Roon just doesn’t understand or care to provide a user interface that is understandable

I am absolutely frustrated by your interface. When I stumble through your site long enough to accidentally acess a help interface, the correspondents are uniformly helpful. But I don’t know how to use your interface. Where are clear instructions that tell me how to use your site?
Tonight, Roon decided to implement a filter called “focus.” I don’t know how it turned on and I don’t understand how to disable it. I should not have rely on the kindness of strangers to get help that you should provide directly. I grew up when there user manuals. You need a direct email address for users like me. I do enjoy the community you provide. But for basic questions, I need more direct contact with Roon.

when I tried to use Roon, it appeared to applied on it’s own initiative, some filter called “focus.” I don’tknow How I engaged this filter. But it will not even allow me to search for “Beethoven.” A decent interface would allow me to pose questions directly to Roon, rather than relying on the kindness of strangers.

Hi Clark,

You can dismiss a Focus by clicking on the x to the right of the Focus filter. You can invert the Focus by toggling the + on the left to a -.

You can find more information about using Roon in the Knowledge Base.

If you want to learn more about using the Forum then this Discourse Guide may help.

Hello @Clark_Varnell,

Support staff like myself are frequently on this site to answer your questions. To make sure that we see your questions/request for assistance, please drop a flag for @support <- like so.

As @andybob mentioned the best place to get more information regarding Roon is our Knowledge Base User Guide or just asking us here on Community.

Andybob has answered your question regarding focus correctly, but any other questions you may have feel free to let us know by tagging support and we can assist.

Thanks,
Noris

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Like all software with multiple functions and use cases roon can lead you into situations where you are a little lost.
I would read the basic function documentation to get an idea of the different areas and experiment. Everyone here is happy to help.

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If I’m not too wrong after having installed roon it always presents some hints upon each single knob when being used for the very first time.
You haven’t simply skipped these in preference of being faster in finally making use of the software?

You might want to check the Roon Knowledge Base. I find that it well written and pretty comprehensive. Way better than some others I’ve used lately.

Not even polite enough to issue thanks, hey ho…

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Dear Exiled Welshman
I never meant to dis you. I’m sorry that you took offense. I think that Roon has wonderful correspondents. If I didn’t get back to you fast enough, I apologize.

Thanks for your response. Do have suggestions for searching the database?

Sorry that you feel disrespected.

Hi Clark,

Responding to your query about suggestions for searching the Roon KB. Start with the User Guide, Browsing and Playing Music section and then have a look at Focus.

My bad here, i guess i have seen to many helpful posts not replied to and feeling fairly annoyed by someone in another post, i vented my spleen.
So, accept my apology.

Clark-
I agree with you not everything in the UI of Roon is obvious. It takes a little bit of a learning curve and then it is pretty easy to use.

A search in this forum will give you the answers you need most of the time. You can also ask questions here and usually get an answer pretty quickly, either from Roon employees or other users.

The Roon KB is also basically a user manual that explains how everything works and how to do what you need in Roon.
A few minutes devoted to a search and reading a few posts or Knowledge Base articles will generally tell you whatever you need to know.

Different people learn in different ways. There was no KB for a year or more after launch.

In that time the way to learn about the interface after the onboarding spark, was to click on things and see what happened and ask questions on the Forum. Then there was a collection of FAQs.

Some people were quite happy discovering Roon. Others wanted a more structured approach, hence the KB.

Are there any video (YouTube) tutorials?

These would be an easy way to see the basic functions to get people up and running. Perhaps there is a Darko or Hans B one?

.sjb

Hans did an introduction (not a tutorial) to Roon a while back…

His review shows details of the Roon UI (although this was an older version at the time)

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