I understand all the issues and complexity of a consistent, robust, fast, and continuously upgradable search experience. But I also know that a product must never break a few fundamental tenets. In Roon’s case it is the ability to work - even in a hampered way - without an internet connection. I can surely see that when there is no internet connection your search results would only include local files, with a suboptimal scoring, etc. However, having such fallback solution is, in my opinion, a must.
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You should reconsider this. Honestly normally I don’t mind this but when my internet goes out for 12+ hours because of a service provider and I am unable to access any of my local music because Roon doesn’t allow it anymore it’s a pretty poor user experience.
If Roon Arcs offline mode worked better that maybe a workaround, but users shouldn’t be fully cut off from music they own because they like using your service and pay you additional on top of it really put a sour taste in my mouth when my internet went out
It really basically makes the roon os useless so now i need to setup fedora and configure a backup software to even keep access to my music because Roon is basically making me choose between roon arc and offline access. Pretty upset by this
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Just curious: where and when did that become a tenet? Was there some Council of Trent-like conclave that I didn’t hear about?
Roon as a product is about the experience. If such experience is effectively completely destroyed when your internet goes down for even a minute, then I would argue that is destructive to the experience to the level that it makes you completely leave the product.
This is particularly true when Roon’s intention is to become an appliance-like experience. No mess no fuzz, anyone can use it. I like this.
I live in Manhattan. My internet provider is Spectrum and by and large it is a robust 350 down / 22 up experience so generally I don’t have an issue. Those living with cable internet from Verizon - a sizeable portion of Manhattan - have their internet drop for 30 secs to 1 min often. I would not want to be in that camp. And this is MANHATTAN. If you live in Brooklyn and have great Fios, good for you. I will not renew my passport to go visit you.
My personal solution to this, in case I need it, is to have fired up MinimServer on one of my computers and use dCS Mosaic to play if the intertubes is down. But how many people have any idea how to do that? And why should they?
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Yeah, I’ve got Spectrum as well. Suburbs, buried wires. So pretty robust, so far. I did lose connectivity for ten minutes this summer during a huge storm.
Sure. I just put some vinyl on the turntable. A less viable option in the cramped quarters of Manhattan living, I suppose.
This is how I know you are really a New Yorker! I laughed out loud when I read that. I miss The City, but not enough to renew my passport from Oregon 
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Is that the best Kraftwerk album you have?
Hmmm… I don’t really have a favorite. This is one I really like (most people seem to not love this one). I find their albums an amazing variety of styles.
I own it (as ‘Electric Cafe’ and not on vinyl) and like it, but it’s not their best.
I buy the German versions when possible. Got their entire reissues of recent times on vinyl and digital (yes I know it was remastered in digital) and was careful to get German versions for those albums where it is different from the American ones. Technopop is very sort of mainstream electronica and that’s what I like about it whereas say Mensch-Maschine is more proper Kraftwerk. They are all pretty different.
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hear! hear!
It is unclear. My guess is that the new code relies on access to APIs that live in the cloud - this means the code needing to execute functions during the course of normal running (possibly more than search, not sure). There’s no mechanism in the code to “skip over” these cloud-resident function calls so if Roon happens to hit one of these it stops. I can see that, even if the Roon team realizes the decision was completely daft, it might be very complex at this point to rearchitect this.
It has nothing to do with checking your subscription. Why do people keep coming back to this???
I am guessing they have written a lot of code with the principle of liberally accessing cloud-based APIs and at this point they might realize how insane that assumption was but they are knee deep.
My 2c to the Roon team would be to fix this somehow, even if search becomes super-basic when no internet connection is present.
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I’m late to the party on this, but I have to add my voice to the calls to fix what happens in 2.0 if internet is down - like so many others, I think it’s ridiculous to have zero ability to play locally stored/owned files in this scenario. Coming to Roon as, originally, a Sooloos user, before Tidal/online streaming was a feature, it seems even more crazy - primarily, whatever happens, I should be able to play local content I own, whether I have internet access or not, on my local network. It should be understood that most users have now likely replaced CD players, etc., with Roon (or an alternative). A CDP did not stop functioning when there was no internet, neither should Roon, or any other software for playback of one’s own music.
This has implications for the amount of data we will be required to keep, going forwards, as it will no longer be sufficient to have Roon media and backup, iirc this is proprietary format and nothing else can access/play it(?). If that is the case, we will now have to keep media available in a different format/drive for the sole scenario that internet connectivity disables Roon.
What is the issue in simply restoring the local search funciton, which would be activated solely in the event of internet outage, to avoid the previous problems it was apparently incurring while the two were present in tandem? Presumably the code is already there, as it was the core search function for many years…? Even if this is temporarily not as good as the new search, it would be much better than nothing, and just as good as something which was class leading for many years?
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Well said.
Hi @ScreenMachine,
I have sympathy for your view and understand it, though I don’t foresee Roon changing tack on this.
I’d would like to add clarity to this statement ( / question)…
Roon maintains it’s proprietary library database of your collection but it does not change the media [your local audio files] these remain exactly as you ripped or downloaded them in FLAC, ALAC, WAV, MP3, … format and are thus readily accessible by other players that support the given formats.
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Carl, you have to stop dictating your posts! Good one!
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Oppps, a freudian slip may be? now fixed (I hope).
Here in lies the issue… if we were happy with other solutions we wouldn’t have probably got Roon for our setups. But when we did this Roon purchase we all never expected our local music access to be cut off by an external issue (outside of our control or even Roon’s control for that matter).
Even Roon told us they would allow a local library to function if they ever went out of business and external servers were not available.
Certainly for those with a single system zone and modest local library it’s an easier option with many player alternatives but the number of us that really push Roon’s feature set with large local libraries and multiple zones are in the minority.
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Carl, thanks for this, good to know the media type is unchanged. Are these media still accessible by other solutions if they are stored on the internal drive of a NUC running ROCK, whether or not the internet is accessible?
I have a use-case come up which would require knowingly using Roon in a situation where I am already aware there is no/patchy wifi available - a cafe where I often work and wish to start listening with headphones. I was hoping to use the old trick of transferring core to my laptop temporarily while working there, and using local files, then transferring back when I’m home. This would have worked fine under the old 30-day rule, but apparently not now? This also comes up if I’m taking a train journey and might want to listen to some music without internet, locally stored, etc. I’m sure these are not the only examples and it’s not just during downed internet access that this might be affecting legitimate users.
So - as a temporary work around (although I reiterate that I’m against the whole principle of this ‘internet required’ approach):
- What does Roon require by way of connection reliability/speed in this scenario to play back local files (e.g., will a tethered iPhone with very low-to-no reception do it, if I’m not using the search function much)? I’m not sure how much and for what purposes Roon checks in with online servers, apart from when searching.
- Assuming zero internet connection, is it possible/going to cause issues if I run 1.8 Legacy core when using the laptop and 2.0 on Rock at home, or will this mess up favourites, etc.?
- Is it possible to run two versions of Roon on my laptop, 1.8 when out and about as core, 2.0 at home to use Roon remote?
- Not necessarily to do with the above issue, but do I need to mirror the media exactly between the two setups, or are the two cores treated as distinct and separate for this purpose?