Roon-STREAM please

Feedback Feature Suggestions
1

For the large and ever growing number of roon users who’s only source of music is a streaming service such as Tidal or Qobuz, the current product fails to meet user needs in many ways. For users who have a physical library stored on a network, I’m sure roon works great. But for everyone else the way the roon library works makes little sense and causes all sorts of issues for users. So if you have a physical library and you are happy with roon please move along, there is nothing for you in this post.

For everyone else, and i know i can speak on behalf of a large number of people who have either left roon or continue to just about put up with it, the roon library makes no sense at all when streaming from Tidal/Qobuz. I propose either a new version of roon, for streamers only, or a new branch, which asks users at setup time whether they want to use roon in ‘normal mode’ i.e. the current workflow, or a new ‘stream only mode’ for users with no physical library at all.

A stream only version of roon would solve a lot of problems/issues/bugs/frustrations with the current ‘Library’ based version of the product, and achieve the following:

  • roons’ server or library for streaming only users could and should be in the cloud - just like all other streaming services, so that users can take their playlists, favourites etc on the road, in the car, on holiday etc without being ‘locked’ to the home. Streaming only users get zero benefit from the roon server whatsoever. I know roon makes money from selling nucleus etc, but so many users just don’t need one as there is zero benefit. offer me a nucleus in the cloud and I will buy it tomorrow. offer me a nucleus for my home at a quarter of the price and I’m still not interested. Even multiroom could work just as well as it does now if the library was web based a-la tidal connect, spotify connect etc
  • roon is supposed to allow users to manage their music likes, dislikes, playlists etc in the best way possible. This isn’t true for streaming only users who have to jump through all sorts of hoops, with bugs, inconsistencies and roadblocks along the way, just to get to the point where they can like a song. Every song being played, from anywhere at any time should be instantly ‘heart-able’. or block-able. And any album should be heart-able or tag-able. There should not be any need whatsoever to first add it to library, and wouldn’t be with such a version.
  • roon should sync 100% with the streaming service for streaming only users - this would be easily doable if roon was cloud based and the roon library was removed so that all songs/albums/artists/playlists etc saved or liked in roon are instantly saved/liked in the streaming service and vice versa. Keeping your music likes and preferences from the native apps in sync with roon and the other way around is an unnecessary struggle at the moment
  • roon is sloooooow - roon sometimes takes ages to load an album or add an album to library or lots of other functions. I’ve tested this extensively with multiple servers of different types, multiple wifi networks and devices and conclude that this is a roon issue - often while waiting for roon to play a track or load an album i can open qobuz, search for the same content and play it instantly, while roon is still trying to load. I have never once experience a delay in loading a track in Qobuz/tidal/spotify as long as my web connection was good. I have regularly experienced delays loading the exact same content in roon
  • roon sometimes gives you a message that an album or song can’t be found - an album or song that was just playing 2 seconds ago - but if you remove it from your library all of a sudden it can’t be found. this is daft. imagine tidal telling you an album you just played cant be found just because you removed a heart or moved it from a playlist. This is just one of the numerous bugs that occur as a result of roon effectively working off 2 versions of every song/album etc - the one from your streaming service and the one from your library both of which appear and behave and can be interacted with in completely different ways inside roon. This is completely daft to a streaming only user

If roon can’t deliver what many consumers want then maybe someone else will, and I will be eagerly waiting for whoever comes to the market with a smart solution first. In the mean time I will trundle on with roon, not because it’s good, but because it’s the best of a pretty awful lot of options for the ‘streaming only’ music quality and hi-fi enthusiast

2

A good morning to you Zeki!

I’ll try to offer my pennies worth to some of your points.

This is a feature section for Roon, all paying subscribers should be welcomed for their comments, questions and concerns. Put simply, you are part of a community.

I tend to agree with you.

I subscribe to Roon (for my digital library), Qobuz (for discovery and all the meta data), Tidal (for discovery and all the meta data, although I may ultimately drop this subscription) & Spotify (for its excellent on the go service).

Even if I did not have a large digital library I would still maintain a Roon subscription just for its ability to use devices like Ropieee etc to bring my sources to my speakers.

Adding a cloud based solution for this only removes a level of control to the user and be reliant on Roon’s cloud service, for what benefit?

My use case, I don’t travel with my amp, dac, speakers and stands. Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify all have great mobile solutions for my needs when I travel etc.

For the most part I am very happy with how Roon manages this.

It seems to me you may be suffering from an overload of available music and sources. This is quite common in 2022. That firehose of easy access to just about everything that we now face eh?

My experience differs here as well.

Caveat, I’m self taught tinkerer. I research, read, learn, plan, execute. I’m running Roon on cobbled together gear on a home built NAS, a few raspberry pi etc. Most computing & network gear is simple amazon basics stuff. A well put together and thought out home network on minimally, good enough gear and Roon operates absolutely wonderfully. My local library or streaming.

Software is software. Frustrating, I know, but again to be fair, Roon has been a solid piece of software in my experience.

Looking through the forums the community seems very supportive as does Roon.

Competition is always a good thing.

Finally, let me ask you a question Zeki, why do you need to use Roon over just a standard streaming service?

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3

I agree with Zeki 100%. That’s the way Roon should go.

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4

One hundred percent in agreement with @Zeki_Mustafa. This is the most relevant post I have seen in months. If you want more examples of all the inconsistencies and bugs due to the library/non-library conundrum: Solve the library/non-library conundrum and all the complexities it creates for tagging, focus, playlists etc. Just one more example. I am playing a Roon Daily Mix. I want to tag (or heart) one of the songs played. I know it’s already in my library (yes, I checked). I can’t tag or heart it. Why not? Because the Daily Mix is not playing the “library version”. So? I need to go to My Library>Tracks and search for the song. Click the three dots next to it and than I can heart/tag it. Daft? Indeed.

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5

The integration of streaming services and local library into a single “My Library” is a hallmark of Roon. It is one of Roon’s key unique selling points. Basically you’re asking Roon to be not-Roon.

You have no way of knowing how many people have left Roon vs how many people have joined/are happy with Roon regarding this issue.

Again, you have no way of measuring this (“many consumers”). Having said that, of course you can wait on the development of a product that suits your needs. If there is a potential customer-base, somebody may develop said product. Personally, I’m not convinced.

I am firmly opposed to Roon dedicating what would be a large amount of development time to this suggestion. Software development is somewhat of a zero-sum game. If time is spent developing one feature, time is taken away from maintaining/developing other features that are part of Roon’s core business/service model.

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6

The world isn’t black and white. I imagine, though I don’t know, that the majority of Roon users are likely to have a mix of local and streaming music. Roon has to appeal to everyone, and attempting to carve out a solution for one perceived group doesn’t make sense and simply polarises potentially compatible views.

I think it would be better to have “bite-sized” requests that state why you would like a particular feature including the problem this would help you overcome. You may find support across the spectrum.

A feature request asking Roonlabs to rewrite their business plan will never have legs. :slight_smile:

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7

Roon have said many times they wouldn’t have the current design if they were starting now but Roon was built on Sooloos which was pre-streaming.
Their ambition is to move away from the library in or out distinction.
However, the last thing any developer is going to do is have two distinct products when they are obviously being successful with their current product.
Roon is incrementally moving to the cloud but there are too many areas of the world where the Internet infrastructure would not currently support a full solution based in the cloud.

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8

Hi. I hear you. I only use Roon with Tidal. No local library. In the past i had some problems. But now i have to say that everything runs well and reliably…
The only thing i wish i had is the ability to have Roon in a cloud based. Like Plex for example. Installing Roon in a VPS and be able to connect to my Roon core everywhere and in my house, and my parents house in the weekend…with no extra installations and configurations…
And the free up using a PC dedicated to Roon in the house has i do now…

Not essential i know. But nice.

9

Bruno,

genuine question, with no local library what features of Roon do you find yourself using that is not provided by Tidal?

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10

I don’t want to appear unduly negative, but how can Roon do the things that it currently does without access to a core with adequate processing power? There are plenty of options for cloud based solutions, although I fully understand that they don’t meet everybody’s needs.

Obviously I’m not against Roon growing/changing, but without access to a core we are back to the “Roon becoming non-Roon” that I mentioned in a previous post.

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11

Same as 100% of the companies providing SaaS.

Roon is not that intensive, it just needs a lot of memory for large libraries. For streaming only that should be very little.

12

Hi Andy.
Fair question.
In the past i had local. But then i was spending 90% of the time streaming from Tidal and most of the music i had local i also had on Tidal. But what made me drop local was that i changed my way of listening. Before i had the habit of listen time and time again my favorite albums. But now, what i want is to discover new music. Sure, i still listen to my old time favorites but those are almost all in Tidal so…

About Roon without local library.
I largely prefer Roon interface vs Tidal App.
I use and rely on Roon DSP (parametric EQ) and Tidal dont have that for my Sennheisers HD600 and other headphones.
Roon alow me to have multiple endpoint in the house, all controled in one place, my phone. And my girlfriend has his own Roon profile with her playlist, etc. Yes, you have Tidal Connect now, but is not the same.

I guess thats it.

13

If the OP is suffering from Roon being really slow, that is a fault. It isn’t how Roon should behave and certainly isn’t a consequence of how Roon is used. Fix that problem and strike it from that list. I can’t really comment on the rest. I’ve been instructed to move along! :joy:

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14

Bruno,

all fair points.

That’s the big one for me too.

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15

But Roon’s operational model is built on multi-room, DSP and other features that are hardware intensive. Why would you need to use Roon if you just want to stream, without utilising the specific features of Roon (features that make it necessary to run things from a Core)?

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16

I have 4 endpoints, DSP engaged with parametric EQ and my modest i5 7200u averages 15% utilization…
Most of the VPS today run on fast SSDs, multicore CPUs in GBits network connection…

Not saying that you are not right about Roon type of product though…

17

This.

When I sit down at home to listen to music that’s me digging in for the night. I’ll already have a good idea what my listening will be for the evening. I’m not looking at or bouncing around any of my streaming services. I will read the notes and other information provided by the like of Qobuz within Roon, but that is the extent of integration I’m looking for.

I tend to discover new music whilst working and listening on headphones, driving etc be it from Qobuz, Tidal or Spotify. If something grabs my attention and I really like it I’ll likely buy a physical copy, rip to Flac stick in my library.

So I guess in my use case the thought of spending effort and time for cloud based solutions would be pointless as its already available across some many solutions and eats into Roon’s real strengths.

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18

Really? they didn’t have DSP in the beginning so can’t see how their operational model is built on it.

Multiroom is not resource intensive either, it’s just a multicast from the core using RAAT.

I don’t use DSP or multiroom so you are saying I shouldn’t be using it.

Roon has always been about the metadata, artist info, band info and associated rich data etc. All of which can easily be hosted in the ‘cloud’

19

Does it matter if those strengths are in the cloud or on a core to an end user?

20

Agreed, but the question is whether or not the rebuild of software architecture would be worth it for Roon. We’d be talking about Roon running this expanded cloud based approach alongside their current core-based approach. That’s a big ask (I would have thought).

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