Roon Newbie Questions - Various

Roon Software Discussion
1

I’ve just signed up for Roon (one year - trying it out before deciding if I’m a “lifer”).

I downloaded and installed the Roon core on my Mac Mini. I downloaded and installed Roon Remote on my iPad Mini. Through Roon Remote, I had the core index my USB HDD where my wav files reside.

Hence my first comment - The library is connected to the core - not directly to the iPad. I should have been able to index the HDD directly from the core on the Mac Mini. But this is minor, and all’s well that ends well - the HDD is now accessible from Roon.

Which brings up my second content. I’d spent LOTS of hours associating cover art with the correct files in JRiver (my previous media player). Roon lost more than half my covers and replaced many of the remaining ones from (presumably) the internet with incorrect or low quality artwork. Boo Roon! So now I’ll have to spend all those hours (again) finding and associating the correct cover art. I’d expected better.

So now I want to get Roon to stream to my Roon-compatible Oppo UDP-205. Found out I had to download & run “Roon Bridge.” Did it. When I finally found the right place in Roon Remote to find the Oppo, the Core recognized the Oppo and began streaming. But it would have been nice, again, since Roon is actually associating the core with the destination, if this could have been done from the Mac Mini. But it is what it is.

So now I’m getting music in my living room from the Core in my computer room. Everything is peachy, right? Well not exactly. About every 20 or 30 minutes, the iPad kicks me out of Roon and back to the home desktop. I restart Roon Remote, and although it picks up playback from where it was lost, the album view kicks me back to the beginning of the album list. This is a major PITA, because it’s a BIG album list, and if there’s any way to navigate around except by swiping a page of album covers at a time, I’ve not yet found it.

I also tried to get Roon to add TIDAL to my list of sources, but TIDAL keeps rejecting my password, despite the fact that it recognizes my account. I’ve changed passwords three times now, and still can’t get in to my own account. This is not a Roon problem so far as I know, but rather a TIDAL one. I’m beginning to think that I REALLY hate TIDAL…

Other small hitches:

The Roon screen on my iPad mini is stuck in landscape mode and won’t display in portrait mode.
In Roon, I often seem to get multiple copies of the same artist (Bob Seger / Bob Serger and The Silver Bullet Band / Bob Seger & Angela Merkel / Etc.)
The touch screen of the iPad mini is VERY sensitive when in Roon. I often touch something I didn’t intend to (fat-finger syndrome) and end up who knows where.

Suggestions welcomed.

2

That’s correct, the library is connected to the Roon Server (core) and that is what indexed your library. Your iPad is simply a way of controlling Roon, everything is performed by the core.

Nothing is lost! Roon doesn’t change or alter your music files*. If you want to use your artwork you can. Open Roon Settings > Library > Import Settings, Edit and select Prefer File or Prefer Best.

*Roon will delete a file if you instruct it to do so.

For your other questions, a good starting point is to read the following Knowledge Base articles:

https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_Getting_Started

It’s not clear from your post where you core is located. Is it next to the Oppo? Where did you install Roon Bridge? On the Mac? If so, that was an unnecessary step. Let’s get you basic setup sorted before addressing the usability questions.

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3

The ipad is just a control. Playback should not stop because the ipad closes the control app. Or is this not what you meant?

Roon does need to do a better job of remembering where in lists users are when they navigate back. That’s been commented on and probably will be fixed in some future UI update.

4

Thanks, James_I -

To clarify: Not only does the iPad revert to its home menu, but also music playback DOES stop. Does this imply issues with the core server rather than with Roon Remote?

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5

I think a better idea of how things are connected.

  1. How is your core connected to the network?
  2. How is the Oppo connected to the network, or, if it is not, then what is the Oppo connected to and how? The Core or another Mac? USB?
  3. The playback which interrupts; is it music being played to the Oppo or music being played to the iPad?
  4. As a test, forget the iPad, start up and just use the Mac Mini. I assume you installed the Roon Core, you can also install Roon (the graphical interface) on the same Mac Mini. During installation tell it to connect to a server and point it to the server running on the same machine. Then you will have a control interface on that Mac Mini. Start playback using that interface and see if the music stops with the iPad out of the control chain.
6

I think it does. The remote on the iPad should just issue a “play this” command but it doesn’t need to stay connected or the app open in order for music to continue thereafter. So it is not really an issue with the remote app.

However, it could be “user error” - is playback stopping in the middle of your queue, or is it just not starting Roon radio after the queue is done? If the latter, that could be because Roon cannot start radio from a Tidal song that is not in your library. That’s one way that roon stops unexpectedly.

7

Setup as follows:

8

Have installed Roon Server by mistake? Roon server is used if you want to run headless.
If you had installed the normal Roon package you would be able to control Roon on your Mac Mini.

9

Perhaps I did - how can I tell?

10

Can you access Roon from a screen on the Mac Mini ? If not you may have installed Roon Server. You can install Roon and Roon Server on the same machine and point Roon to the Roon Server Core. That way you can control from the Mac Mini by running Roon when you want, but will otherwise be running Roon Server headless.

Have a read about the Architecture.

11

@Glenn_Young you should also provide what versions of the os and iOS you using too. iOS needs to be on at least v11, but ideally the latest.

12

IOS = 12
OSX = 10.14 (Mojave)

13

Both of those should be fine

14

No, I can’t access any Roon screen from the Mac Mini. I can see that both Roon & Roon Bridge are running, but have no access to either.

So, if I understand you correctly, I’ve got Roon Server installed. I’m assuming I should delete it and then install the “full version” of Roon?

15

Looking in my Applications folder, I find something called “remotecore.app,” but I see nothing that specifically could be the Roon Bridge. Is there such a file? What would it be called?

16

The poor quality artwork is a known issue, it wasn’t always this way. Roon promised to fix it but it has been broke for at least 6 months or so.

17

Nope, I think you should do what I suggested earlier and install Roon on the same machine. I’m pretty sure @andybob would agree. It can run on the same machine as the server and act as a graphical front end. When you install Roon in this manner, you should choose to connect it to a server which, in your case, is the same machine. BTW, Roonbridge does not need to be on the Mac Mini at all.

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18

Yes, I did this on my MacPro. I even created (to experiment) a Roon only account, with as many processes turned off as possible (I have no idea if it made a difference to sound quality but when Roon Sever ran on my Mac I wanted it to use as little energy as possible).

Anyway no need to over complicate things, just instal Roon and point it at your core.

19

“Broke for six months or so?” Then why am I paying for Roon? I could buy features that don’t work for FAR less than $120 per year. The issue with importing cover art is that my previous software (JrRiver) allows storage of album art in its own folder, independent of the actual files (unless you use FLAC). The user can specify both the name and location of the art file. Roon needs to be “smart enough” to find the previously-used art file and then use the files associated with each album or track. But Roon is currently stupid - it doesn’t bother to look at the art file for the music being imported - it doesn’t associate the previous art with the imported files. Instead, Roon throws away all previous associations, and tries (lamely) to locate its own art for each album or file from the internet (often with comic results).

Come on, Roon - THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY - Get your software to find and import the correct artwork for the proper albums and files. When more than half my imported music is “grayed out” in Roon’s display, it’s obvious that what you’re doing is nowhere close to working.

If Roon were free software that some bozo had cobbled together in his garage, I could be more forgiving of such shortcomings. But to my knowledge, Roon is the most expensive product ever offered for audio streaming. And despite your income and the (very) high cost to consumers, you still can’t even trouble yourself to attempt proper artwork imports? Really? Really?

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20

Fair point, but you can specify that Roon uses existing cover art it finds in the folder, it is in Settings.