattan, internet service providers such as Verizon over coax have regular 1minute-ish blackouts. I would estimate once an hour give or take. I know because the Peloton bikes in the building gym are affected by this (ok yes, first world problems).
Now, there are ways to have made use of cloud-based APIs fault-tolerant. They require a bit more work initially. Enterprise systems implement such mechanisms.
Having said all this, the Roon team is probably in a state of denial at this point, as rearchitecting this is likely complex and time consuming.
I will not leave Roon even if this is not fixed. But I can see the chatter all over the internet about this and I can see Roon’s customer acquisition trend being affected by this unfortunate and uninformed choice.
Real world testing of Roon’s new architecture, along with Danny’s own words, suggest that Roon 2.0 should work for an indeterminate time without internet connection. It’s just that this isn’t guaranteed. Brief outages are ok. Longer outages, not so much!
The reason the disconnected uptime is not guaranteed to be greater than zero is architectural: when the code hits a cloud-only API call, it fails. As such, what you’re saying is not correct.
You can simulate this easily by unplugging the external cable from ISP to your modem while keeping the router active. I did, and in a couple minute after I unplugged the cable Roon stopped playing a file, any file. I could not any file until I reattached the external ISP cable back to the modem.
So two minutes for me, but YMMV of course.
I know that it’s architectural. Roon 2.0 is designed to work with a constant internet connection. I was merely suggesting that one minute internet outages are a lot less likely to cause a problem than longer terms outages. I have experienced a number of short outages without losing playback. In fact, under testing, I manged just short of 3 hours of internet-down playback before the whole thing packed up.
We are hoping it’s not dead but you might be right.
What I wish/hope for is for Roon to properly handle and inform the user when the internet is offline yet still allow certain functions that don’t require immediate internet service to continue to work (e.g. select and play a local album).
No doubt the code and UI required to do so is complex. We have no idea how often our 2.0 Roon installation needs to talk with the mothership. Still, the loss of internet service - even if for just a short period of time - is a very real use case that most if not all Roon users will undoubtedly be confronted with sooner or later.
I’m probably one of those that upgraded immediately. I had no known reason not to upgrade. I came here today trying to work out why my searches are so slow these days. Now I know, bits and pieces are now in the cloud.
I’m really disappointed that Roon has chosen to go down this path. My internet can be pretty slow and disrupted. I’ll be buying a J Rivers license as a backup plan.
I fail to see why you’d move searches to the internet, all my files are local, I don’t use a streaming service because internet is unreliable.
I’m not sure where resource complaints are coming from but I suggest that searches are the least of the load. Perhaps cloud DSP makes more sense.
I don’t like the direction this is heading. As for people using 2.0, I suggest many are like me, never come here unless there’s an issue, many of us just want to listen to music and have that instant responsiveness that you’ve just removed.
Consider me an unhappy customer.
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Miguel, instead of being every time the echo of other complaining users here, why don’t you disconnect the cable from your internet and then start to make a list of failing functions.
Then we can discuss in more details the effects of the changed design.
…and do what I did in my example: click three or four times on a local function after you get there a no connection error and see if it is working again. Good luck!
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I did just that and Roon 2.0 stopped playing files in a couple of minutes.
I have since upgraded to 1.8 Legacy.
Because I understand the root cause of the issue and what you’re suggesting is pointless.