Roon 2.0 and internet connectivity [it's just like 1.8 now]

[_Jeremy]

Will they stop charging a monthly fee if you choose to stay with 1.8? Not sure why they’d need to, since you won’t be accessing any of the new features or bug fixes.

[jamie]

@LarryMagoo

Hey Hugo…what do you think now that Shuffle is gone with 2.0? They simply would not have gone to the tremendous effort it took to gives us ARC, if it was not for profitable data acquisition…when anyone listens to mobile music, the SQ is not anywhere it is when listening to your main system…so why all that effort when iTunes does the same thing? It does not makes sense otherwise…

Hey @LarryMagoo -

I’m posting this as public notice that your Roon Community access has been suspended for 90 Days for continuing to make false statements about our our products and our intentions. I posted our position on statements like the one you made, just five posts above yours. I’m linking it here, again, for everyone’s reference

In case there’s still some confusion about this, do not post conjecture about Roon Labs and Roon products as though they are facts in this thread or on our forum unless you want your access to Community revoked. Enough is enough.

[Gustavo_Castro]

@danny

1- In the best and most common situation, nothing happens, and the music will keep playing just fine. In the worst case, you may get an error when you attempt to interact with Roon (depending on what you do), but no matter what you did, it’ll work when you try again 1 minute later.

2- Same as above, but replace 1 minute with 4 hours.

Personally, my biggest problem is the lack of clarity on what happens when you loose connectivity. You say that 2.0 requires permanent internet connection but then say that some things might work and others not. And the number of things that will work or not depends on how long the outage lasts.
On the other hand it seems to me that this change is driven by the fear that having ARC clients lingering around without a 100% online core could result in license sharing?.
Lets talk about fairness (For both roon and its users). roon was marketed as a way to use your local digital files with the ability to need license check once every 30 days or so. That is being removed now. So trying to bridge the architectural, licensing and user needs I think It will be fair that:

1. You can use your local files without internet connection. Search will not work. But you can browse by artist, album and composer. And of course, playback will work and so will DSP and all features that are local to the core.
2. I think it will be fair if you limit the number of ARC clients (I am not sure if this is currently done or not). Lets say that 5 clients will be fair, but depending in the rest of the options I could be convinced that 3 licenses is fair.
3. You can purchase additional ARC licenses if you want (lets say USD $20 a year for each additional license).
4. ARC can go offline for 7 days (yes, there are travel destinations with poor connectivity, including cruises, cabin in the mountains, etc). I could even be convinced that you can have 1 arc client with 7 days offline access and the rest with only 2 days although at this point the licensing becomes complex.

best regards

[miguelito (Miguel Barrio)]

@danny

This is one of those many reasons: we used to have two search algorithms. One ran locally and one ran remotely. The local one was quite poor because it lacked the infrastructure to keep a good search engine operational. But because of offline support, we needed to keep both functional. The online one keeps getting better but the one that lives in the Core hasn’t been improving at the same pace. Search is a major pain point for many of our users and it’s a shame because many of those same users are using the local engine often. On top of that, being, consistency is extremely frustrating. With 2.0 we killed the local engine. So now all search requests go through a single unified engine that will continue to improve. But if we advertise offline support, then search has to work offline, which has been problematic.

This is one of the reasons, but this is an architectural shift that allows us to make improvements and shed some of the limitations that we’ve been constrained by in the past

It would make sense to run search in the cloud if all you’re searching for is things that exist in your db. But what happens with content that either does not exist in streaming services or worse that was never published. I have some of that content in my local files - all very carefully tagged in the files’s metadata. Will those tracks not show?

[danny (Danny Dulai)]

@miguelito

I have some of that content in my local files - all very carefully tagged in the files’s metadata. Will those tracks not show?

they will, but poorly based only on keyword matching.

[Vincent_Kennedy]

@jamie

Enough is enough.

Hero x2! Carry on!

[BCBC (Somewhere in British Columbia)]

@_Jeremy

Not sure why they’d need to, since you won’t be accessing any of the new features or bug fixes.

1.8 Legacy still uses Roon’s search for metadata and scours the internet to serve text, images and lyrics, artist links etc. Despite lacking some of the features of 2.0 it is using the company’s resources.

[killdozer (Brutalise me with music)]

Not just server resources, there’s presumably licensing to other metadata services, AllMusic’s not free

[Vincent_Kennedy]

@Gustavo_Castro

roon was marketed as a way to use your local digital files with the ability to need license check once every 30 days or so.

Hey Gustavo - Could you point to me where Roon was marketed requiring a license check every 30 days or so? I poked around and can’t seem to find that other then in some topics on this forum which I wouldn’t consider marketing. I’m not able to find this information on the broader internet where I would expect to find marketing information.

Thanks!
Vince

[danny (Danny Dulai)]

@Vincent_Kennedy

Hey Gustavo - Could you point to me where Roon was marketed requiring a license check every 30 days or so? I poked around and can’t seem to find that other then in some topics on this forum which I wouldn’t consider marketing. I’m not able to find this information on the broader internet where I would expect to find marketing information.

we didn’t market it… it’s only been said in topics.

[Oggie]

This is already being discussed on this thread

Roon 2.0 and internet connectivity [it's just like 1.8 now]

With the Roon Core on version 2.0, the grace period is not 30 days anymore. You must have internet access to run the Roon Core 2.0. If you require offline access for any substantial period of time, you must stay on 1.8 Legacy.

You can also vote on Feature Suggestion on this thread https://community.roonlabs.com/t/make-roon-play-local-music-files-w-o-internet-access/214998

Best Regards.

[Vincent_Kennedy]

@danny

we didn’t market it… it’s only been said in topics.

That makes me feel better. I was getting worried about my search skills.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@Menzies

What if Tidal or Qobuz went down!!!

Then I can play files that I happen to have downloaded locally within Tidal or Qobuz. As opposed to Roon.

[vmartell (Berlin Papel)]

@Jim_F

It will be maintained until 12/31/2022. After that, it will work until it doesn’t. It’s explained somewhere in all the information Roon posted early yesterday before Roon 2.0 rolled out. Everyone should have read it.

Should I have? I fired up Remote one morning and found out the Core was upgraded - SOL after that point. What is the point of downgrading to a product with an EOLife/EOSupport date that frankly is not that far off? On top of that keep paying for it?

I know it looks that my approach (wait to do something/won’t do anything until I am actually affected by this) seems pretty reasonable - I think it even earned me like from danny, but if you read between the lines it is actually one of the angriest. If I ever get affected, I am not downgrading, I am cancelling and going to Volumio.

But like I said, let’s see - if nothing happens I will keep patronizing. It is a good product. They just made a bad decision that I happen to hate.

v

[crom]

Ugh, bit late to the party here. I purchased lifetime Roon about 6 years ago because I loved the rich experience available locally. Previously I used jriver but Roon gave so much more. Reviews, opinion, links to different music. I’ve got a massive local collection and have invested in good hardware to make the searches run quickly and my Roon experience to be a good one…i expect Spotify/tidal etc to go down if my internet goes down…but not my main stereo…Roon was like playing records, except better, now it’s not because it relies on something that is completely out of my control.

[Shon_Ellerton]

Managed successfully to downgrade to 1.8 with my Synology NAS. For those with Synology NASs, may experience not being able to load up the local library. I finally managed to work it out by NOT de-installing Roon 2.0.

First, and this is optional, zip up everything in the RoonOnNas and save as a backup. Just in case…

Second, turn off the Roon 2.0 service.

Third, load up Roon 1.8 remote apps on desktop and tablet and phone devices.

Fourth. Install Roon 1.8 Core on the NAS and start the service.

Run the 1.8 desktop or app remote and, it’s working fine.

Because I had some crappy Internet, I did note that searching on Roon 2.0 was very slow. At least this is what I perceived it to be, but please correct me if I’m completely wrong here. But I do know for a fact that my search speed in my local collection when back to its speedy self.

[itzlbritzl]

Dear Roon. I love your software. And making the core available for off-site use (if you choose to do so) is huge.

But come on… the downsides of your design and your „how to“ really are just ridiculous. I am trying to stay as calm and clinical about this as possible, but man that is not an easy task! This about being able to listening to my beloved music. It doesn’t get a lot more emotional than this… you seem to be forgetting that!

Considering Roon‘s legacy it is absolutely beyond me, how a software company, who developed the most expensive music server software ever seen, renders my local music useless when offline. Absolutely flabbergasting!

Do people really have to buy Audirvana or Amarra additionally to Roon to be able to play their own music on their own stereo when they:

• have an internet outage
• have a vacation home which is offline by design

This is just bad policy. This is Apple-like arrogant „Apple knows best“-attitude. Please refrain from that. An analogy: Apple designs MacBooks in a way so that the device boots up as soon as you open the lid or push any button. And the user cannot switch off that „feature“. You seriously need to install third party software that switches off your keyboard while the MacBook is running in order to clean your f••••ng keyboard! They sell unfunctional bugs as a feature and the customer who pays top dollar has no choice (while it would be the simplest software switch to leave him with said choice).

This is the road you are taking now unfortunately… and you are even worse, because after all one can still use a MacBook with a dirty keyboard or after one messed up a lot of stuff and settings with unintentional use of keyboard shortcuts.

A 700 dollar music server (ok, I „only“ paid 500) that renders local music useless… music which I bought and I possess, stored on a compact hardware which I possess (and like to bring along to my offline by design vacation home)… a music server which renders my local music useless when internet is out of service… when all the metadata already is locally stored on the core‘s SSD. Come on: you simply cannot be serious about that!

Everybody can live which a less efficient search engine in these moments when there is no internet service, switching back to online search when internet is up again.

Really, this is like building a house without windows and then trying to carry light inside in suitcases. I lack the words to describe what I am feeling right now… this is one of the moments that really make you wonder if software developers just stay awake at night, thinking about new ways to annoy users…

Sorry but considering the emotional topic of having my music at hand this is as objective and clinical as it gets

[Coltrane]

What a rant {slow clap}

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

@itzlbritzl

this is like building a house without windows and then trying to carry light inside in suitcases. I lack the words to describe what I am feeling right now…

I dunno, I think you’re doing OK. Love that simile!

[Jim_F]

If I had a bunch of local files and was concerned about internet outage, I would grab a license to Audirvana Origin for $125 lifetime. I would do that and stay on Roon 2.0 so I always had the latest Roon version and access to Roon ARC.