But then you need a player for those files. What I am suggesting works with a USB connected DAC.
To be clear, my suggestion is a joke!
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It doesnāt have to be ROCK. Roon core also runs on Linux and Windows. Iām not saying everyone should do it, Iām saying itās possible to run other servers at the same time. I run both Roon core and LMS on my machine. One more reason for me to avoid locked systems.
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Seriously? Plug my phone into my DAC via USB and play whatever ARC cached on it when roon core wonāt play music from my file server without internet?
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Cloud services are accessed through interfaces. roonlabs can write one alternate implementation of those interfaces which use local metadata and provide āreducedā functionality as it existed in the code before moving to the new whizbang cloud-based search. Theyād mostly just have to refactor some old code to run behind a facade that implements the interface(s) defined for the cloud services. If they use dependency injection in the code (and who doesnāt?) then when the cloud implementation times out due to an internet outage, the code can fail-over to the āreducedā (i.e., local) implementation by injecting a new āreducedā instance of the interface in place of the cloud interface. The discipline of writing a second, simple fail-over implementation might even make the cloud-based implementation more robust and testable.
- Eric
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Are there any plans to support customers that want to continue to run local search on their own hardware? Iāve been budgeting to get a Roon lifetime subscription, but couldnāt justify it with local search being discontinued. There is a big opportunity cost here not just from existing customers, but potential customers. Roon stands out from the pack by being a local solution, but with an always connected requirement, it loses some of that appeal.
Would you please understand what you are saying is:
1- Absolutely obvious and pointless
2- Misses the point completely
I try to keep it cool but really I am starting to get annoyed.
maybe there could be a win/win situation here. Roon wants to move to targeting a cloud platform to streamline their development, and make use easier for new, and non technical customers.
If that is the case, could roon make available a docker / container file for their cloud server instance, so that I could run that ācloud serverā in my home?
This is the idea of a dedicated server. Most customers wouldnāt have to use it, but customers that want it, could.
I donāt think this is a good idea: on top of fragility youād have more latency. Plus you would always need some form of bridge between the cloud code and your local network.
Well, we already have something called Roon Bridge.
That is not the same thing. That allows your device to work as an endpoint.
Well, thatās what it does right now. But what does that mean? It means that the bridge can access the network ā and the Core can access the bridge. Suppose the bridge could reach out, instead, to a Core in the cloud. The bridge already pulls data from the Core to play it. Why does the Core have to be on the LAN instead of the WAN?
It would be a nice convenience option for many customers, to not have to have a Nucleus or other Core machine in-house. Maybe that kind of setup would only support RAAT. But that would probably be OK, too. After all, there are lots of Roon Ready devices already, and Roon Ready streamers for devices which donāt already have Roon inside.
As for latency, Iād say that the various other streaming services have already demonstrated that it is not an insuperable problem.
Get it on the roadmap and get it fixed, please.
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Well it is unclear the Roon team sees it as an issue at all.
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Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate!
Iām thankful for family, friends, a warm home, and music to fill itā¦
Also thankful for choice. My Roon subscription is cancelled and Iāve moved to a platform thatās continuing in the direction I prefer. I wasnāt a lifetime subscriber but Iāve been using Roon for years and was heavily invested. But none the less, I encourage others to just walk away rather than beat a dead horse. Re-purpose your hardware and move on. Ultimately Iām happier for taking matters into my own hands.
And always be thankful for what we have.
-S
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Absolutely spot on! Couldnāt agree more with this sentiment.
Roon has effectively turned our music libraries into something we have no control over
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I agree with this characterization.
However, it is easy to think that simply removing search when the internet is out is an easily accomplished task. In reality I donāt think it is. My read is Roon made the decision when they started writing 2.0 to rely on cloud-based APIs liberally. This means the Roon code calls these functions liberally everywhere - and these functions can ONLY work if thereās an internet connection. Reworking the code to be fault-tolerant to no internet is probably a fairly complicated task.
To be honest, I think the decision is an incredibly bad one - and makes me question the quality of the Roon development team and more so the skill of the management team not to see this issue right away. I would venture it was a cavaliere decision without a lot of thought - an issue that could have been avoided with more careful design. But now the team is knee-deep in this decision. In my opinion, at a large software firm, this would result in those approving this decision to be dismissed. But we are talking a tiny team here, so you fire danny and youāre out in the cold.
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The Roon team has proven to be incredibly sharp and resourceful. I doubt they expected anything like the customer reaction theyāve received on this. IMHO, Iāll be surprised if they donāt come up with a way of dealing with offline internet and local music. But it does behoove them to make a formal statement of their intent on this issue. (If they already have, I havenāt seen it).
I, for one, will undoubtedly stick with Roon 2.0 (and beyond), but Iād also seek my own alt solution for the times the internet is offline. Perhaps just keeping 1.8 Legacy installed on a spare laptop ready to go would work fine. I havenāt tried it (yet) but I would if I knew a 2.0 solution was not forthcoming from Roon.
Having a spare 1.8 is a good idea (may do the same). I guess the issue might be that you canāt login / switch the license over from 2.0 if you had already lost internet connectivity.
I think this issue can also be viewed in a broader light. It seems to me that even pre-2.0 versions of Roon were also overly reliant on your network connection at home and didnāt do much/enough caching, e.g. for the structure of your database and cover images. Whenever the connection is for some reason slower than needed, issues and slowdowns occur.
Iām trying to use Roon ARC on the go as much as possible to see if itās a suitable alternative to my music player with locally stored files. However, it sometimes fails to just load my music library, loses cover images, or is generally slow in loading up the structure of my library. The offline toggle fixes some of this, but not all, and it doesnāt make much sense to me that I have to tell Roon it shouldnāt be looking for my core when Iām not on 4/5G or Wifi.
I donāt know if this can be generalised, and donāt mean to offend the Roon team, but it seems that it has to do with little consideration for fault tolerance and robust design and development in Roon products in general. All my Roon clients, be it Roon for desktop, Roon remote on two Android devices or Roon ARC, crash or lock up frequently, generally more than once a day. More than anything, Iād wish the Roon team would invest in making more robust products.
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It seems that with these constant upgrades, itās like we are using a beta version. However it also looks like Roon is addressing this very issue with the launch of a Qucik Access program to assist with beta testing prior to release.
This is a good move on Roonās part and it shows that they are listening.
Here is the category they created for it. Do not know if they are still inviting new users or not in case you would be interested.
āMD