This is of utmost importance to me and has been since I purchased Roon. At the time of purchase two years didn’t even think about being able to access my Roon library while at work, in the car, on holiday etc… I was stunned really when I quickly figured out this limitation. I was also a bit surprised to hear the reason was due to Apple’s programming restrictions, especially when I had experienced a vast range of applications on the iOS platform that have no problem streaming music from either their own cloud based servers or from my own local server infrastructure. Even today the most popular iOS apps allow for streaming of music and playback on iOS devices.
I must be quite slow as it has only been in recent weeks that I think I understand what Roon meant by ‘This is not allowed by Apple’. Depends on what your meaning of is is…
As I understand it, Roon means that the remote software on an iOS device cannot be successfully controlled by another remote all the time and as an endpoint all control would need to be done on the device. This would go against their ethos of all remotes need to be equal, never mind that all other remotes can handle playback now.
I initially used a VPN as a workaround. Yay! It worked! I could see my lovely Roon library while I was away from home.
“Look everyone, see this amazing software, you should buy it.”
“Oh yeah? It looks amazing, check out all that rich meta data. Oh hey you even have Tidal integration. Can I listen to that new Jay Z album?”
“Oh sure.” I’d say, taping the first track, then clumsily tapping the ‘Play Now?’ pop up.
You can see where this was headed. Apologies for the app, sorry it can’t stream outside of home. How much again? they’d ask. Or, why not just stream it from the Tidal version, might be asked. Outta luck sorry.
So, fast forward these days, I maintain three music libraries! Roon is easy, it watches all the folders in my iTunes Music directory. I add music using iTunes, do all tag editing and arrangement in iTunes and let Roon display it. I also use Plex to create a music library. It adds a lot of rich meta data too, and allows me to sync hi-res content.
On my mobile devices, I have 4 music apps.
- Roon - number one at home, not usable elsewhere
- iTunes - on the go playback, usually in the car or where I have good mobile internet access.
- Plex - Music I have synced at full resolution to my device, mostly for playback where I do not have access to the internet.
- Tidal - for desperate times to access an album I don’t physically own. I would not use Tidal if it weren’t for its Roon integration.
I have introduced Roon to many many people, anyone that will let me get a word in really. I’ve been a corporate salesman of software and IT for a decade, and was apparently quite good. I could convince no one to take up Roon because of its inability to be accessed outside of the local subnet.
I haven’t harped in about it like the one click play crowd, for example, but I know how they feel when someone comments that it’s not important to them so maybe it should be lower priority.
My music listening has been greatly enhanced by Roon, I am super grateful for that.
Having to endure the lacklustre experience of the software I was hoping to replace it with, for such a long time, is quite frustrating.
So, um, yeah +1 from me.