Hello Everyone,
Today’s Early Access release includes some changes to how Roon works on Windows and Mac.
What’s changing?
In short: We’re simplifying how you install Roon on Windows and macOS, to offer more flexibility and better performance regardless of your configuration.
On Windows and Mac, the Roon Core will now run as a separate background process – Roon Server – accessible via the System Tray on Windows or via the Menu Bar on Mac OS.
Roon users can expect a seamless migration and while this won’t change how you use Roon day-to-day, it does mean a more flexible, lightweight, and performant version of Roon on Windows and Mac wherever you run your server.
Going forward, we will no longer offer Roon Server as a stand-alone installer for Windows and Mac. On these platforms, there will be a single Roon installer which will include the Roon application (for selecting music and configuring Roon) and Roon Server, for users that run their Core on Windows or Mac OS.
In these setups Roon Server continues to run in the background when you close Roon. If you’d like to shut down Roon Server on these platforms you can do that from the System Tray or menu bar.
Why change?
Roon was designed from the beginning to be completely modular, giving users total flexibility on where they run their Core, and how they connect a virtually unlimited number of remotes and audio devices.
Running Roon Server as its own application has long been our recommended configuration, allowing for improved performance and UI responsiveness, and ensuring that background work, signal processing, and other tasks can continue even when the Roon interface is closed.
Historically these benefits have only been available to the more advanced users who’ve taken the time to fully understand Roon’s architecture and download multiple installers. This release ensures that all Roon users who run their Core on Windows and Mac will enjoy these benefits going forward.
This change will also make it as easy as possible for new and existing users to configure the optimal Roon setup on Windows and Mac. We’ve found that our longstanding download options are overwhelming for many users, and the complexity of these options discouraged many Roon users (especially new users) from configuring the best possible setup.
Going forward, Windows and Mac users will always just download Roon, without having to weigh various download options. After a straightforward setup process, users can enjoy the benefits of Roon Server running in the background, without the added complexity of downloading and configuring multiple software packages.
What’s Next
Wherever you run Roon Server, your experience on Windows and Mac should be basically unchanged.
If you currently run your Core on your Windows or Mac device, this update will automatically update your install so that you’re running both Roon Server and Roon.
Roon Core → Roon Server
As part of this change we’ve decided to retire the term “Roon Core”.
This terminology was originally created to help communicate that the Roon app had two different “modes” – it could run exclusively as a remote, or it could run as both a remote and Core.
With this change, that’s no longer true. Roon and Roon Server may be bundled together on some platforms, but they now function independently regardless of your configuration.
This makes it easier to understand Roon’s architecture. In short, to use Roon you need Roon Server, and that Roon Server can run on Windows, Mac, Linux, or Roon OS.
We’re working on breaking the habit of saying “Core” and we hope you will too. As the Roon Community continues to grow, we feel “Roon Server” is a much clearer way to talk about what’s needed to get started with Roon.
Our iOS and Android apps will continue to be called Roon Remote and Roon ARC.
Thank you for reading and for your continued support,
The Team at Roon Labs
What’s new in this release?
Build Numbers
| Application | Version |
|---|---|
| Roon / RoonServer | 2.0 (build 1310) earlyaccess |
| Roon Remote (Android / iOS) (build 1310) earlyaccess |
Changes
- Roon artifacts simplification changes for MacOS and Windows
- Various search Improvements
- Miscellaneous fixes and enhancements
Installation
Cores, remotes, and ARC installations already running earlyaccess should update automatically. If you need to reinstall, the latest earlyaccess builds can always be found at the following links.
| macOS: | Roon | |
| Windows: | Roon | |
| Linux: † | Easy Installer | Full Package |
| Nucleus / ROCK: | See Help Center | |
| Android APKs: | Roon Remote | Roon ARC |
† Information on loading Roon on Linux can be found here . Please use the files linked here in place of those from the help center article when loading earlyaccess.