I believe the Wizards of Roon have a great product. As a former user of jRiver, Foobar, jPlay and others I purchased Roon even without a trial. It looked and is awesome.
But I believe a program such as this should
Strive to be the best sounding program.
Play virtually any file imaginable including ISOs.
Provide a link to every artist or band included in the Wikipedia database. I would be glad to pay a fee for this similar to the donation Wikipedia asks for. It’s a great resource much better than the bio database that ROON now uses.
As a bought and paid for lifetime member I wouldn’t mind paying for additional services
like:
An option for a Roon tech to log into one’s system and fix things that occasionally go wrong instead if me losing hours of time reading the database and waiting for the Roon guys to respond.
Provide the same information that Lps used to provide on the back or inside the covers of the albums.
Subscriptions to DSP products already developed and highly regarded. Pay to play.
There are probably others that I can’t think of. But in general while I’d not like to pay more than I have I would elect to pay more for a Roon Premium license that has new and much much better features.
I do believe Roon needs to look at what the much lowered priced options on the market provide. It doesn’t make sense that a $50 or free program should provide more features than Roon provides itself. Roon has set its goal as being THE top tier product of its kind.
I wouldn’t expect it to equal all the features a program that is twice as old as it is in the first few updates but I do expect to see these features eventually.
Come on Wizards of Roon step up to the plate or wicket.
If Roon programmers can’t program these features themselves then do as Apple , Amazon, and Microsoft do and acquire these features by buying the rights to the program and incorporating it into Roon, possibly as an additional subscription. This scheme works for Tidal and Qobuz quite well.
As for as these features being expensive many of us bought quite a bit of copper wire that costs hundreds of times more than Roon does then throw it out as yesterday’s rubbish a month latter. Well maybe not throw it out but sell it for a quarter of its value. You know what I mean. Even at the new lifetime membership price Roon is quite a bargain when compared to the amplifiers, preamps, speakers , PCs and DACs many purchase.
I don’t think different software makes music sound better/worse and I don’t buy expensive copper wire. I really hope Roon don’t invest valuable resources into ‘improving’ the sound quality of the programme based on the delusional tendencies of audiophiles. Concentrate on usability, features and compatibility.
I will not respond any longer or give my opinions when folks can’t be civil or ridicule what others hear.
Sorry but I would never deny or ridicule the observations that you’ve made. I’ve too much respect for my fellow humans.
Each to his own.
I believe everyone on this site and other sites has the right to hear exactly what they think they hear.
I’ve been a software beta tester for several high end manufacturers if both software, hardware and or both.
I’ve too much experience to deny what others perceive as that is their “truth” and everyone deserves there own reality. I’m just not sure why others can’t accept the same.
There are many free shareware and inexpensive programs that will do some of what ROON does to some extent other. Just do a Google search yourself. Roon is a remarkable program and I purchased a lifetime membership after using the program when first available and in less than a day.
I’m sorry I even shared my opinions or observations.
I will be sure to share even less in the future.
One can be certain that others with valuable observations and experiences will share less and less to the detriment of the hobby and this site.
I may be a little sensitive at this point as I’m in a hospital trying to distract myself as a parent tries to leave this earthly orbit.
It’s a shame this thread got off to such a rocky start. I particularly like the suggestion to augment the artist descriptions by including links to artist/band’s Wikipedia entries where available which presumably when clicked would display within Roon or in a pop up window that could be closed when done. That seems a fantastic idea to me.
For bigger bands there are also often Wikipedia entries for individual albums which, although for me not as exciting as the artist/band links, would also be a nice extra value add to include links to in the Roon information pages.
It’s a big job of course so presumably some code would need to be written to try and automatically find the link to the appropriate Wikipedia entries, no one would have time to manually create them I suspect, and then bad links (mistakes by the automatic search algorithm) being manually corrected by some report-incorrect-link mechanism.
Roon is almost certainly getting the external links from the Musicbrainz entries for artists, e.g. for Afro Celt Sound System. If they are there, they will be displayed. If no-one has filled out the entries in Musicbrainz, then they won’t be.
I used to write for many audio sites. I find myself interested in doing so less and less.
I never write for Audiogon anymore for instance.
I do not understand why it makes people unhappy that some spend money on expensive wire, tubes, or other components and claim that these items make a difference.
Nor do I understand why other audiophiles get upset that some do not hear these differences.
I’ve installed many programs on my system for trial. I’ve also Beta tested for several audio sites.
It’s interesting to me that many or all claim to be “bit perfect” and yet none of them sound exactly the same to me.
It could very well be some pre conceived expectation or perception. Perhaps mass hypnosis performed across the internet stream.
For some reason software and the way it’s written can for some sound different.
As for paying more for ROON services I wouldn’t want to. And I believe ROON should play ISOs. Even though I have none.
I don’t know how many purchased a lifetime membership when ROON first started up. I believe that the ROON Wizards could be somewhat beholden to and include all new additions as a “thank you” to early investors.
Many pay extra for Tidal and Quboz. I pay for one service and think it’s a bargain.
Data and the use of copyrighted material is expensive. So if Roon offered a higher tiered package that brought all the information contained in an LP album to my iPad I’d consider paying more for a more enjoyable experience.
You do realise that the Qobuz service offers PDFs of sleeve notes and inserts for a subset of their albums? Most new releases will have them. Roon will display these if they exist.
Some, or even many, but not all I think. I’ve certainly had many occasions when Roon Radio has thrown up stuff, I’ve clicked on the Roon hotlink to the artist and got no info, but after Googling I found a Wikipedia entry. Good to hear/see that the basic mechanics are in place so maybe it is the auto-discovery/linking that could be enhanced, or even introduced (perhaps the linking is currently manual), to associate those entries with more lesser-known artists.
My hypothesis: there is more going on in the PC or streamer than we know. The power supplies are extremely sensitive to extra services the PC needs to perform. (For simplicity’s sake I’ll equate proprietary streamers as a PC as they share many similar parts. )
In the case of Flac (at first I liked the idea of compressing files to save room on my drives. But today I find no need) I perceive a difference between Flac, AIF, and Wav files. All are bit perfect but that wee bit of unfolding a Flac file requires puts just enough strain on the power supply and CPU to make an audible difference. Not a game breaker but identical AIF and WAV files sound just a wee bit more relaxed or analog to my ears. Others hear no differences which is ok. FLAC files don’t sound bad just different. Some may say better I’d guess too.
This is why there is so much discussion about linear power supplies, operating systems, MOBOs, CPUs, etc in other threads. I perceive a difference when I experiment.
However if I didn’t want to do any of those things and I didn’t want to mess with other formats besides FLAC, playback is still exceptional with just a plain PC operating Windows.
We are living in exceptional times really for music playback.
