It does, as in house experience, engineering, development, maintenance, resources etc are finite.
If anything it would make those easier and simpler to manage.
I think artist info, band info already technically is, no?
Yes and No, Roon have a metadata DB in the cloud but anything relating to your library is local.
Understood Chris.
For me the great advantage would be to not have to have a dedicated PC for Roon. And be able to access Roon in other locations without the need of my phisical core.
Maybe is because i use Plex and love to have that possibility…
Not a deal breaker for me as the ease of use, interface and peace of mind that Roon give me is more important.
I tried several options before. Volumio with Tidal connect, Daphile, Picoreplayer, Audirvana, etc. I now can afford Roon so why compromise as Roon gives everything i need and in a easy way.
See i love tinkering. Realy do. And i tried so many things as tinkering is so addictive for me. But i got to a point that i value my time and energy more. Money serves to give us comfort so its worth it.
Hello. To answer your last question: Roon lets me play music directly to my roon ready speakers in hi res without anything in between. At the moment nothing else can do that (dutch n dutch 8cs)
1 Like
Important then.
Definitely a problem generally in hifi today, putting together a system of hardware together then finding a software solution to tie it all together. It is a minefield out there.
I know it does not help right now, but, how did you come to make the decision to buy the dutch n dutch 8cs? By all accounts a great speaker, did you get a chance to see before hand what would be involved etc with just streaming and only having Roon as an option?
They didn’t? I’m quite sure they did have some DSP in the beginning.
Pretty sure it wasn’t there. I started in 2015 and it wasn’t in the early versions I think it came in from 1.4 onwards.
1.6 was the sweetspot 
To be fair, when I introduced DSP into the equation my exact words were
I made no reference to what was there at the beginning. Instead I made reference to the operational model as it is now. I stand by my earlier post.
Please elaborate?
Roon’s operational model, as it is now, is not necessarily built upon the things that were part of the original design. It’s built upon the things that are part of its core functionality as it is today.
I would argue that DSP functionality, amongst many other functionalities, is a core component of Roon. And, as such, Roon’s operational model is built upon it (and them).
The only reason I introduced the issue was to highlight the difficulties of Roon moving to a cloud based, rather than core based, architecture.
1 Like
Slowness in Roon tends to be their cloud services being under heavy not local server issues. Being totally cloud wont fix that.
I can see them having more cloud based stuff. The whole valance art manager is part of that plan and the removal of all artwork being stored on the core. Perhaps a nod to a coreless future. But having tried Plex when it went cloud for a while it wasn’t a good experience.
Mobile is coming and this will likely employ even more cloud services to make it work and keep the Roon experience.
Can’t see and don’t want to see two different products, it won’t make anything easier to support and will draw more on what little they have now. More importantly very costly. Focus on one product make it best in class.
I agree its starting to look like Roons Core base is beginning to struggle with moving forward a bit and it is likely holding back some things. It’s likely time for a refactor on how it’s all done and maybe they can support multiple streaming accounts, proper user profiles etc as the current way the library works really doesnt fit with those requests.
Issues would be DSP and multiroom. You need very tight sync for decent multiroom, the whole system would need refactoring It’s all a very different mechanic it becomes a pull system not a push system as it is now.
3 Likes
Lots of interesting observations.
I agree that Roon can’t support two very different services. I suppose the key question, back to the OP, is whether or not Roon can genuinely replicate the streaming experience that other services provide, whilst still catering for local library (and multi-room and DSP). It’s a big ask, but who knows?
The archeology of Roon is laid out in the Software Release Notes going back to June 2015.
1.0 Build 8 in June 2015 added sample rate limiting for outputs, which I think means upsampling was in the product at that stage.
DSD support was added in Build 16 that month and HQ Player support in Build 88 December 2015. Crossfade support was in at that stage, so it may have been there from the outset also.
4 Likes
For me, the Roon streaming experience is already excellent. I stream from Tidal and Qobuz with no local files. At home, I use a Nucleus and away from home, a Dell XPS 15 laptop. When “out and about,” I use the Tidal or Qobuz apps on iPhone or iPad or use Apple Music. While it would be nice to have a mobile Roon app for our phones, I don’t see it as really necessary.
3 Likes
There’s a difference between DSD and DSP though
DSP came in at v1.4 Unless I’m wrong?
Depends what you call DSP. If you include upsampling, volume control, cross fading etc. then those things predated the DSP screen.
3 Likes
The dealer i found offered a 1 month trial. At the time they weren’t roon ready and i wasnt using roon, i had a streaming dac which i used with streaming apps which worked ok but the best setup was spotify which is lo res, qobuz doesnt do a connect option and i dont like tidal. Since the 8cs became roon ready i got rid of the streaming dac and now go direct to the speakers using roon. There is talk that dutch dutch might add direct support for spotify/tidal and spotify might go hi res. If they do that might be a better option than the pain of managing my music through roon but i dont know yet