Roon is both incredibly great and excruciatingly poor

That’s what it does.

Can you upload a screenshot of your Album view ? That will show whether the Focus tools are present. You will see them on a computer also, not just tablets.

With the KB, there are headings and subheadings in the User Guide. What would you use an index for that the search function doesn’t do dynamically ? Can you give an example of an unsatisfactorily scattershot result ?

Is your Lenovo Tablet one of their Android-based tablets? I suspect it is, because with my Lenovo ThinkPad 10 tablet, it doesn’t lose the connection with the Roon Server when it goes into power saving mode. Neither does my Surface 3 tablet. Both are Atom-based tablets, with Connected Standby (aka InstantGo).

I hear this adage more and more and I’ve got quite a few clients in software development who have been hit very hard by the simple fact that manuals are very much not a thing of the past. One of these clients has seen three deals cancelled due to lack of documentation where the prospective buyers went for lesser performance but better documentation.

I don’t believe it’s a good idea to force older generation customers (i.e. the ones with the cash) to conform to not-really-working-but-hey-the-kids-today-all-do-it-like-this ways of working.

This is an example of both an unsatisfactory and scattershot (albeit only two shots :grin:) result. Somewhere in Roon I believe there is a possibility to ban tracks (or artists or whatever). Until now, I haven’t found it. The hits from a search on the knowledge base are… ehm… less than helpful.

So yes, documentation, documentation, documentation. It’s been a mantra for software developers since back in the days we all learned to program in assembler. I know I’m a living dinosaur, but that doesn’t mean old truths have stopped being truths.

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Yes, the Lenovo is an Android-based tablet. Much to my chagrin, but most remote apps for domotics are either Android or IOS. So it makes sense to use an Android device as a control device for Roon.

Otherwise I’ll have the portable device equivalent of a coffee table full of remotes.

Tip for software developers everywhere: develop a true universal control app and you’ll be the richest man/woman/other sex in the world. (But according to the weather report, pigs have been reported flying :joy:…)

On banning tracks, it’s the heart button. Hit it once to mark it as a favorite (which to my knowledge is just a standard tag - it does not affect Radio/Shuffle or other selection logic, I don’t think) and hit it twice to ban it (Ghostbusters symbol) which does then stop that track from being selected in Radio/Shuffle or album play, UNLESS that track has been specifically queued up.

I agree I would love more documentation about the specific way that some features work, like the heart button. If the effect is just obvious (immediate, visible, does not affect logic), fine, but sometimes the effect isn’t visible or obvious. For one thing, i didn’t know that Thumbs Down affects more than stopping that track from being queued at that moment – sometimes I just didn’t want to hear that track at that moment, but do not want to affect anything else. But that said, it would be a serious resource drain for Roon to document every feature fully since the software does change substantially with each new version release.

I didn’t start this post with this in mind, but it does occur to me that the heart button is a little weird conceptually - that is, if you favorite something, all that does is allow you to filter a search for favorited tracks; it does not affect Shuffle/Radio etc., but at the same time, the Ban will actually stop a track from being played. So that is a little counter-intuitive as a toggle, kind of like if a knob or lever in your car if turned left starts the air conditioner, but if turned right, starts the turn signal rather than the heater. You can get used to it, but I can see how it would confuse users.

Hello i am new to Roon, just installed at home to set up a multi room audio service with a couple of Pi3 as bridge.
I think Roon is very powerful for what he does. It’s so easy to set up a complex system and manage a library, and have good sound streamed all over the network.

Of course every software can be improved, product management is a complex art. Every user can have different needs, it’s up to product management to prioritize, follow management strategy, competition landscape in order to select important features.

Right now Roon seems to me a well balanced product, with a clear strategy and a nice roadmap for the product.

Ciao
Fabio

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I remember Douglas Adams saying something along the line of…

‘If an idea exists when your born, it’s normal. If it comes along in your 30’s and 40’s, it’s interesting and there could be a career in it. If it comes along when your 60 say, then the world has gone to hell in a hand basket’.

Anyways, we are all on the time line and we only go one way lol but in the meantime use a manual if you must. It’s ok, it just takes longer perhaps.

Picking on the old uns — shame on you :stuck_out_tongue:

At least our music is in the digital age

I think it was Arthur C Clarke who said about modern tech seen 40 years back could be regarded as Magic

Roon is Magic , but like someone above said any software can be improved

The dependence on external metadata is a recurring theme, but as some one here said, have your 2 week trial and try going back

Mike

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So what I was trying to get to in my original post was - Roon can’t solve the metadata quality problems… and they shouldn’t try. That’s not the core value prop of what they do, the metadata is the frosting on the delicious technology cake in my mind (or ear) anyway. So if I were an enterprise architect at Roon, I would direct some cycles at abstracting the technology layer from the metadata layer so that I could plug in different sources of metadata for different use cases. The issue I can see (which I’m sure Roon is well aware of) is the presumption that enough of their customer base cares about the quality of the metadata. With 40 years of music fandom and a 20 year career in the industry, I am confident when I say that the quality of the Rovi metadata sucks. But I am a total edge case and I realize that, so I understand that it only makes sense for a Roon to spend money figuring this out if it makes economic sense.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I hate to see the impact of the tight coupling between the user experience and the Rovi metadata. From my perspective as a Roon consumer I would like to see some options there. At any rate I will continue to enjoy the great Roon technology while holding out hope for some additional options on the metadata… and the user experience.

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However poor the metadata is, I don’t have to find it and do it.

Lots of media players give Tag editing etc BUT you have to manage it …

Roon does a god ( not excellent) job of managing metadata as you say because of its sources to a greater or lesser extent

I spent a lot of time and effort adding Composition to my library, Roon does that for me even if I have to wade in occasionally to fix a few tings.

I have just started with Tidal and am impressed at the scope and ease of getting tracks and albums.

I am a convert, but I will continue to chirp if I think it helps

Mike

I agree. I can not hear ANY difference in a CD vs the SQ of a digital stream service like ROON. I’m using ROON as a wireless transport source (network input on my Krell amp)…& it sounds absolutely pristine…exactly like a CD…maybe even better. I’ve switched between both sources & can not make any notable distinction using the same recording across both inputs. I also use it on my iPhone (output into my MOJO/POLY amp/DAC) which yields the same results. I don’t think anyone could hear ‘better sound’ than what ROON provides.

I don’t understand RAAT…or any of the tech behind it…I do know what my ears hear is sublime. ROON has closed & surpassed the gap of digital audio tranmission being thought inferior. The recording source is the culprit of all noise or sound degradation (if any) or config issues as suggested not ROON.

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Regarding sound quality, I have to confess the only difference I hear between streams passing through Roon to my Bluesound Node and streams piped directly through the Bluesound Node is when I listen to music from the external HDD connected to the PC that runs Roon Server. The sound quality is somewhat better, probably because RAAT provides a better transport layer. As for Tidal streams: I don’t hear a blind bit of difference. Sound quality is excellent in both cases.

Played around with the DSP settings today. I turned on the Sample Rate Conversion and all of a sudden my clean, clear, wide and detailed soundstage turned into something that sounded as if someone went overboard on loudness compression. Horrible.

So that was immediately turned off. RAAT seems to be doing a fine job in getting the data to my Node 2, but that’s it. After all, what"s the point of having an excellent DAC if you don’t let it do it’s job. All the streaming service has to do is deliver the bits; the DAC will do the rest.

The shorter the signal path, the better.

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Roon does a fantastic job in managing your library and making your collection more personal. Going forward I’m sure liner notes etc will be included , which would be a great addition . I think anyone who’s been on the journey so far will feel that it’s been a very rewarding experience.

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Have you gone over to the dark side Tony? - moved away from command line heroics?

.sjb

Albunack simply merges Discogs and MusicBrainz databases into a single database, this is what we use for both SongKong and Jaikoz.

As SongKong developer I have done some testing against Roon that generally shows you do get much better results if you tag with Songkong in three main ways:

  1. It improves the metadata available to Roon to enable Roon to make better matches
  2. It can reorganize tracks so they are one album per folder, and also sort out multi-disc albums into subfolders to help Roon with matching.
  3. Albums still not identified by Roon will now display better within Roon because of the metadata added.

We do have plans to support the Roon specific tags, unfortunately others tasks have delayed this but it is something we really want to do. For example we have good Classical support in Songkong (Works , Movements etc) but these are not strictly compatible with the tags that Roon uses.

Regarding crowdsourcing to improve metadata, the obvious success story is MusicBrainz. Although not the primary source I understand that Roon does use MusicBrainz so I guess if Roon users participate in improving MusicBrainz metadata then over time would get some benefit.

FWIW MusicBrainz is trying to improve its Classical content by organizing data clean ups based on a particular composer - https://blog.musicbrainz.org/2017/12/01/classical-clean-up-3-dvorak/ or label - https://blog.musicbrainz.org/2018/02/08/classical-clean-up-4-hyperion/

@paultaylor, are you saying it is better to use SongKong than Jaikoz?

No I was saying it is better it is better to use SongKong before importing into Roon then to not. Having said that although the SongKong and Jaikoz matching algorithms are very similar currently the SongKong one is slightly ahead of the Jaikoz one, so you will likely get better results with SongKong then Jaikoz.

Actually, it’s working with Musicbrainz (and Discogs) data which has–in part–convinced us that even long-running “successful” crowdsourcing projects seem to always fall short.

Musicbrainz has a good schema, and decent set of curation standards (with exceptions–like the tendency to encourage placing composer names in the track artist field…a major lapse, IMO).

The size of the data set is rather small. Coverage of the long tail isn’t good at all (isn’t this what crowdsourcing should excel at?). Richness–in terms of populated track credits, reviews, bios, artwork–is a long way away from Rovi. Accuracy is about on par with Rovi…with biases towards differet kinds of errors in each.

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