Roon and internet radio: disappointing

That is great news! Approximately when is the new design planned for launch?

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Did you get an update on the planned launch date?

Roon doesnā€™t announce dates for future releases for a number of reasons.

Firstly testing is iterative, as bugs or reversions are discovered new builds are developed and tested until a robust release candidate build eventually emerges. That process is necessarily indeterminate. Roon prefers to release when ready rather than when an arbitrary estimate was given.

Secondly, once the devs create expectations about release dates those expectations may need to be managed precisely at the time when resources are best devoted to getting a robust release build out the door. Countdown threads develop, people become frustrated and short tempered. Itā€™s not an enjoyable experience for the devs or users and is, in my view, entirely artificial, unnecessary and avoidable.

On a number of occasions the devs have indicated that they would prefer to release projects incrementally as they are completed, rather than in larger multi-project mega-releases. At the moment, however, there has been a lot of banging and hammering going on behind the curtains in a number of different directions and Iā€™ve got a feeling that itā€™s going to be a busy time in the next few months.

There is no reason for that (except maybe some poor resources management). Itā€™s just attitude and not necessarily a good one. Imagine how frustrated developers (or anybody at ROON for that matter) will be if the customers will have the possibility to pay when they want without an announced dateā€¦

Again, itā€™s just attitude. I assume that the developers get their paycheck at a precisely time, but how frustrated and short tempered will they be if that time will be, well, sometime in the future, maybe.

When people are asking about release dates is because theyā€™re just eager for something they want and bring them joy or they want to do some educated decisions, not because they want to sue the company if the promised release date is overdue. @Nikhil_Nayak was just asking for an approximately time frame here for exampleā€¦

Luleanu

Hope you never decide to buy a Devialet product - if you genuinely think Roon are bad then donā€™t ever look at getting a Phantom or Expert :grimacing:

I donā€™t think that ROON are bad (or good for that matter). They are what they are, at the level of expectations for some and disappointing for others, nothing extraordinary in the software world today. But considering some of their answers here i believe that they have a bad attitude for someone to base its future audio system development on them.

Iā€™m not in the market for anything that advertise with ā€œThe bestā€¦ā€ or ā€œThe mostā€¦ā€ or whatever. :grinning:

I have a meaningful reply. I will post it sometime in the future.

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Iā€™d also love to see integration with SiriusXMā€¦ No idea if theyā€™d play along, thoughā€¦

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Come on Roon folks! It is a long over due function to built-in a tuner or connection to TuneIn. And of course we expect beautiful graphics like we are used to in Roonā€¦

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I have to agree with the thread starter.

Iā€™ve always liked Roonā€™s internet radio experience but ONLY after the pain of searching for and finding URLs, entering the URLs and then adding station logo images. Granted, this is a one-time task for a station.

I was tooling around on the Denon AVR I have for a small home theater and the vast number of stations easily available is powerful.

Implementing a directory must present cost or technical challenges that make it a non-starter for the Roon team?

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This would a valuable addition

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More likely that there is a long list of things to be implemented in the plans, all of which have different priorities and work involved to design, implement and test. I also suspect that the priorities will be influenced by the ā€œbang for the buckā€ factor - i.e. a feature that has great value for the Roon market that can be quickly delivered will be higher up the listā€¦

Some people seem to thrive on discontentment. A rather negative drive IMHO. Probably compulsive box swappers in previous times. Personally, coupled with my Devialet, Roon is the best thing thatā€™s ever happened for me in nearly 50 years exploring this sound reproduction hobby.

I rather enjoy the uncertainty and open expectation on when the Roon devs release a new feature. A welcome pleasant surprise every time especially as it (in my experience) works properly first time! How many others achieve that?

Yes, I also want a better radio service, but Iā€™ll happily be patient, as my expectation, based on past experience is that when it arrives it will be good. Bravo Roon! I have never regretted my lifetime membership investment.

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Others thrive on worshiping, another negative drive IMHO :grinning:

Iā€™m not dissatisfied with the product, Iā€™m just realistic. I enjoy using ROON as much as the next guy, but itā€™s not yet close to keeping at least its very first promise (turn thisā€¦into thisā€¦). Unfortunately none of todayā€™s media server based applications (emby, jriver, mezzo, plex, roon to name a few) itā€™s even close in achieving the top position in doing good what they are supposed to do. I can give you a lot of examples, but in the end youā€™ll just have to use all of them in order to make your media library act as you want. And the problem is not in technology or imagination or creativity, is in egos and attitudes: ā€œweā€™ll never do that, or this or whateverā€.

Now, on the topic, trying to push things (Feature Requests) in some direction and not getting at least an answer because people at ROON ā€œbecome frustrated and short temperedā€, wellā€¦ yes, thatā€™s the kind of attitude that brings me some discontent.

Iā€™m sure that they are a lot of toys out there to bring a lot of joy in todayā€™s audio world. I have, had and tried a lot of them both to my satisfaction or disappointment. Iā€™m still using my reel-to-reel way much more than my media library (with way much more satisfaction for that matter). And Iā€™m not young anymore either, but my feeling is the opposite, the more Iā€™m pursuing this hobby the further I am inclined to escape from the whole computer audio stuff. :grinning:

Youā€™ve misunderstood me. This is an example in 2015 of a thread where more information about timing was shared. It wasnā€™t people at Roon who became frustrated and short tempered, but us users.

Ok, I see now. If thatā€™s the case, then I apologize to those whom unintentionally I may offended.

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No worship from me, mate. Iā€™ve not ever had that distorted emotion in my psyche ever. Nope, Iā€™m trying to keep it simple. Roon has for me been the very best sound service I have ever experienced. From what I have read, other pretenders frequently miss the point and donā€™t measure up. Iā€™m happy to keep faith with Roon and as said, enjoy the next release that excites me when I sample it.

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Finally, someone who knows the secret! :grinning:

That is the spawn of the devil and has ruined 2017 onwards AVRs and many other streamers.

Back in 2016 for eg, Yamaha used vtuner (as did many others). Most radio I wanted I could find, and most importantly, those that I couldnā€™t I can add as a URL - and more important still - the radios for which I have a premium sub could be added as well - because that has a unique URL with my personal access key in it).

Roll on to the 2017 models of AVRs, streamers etc and it seem the whole industry has moved wholesale over to tunedin based services which may or may not provide a vast array of stations in their index (quite honestly I donā€™t care), but seem to fail to provide any means of adding station by URL thus completely blocking out the use of premium radio services (ie where you pay a small sub for a higher bit rate stream and no adverts).

Now I donā€™t care if Roon add tunedin - I will never use it anyway - however Roon will very rapidly become worse than useless if they ever stop support for custom URLs.

The marketing people at tunedin have pretty much destroyed the entire streamer marker for me. and TBH Roon partly have them to thank for driving me toward Roon in the first place (obviously not the entire reason, but certainly on of them).

One hopes that eventually tunedin will get around to support custom URLs, but somehow I doubt it as AFAIK it lacks the hardware ID that vtuner had.

High all,
as the starter of this thread I want to say that ā€œTuneInā€ (as seen from me in my LINN-device) was just one example that integration of internetradio can be much more comfortable.
Christoph

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