Had to look this one up.
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Roon Radio looked promising but in practice it is very disappointing.
The algorithm is supposed to be self learning, yet it still shows the exact same behaviour as it did at the time it was launched.
The problems:
- It does not let users ban artists;
- It keeps throwing up the same 7 to 10 artists “related” to the seed;
- It latches on to one (sometimes two) albums by each artist in its limited selection pool;
- It keeps doing this even when restarting a session.
I do not think there is real learning behaviour, or if there is, it’s too general to be of much use for an individual user.
This is a let-down because Roon is supposed to be all about individual user experience.
Compared to Spotify’s algortihms, Roon is years behind.
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I don’t use Roon Radio often but I gave it a go today. I seeded a track by The Weather Station. So far after a couple of hours I’ve had tracks from 21 artists with several artists appearing more than once. All the tracks have been to my taste, I haven’t rejected any. I’ll keep it going for another couple of hours and see if it starts repeating itself but it’s doing a good job thus far.
Sometimes it does all right, usually with jazz.
With dad rock it’s totally worthless. It always - and I mean always - includes the Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, John Lennon and Bob Dylan. These are my top five artists I don’t want to hear… Ever.
So much for learning. I’m about to throw in the towel with Radio. Enough time has passed since the release of the algorithm to get a feel for the way it’s evolving.
It’s evolving the wrong way for my tastes.
Excellent update to1.6, only have a few points of view:
- Make it easier to delete (TIDAL) content from library. There is a lot of steps and check boxes
- Search results; maybe have an option to “Search in library only”, or present search results with a clear “Library” results at the top
- Also have the option to “Library only” when using the “Radio” function?
- and i find the Radio picks a lot of strange, and sometimes outright wrong, kind of songs. The Radio function in TIDAL itself are, as an example, more accurate.
Keep up the good work!
Find me a classic rock radio station that never plays these artists and the comment might have some traction. But seriously, those artists are pretty much the foundation. If those are not to your taste, you might instead use Tag and Shuffle to create your own radio station without these foundational artists.
Search good tip here
You can limit radio to your library in the three dot settings menu on radio but the algorithm is limited if you do.
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I never thought that I would ever bother with Roon Radio - but now am I am a frequent user. I listen almost exclusively to Classical music.
However, one thing that annoys me is when Roon Radio selects exactly the same composition I have just listened to - although with a different performers. It has happened twice today, firstly Elgar violin concerto played by Ehnes followed immediately by the same violin concerto played by Ning Feng and secondly Elgar Serenade for Strings (Philharmonia A Davis) followed immediately by a version conducted by Barbirolli. Surely, Roon Radio can be tweaked to stop this happening.
The other point is that I cannot understand why you do not get the first selection by Roon Radio until 30 seconds before the end of the first piece of music. Surely the selection could be made almost immediately.
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Thanks, i wasnt aware of the three dot settings there!
Classic 21 in Belgium. Plays those artists but not as staples.
Besides, my preferences are my preferences. That’s the entire point. A radio algorithm that is supposed to learn should take dislikes into account as well as likes. Hence my suggestion in feature requests to be able to ban artists.
After all, the software should deliver results tailored to each and every individual user. At least that’s what it says on the package.
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would be great if there was a way to disable the why did you skip to the next track feature. it’s so annoying! other than that it works great.
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Any plans to improve the genre radio function?
My expectation when seeding radio from a genre is to play songs only within that genre, but from the available catalog in Tidal/Qobuz. Currently the radio also goes out of the genre which results in playlists without a good definition, and in my opinion not what the user intended.
Roon Radio either gets things really good, or really bad. I have to admit (currently trying the free trial), that my primary interest in Roon was it’s radio more than anything else. I use that feature predominantly through all streaming services, and I get frustrated with it. Spotify was great, but tends to repeat itself often. Deezer is hot or cold depending on the seed. Sometimes it finds me new tracks. Sometimes it plays the seed artist every 5 songs. Tidal’s own radio has actually become stellar. But in a lot of genres it does tend to repeat itself often with different tracks from the same album within close proximity. Qobuz…has no radio…and no discovery of any sort, and just tells people to buy Roon instead. 
Apple seems to have the best radio function of all…and the best catalogue of all…and the absolute worst software of all, and total hardware incompatibility. Plus of course no lossless.
Roon Radio…I listen outside the norms I suppose, but does it feature any ability to learn without human input? It runs hot and cold. If I choose a track it might pick some of the best matches, with one really big outlier, but then the radio ends after 5 songs or so… it just loses its thread and dies.
Some genres come out better than Tidal’s radio.
And then there’s the outliers. If I try to play something like Chinese traditional music, say, Hong Ting and build Radio off it, it will play either random international music including Celtic, or it might just dive into house electronica with a random Dave Matthews in between. Every time I thread the same seed. I guess the one other Roon user who tried the genre also had DMB in the playlist?
This is probably my main interest in Roon as an alternative radio experience with deeper cuts than the Tidal/Deezer/Apple algorithms are likely to choose, so I have a keen interest in how it’s intended to develop!
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Here’s a question, probably for Roon staff:
Is there a way for users to help seed Roon Radio in unknown genres or themes? I know Tidal’s radio is partly human curated and seeded where I imagine Roons is not (and it just grays out the radio option when it doesn’t have a match for it.) That leaves gaps for those of us with eclectic tastes that are likely to delve into deeper subgenres, or even users that aren’t in the mainstream of he “target Roon demographic” (insert image of typical audiophile.) I like trying to push the Radio. So many tracks I end up with it finding nothing, or finding 10 songs, most of which are from one or two artists, and then stopping. A little of that would be difficult to match as it would be so heavily metadata dependent to match (track radio of a specific EP or such that has no direct metadata related liknesses.) But some things like my above example, Hong Ting, grouping with Chinese Folk, pipa music, etc seems like an easy genre to seed. With Spotify, Deezer, Apple, there’s search for user created playlists that Tidal and Qobuz lack, and a large user pool with diverse tastes to find something similar. But with Roon we’re limited to user input which falls apart in currently little played genres.
Seeding a radio channel from an erhu folk ensemble album shouldn’t create a radio station with Buena Vista Social Club and most certainly not Dave Matthews, but there’s only so far thumbs-downing every single track for “doesn’t fit” can probably go. I can’t speak for others, but I’d be willing to help seed unknown (to the system) genres as I try to play them, and I imagine a lot of users would be willing. There’s a lot of subgenres that the “average Roon user” is probably not going to have much weight creating compared to the weight of millions of Spotify and Apple users. I don’t think many wouldn’t understand that Roon’s users have to be “curators” to a point.
Arguably, playlists as a seed could help a little, but earlier a Roon staffer made a good argument of why playlists aren’t going to be supported as radio seeds.
UPDATE:
I found some success while playing with it! Genre radio seems to be a little more on the ball than track/album/artist Radio! Using my above examples (I love using Chinese Trad. as a radio test because it pushes the limits of metadata and obscurity.) Of the 3 or so related albums in my library, the genre “Chinese Traditional” existed. Starting Roon Radio from that actually did provide a solid playlist of (mostly) Chinese Traditional music! There’s a win for Roon Radio above Tidal’s own radio. So it appears there are cases where a genre radio works where album/artist/track radio from the very same albums the genre radio finds either “nothing related” and just falls back to local tracks, or finds wildly unrelated content. Obviously dialing into subgenres or presentation types (say ensemble versus single instrument/vocals etc) would work better using track analysis with album or artist radio, but at least should pull it’s own genre radio up than going off-genre or erroring out, but it means the RR algorithms are in better shape overall than it looks at first glance. It just needs some work tying it to tracks/albums/artists, perhaps.
Unfortunately, I tried “downtempo” as a genre radio next, and most of what it played was more “ambient electronica” or “new age” but…it’s a start! And it does supply some capabilities of radio that Tidal itself lacks!
TL:DR Roon Radio chooses songs from Duplicate albums in my local Library. Not cool.
I have more than a few albums with several versions of the album in my Library. The version I want to play most often is primary. All others are secondary. When RR plays tracks from my local I don’t want to be surprised by tracks from album versions that I have grouped behind the primary version.
Usually the album versions that end up as Duplicates are extended versions with demos and live versions that don’t really fit into a radio-type listening session. I will listen to those kind of tracks when I’m in the mood to explore the extended or deluxe version of an album. I also subordinate Qobuz CD-quality versions to my hi-res audio library versions (I keep the Qobuz versions available in the Qobuz app for mobile listening).
Please remove this annoying behavior.
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I like Roon Radio, but when I start with a song or group that has a female vocalist, ALL SUBSEQUENT TRACKS for HOURS will be ONLY female fronted songs!!! This is elementary and speaks to a really bad job of programming the algorithm. I mean really? On some occasions it makes Roon Radio unusable. Is there a fix for this, other than having to skip each track (and enter a reason) until a non-female artist comes up?! Even if I do this, will it eventually learn not to? Seems hard to believe it would.
P.S. I should note that this applies to both Tidal and my personal library (which is currently disconnected).
P.P.S. As soon as I typed this a single male fronted song came on. I would guess that prior there were at least 10 songs in a row with a female singer. Maybe it’s broken out of the loop now…
EDIT: It went immediately back to female singers and in retrospect it’s possible that the one I thought was a male was actually a deep voiced female.
P.P.P.S. Roon seems to have figured out and fixed something because the other issue I had (unrelated) where I get the “track is not available” (which of course it is, by opening Tidal to verify) has drastically decreased in frequency. Hope that loop is broken now too.
I find Roon Radio wildly inaccurate at times, depending on the artist and genre of music. Tidal however has pretty good [Radio] functionality.
Is Roon able to leverage Tidal’s radio functionality? Would it makes sense to do so?
Have been setting up my internet radio stations page and seems to me that it would be very powerful to be able to set up remembered Roon Radio stations alongside the internet radio stations - that way you have one place where you can kick off all your regular listening choices…
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I wanted to reply to this thread back in February, but I got sidetracked by retirement (which has been wonderful, by the way, in case anyone is on the fence about it!) So I’m finally taking the time to say I’ve been extremely pleased with the function of Roon Radio 1.6. It’s a huge improvement over the original version, and I’ve been impressed enough to pony up for a lifetime membership. Sure, there are occasional hiccups, but generally my experience has been positive. It’s been great for discovering new artists. And when I’m doing something else with Roon playing, I frequently find myself realizing that the album I selected ended an hour ago, but I’ve been listening to enjoyable music the whole time! That works for me. Thanks, folks!
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Welcome to the Lifers and retirement…Im only semi in retirement but enjoying it very much too…I also find myself in Radio land often thinking that’s a great track…and go to find it and add to the library or know more about who it is.
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