We have a highly engaged user community which is active on our forums and evangelizes us publicly.
As a plausible lesser apostle , I found myself wondering what it was about Roon that led me to not only convert, but proselytise and what conditions might apply to maintaining the faith. Then I started wondering what excuses the rest of you had so I opened this thread for us to talk about it.
For me the foundation is the user experience. I have had and continue to have a great deal of fun browsing through Roon and Tidal discovering new music and connections with familiar music. I’m keen that others should experience that fun (otherwise it might seem nerdy or geeky !), so I try to show others why I like Roon. So far I have been a dismal failure as an evangelist. None of my family or friends shares my enthusiasm. If we had a quota of converts I would be out of the seminary on my ear.
I think it was the failure to convert any real life lost souls that led me to a vocation on the forum. I had a couple of problems early on, received some assistance (looking at you @Rugby) and decided to pay it forward by helping others where I could . I still like to find solutions for people and get them working properly, but these days Support is doing the hard yards and the Community is more triage and pointing to known issues.
So what would lead me to lapse ? Well I have faith in Roon mainly because I have faith in the holy trinity (Brian, Mike and Danny). If they left, sold the business or abandoned their principles for some heresy then I might become schismatic.
My faith is confirmed if only in the family household by my wife who is normally quite tech savvy but who also likes to use Roon - or at least hasn’t complained about it and manages to swing a tune up to the bedroom RPi setup from her iPad at bedtime… but gets frustrated about there being no basic sleep option.
I have to remind her about the extensions and the alarm options… which sometimes is broken after odd reboots to the Windows Core.
I have had interest from friends but most are not inclined to setup local servers and whatnot…but one is considering - I’ve even lent him a Mac mini i5 server to try…but he wants to go big or not at all and wants a server that will run HQP upsampling to DSD512 and is totally silent and with 8-12TB of SSD storage! I will be happy if he just trials Roon and gets off MC18 - and at least has something reliable to play music with - his old AMD E-350 is really not going to cut it.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, a major part of why I like Roon are the posts in the forum from the Roon folks, where they take the time to explain some of the technology, and why certain choices have been made. It gives me a warm feeling over the quality of the software and their capability of delivering a superior experience.
It makes a real difference when you have folks who are passionate about an experience, and clearly have the technical capability to deliver on it.
I contrast what I see in Roon (for music) with what I see from Microsoft for photography. There was a time, back in 2006-2010, where there were clearly passionate photographers on the team developing Microsoft’s photo application (Windows Photo Gallery). They had a vision for what was needed, and were active in developing cross-industry standards for photo metadata. What they developed was pretty good for that time. Unfortunately, they all moved on, and what we have now from Microsoft, as evinced by their appalling Photos app, is worthy of a facepalm.
To me its the unification of own library with streaming services. That and the fact that the board and support actually follow up on things from the forum. Having just bought into some Naim streaming kit I cant tell you how much this support means. The forum and support on Naim is a very odd place dominated by Naimites who just wont have the beloved brand criticised in any way and there is no support other from the community who’s stock response is well mine works so it must be your network mate, So hats off to Roon and all the Roonies on the forum who always tend to listen and offer up proper help and useful advice…
I really need to use the library more to find my musci by tagging and the like bust just never get the time. One day perhaps. keep up the good work.
Hah - I still keep Microsoft’s Digital Image Pro 10 (the successor to PhotoDraw) around for creating our Christmas cards. It’s also long since been dropped by Microsoft, and nothing equivalent has come from them to replace it…
I came from JRiver which did/does so many things right. But I was blow away by the modernness of the Roon interface and the integration with Tidal which I already subscribed to when I bumped into Roon in late 15.
My hi-fi interest has two different aspects. One is collection gathering and tagging. The other is technical, getting a complex system to work (for the whole family). Roon reignited both those interests for me. It has changed the way I discover music both old and new. It took me a while to come to terms with this. Previously I would just browse artists and find the same old things in JRiver. Now I have many ways into my collection and keep discovering new stuff. The balance between old and new feels perfect now.
Roon has also made me stop obsessing about the perfect tagging. Mostly because Roon wasn’t perfect in version 1.0 and there were few editing capabilities for meta data. So I thought I’d just do it later when the editing possibilities was developed. But in the meantime I adjusted my listening habits without knowing it and now I don’t care about the perfect tagging any longer. I’m cured – Hallelujah! It still has to look nice in Roon but perfect is gone.
On the technical side I now have several zones in my apartment and I have room correction on my main system. Both those things were possible with JRiver it just works so much better in Roon. It is closer to set and forget. My system has never sounded better.
Having a 2½ year old there is not a lot of time for the hi-fi intrest. But there is always time for a short visit to the Roon forum once or twice a day to get inspired. I think talking to others that gets why Roon is special, is a nice relief when none of my friends or wife seem to. Ahh the loneliness of the first mover:)
I have not had any success in converting anybody either. They don’t get the deep links of the Tidal integration perhaps because they see it through my collection and not their own. The other thing is going from a big vinyl/CD collection to a server structure is a big and time/money consuming step.
In the main I find this forum a great place to dip into, finding plenty of advise and being able to offer some from time to time.
The music sections are excellent even for non Roon users as we can all benefit from recommendations.
I have managed to interest people in Roon but they haven’t dropped money on it yet but they do see Roon as the ‘Gold Standard’. Reasons for this. One is mainly a Movie Buff who came from Hi Fi back in the day and has an academic interest, the other is just so busy in life and live music to ‘clear the decks’ on setting things up.
For an outsider Roon can seem daunting, you have to be a serious listener to take the step. People love my Roon but don’t seem to be motivated to go the extra mile.
, I found myself wondering what it was about Roon that led me to not only convert, but proselytise and what conditions might apply to maintaining the faith. Then I started wondering what excuses the rest of you had so I opened this thread for us to talk about it.
