I use both Roon and Apple Music. I use Apple Music strictly for my mobile listening.
There is a killer app for iOS on iPhone called Miximum that can do everything that iTunes/AM smart playlists can do. And Miximum’s smart playlists can be created and edited on your iPhone device with no need to go into the Apple Music/iTunes klunky interface. Two big thumbs up for Miximum!
Roon is still fantastic for integrating my locally-stored library and Qobuz into a wonderful listening and organizational environment. I exclude Apple Music from Roon just to avoid duplication issues and because of Qobuz’s higher quality streaming makes AM redundant in Roon for me. There’s very little of what I like to listen to that is available in AM but not in Qobuz anymore.
The only hiccup is syncing any new library additions. It’s still pretty manual at this point. I sync manually-curated playlists between Qobuz and Apple Music using a premium Soundiiz subscription, which makes playlist syncing very, very easy.
Yep. It’s not really a matter of “versus” it’s a matter of whether to keep both or not (and compromise one way or the other). I just got into Roon because Apple Music sounded pretty terrible on my AVR over AirPlay 2 and over HDMI via HTPC. I added to Roon a basic USB DAC for MQA support and now feel that I can enjoy my system.
Bonus that I really enjoy the Roon interface. Listening at home in your favorite chair is so much different than on the road. I’m probably going to keep both Roon and Apple Music (or change cell plans to get Apple Music bundled).
Roon as a music server and manager of your digital music is far superior to Apple Music. And when you take advantage of the integration of Tidal and Quobuz to stream HD music including MQA encoded music and then play it on your 2 channel system it is hard to beat. I use an iMac as my core, with a PS Audio NuWave DSD DAC which then feeds to my system which is driven by a 300b tube preamp and single tube mono power amps. Great sound and a good paring between digital and tube sound. But for my car, office, and other locations, I always use Apple Music as it is very convenient and provides me with music that’s satisfying to my ears and the listening environment at hand.
I guess you havent looked close enough. There are a ton of bugs. I am around here only for a few months and indentified more than just a handful. Tickets running, so Roon at least acknowledges the issues. As to Fixing - maybe in few years given their bug-fixing track record.
You have done well, only around few months but can quote on roons bug fixing history. Can I borrow your time machine when you are done please? I would use it more productively getting some mint classic Hi-Fi!
I am around since Xmas. Roon runs my library and Qobuz. HDMI via PC with full Roon is buggy as the HDMI interface initialized erratically depending on the sinks availability. RAAT into Volumio is dead stable. I have three Volumios, and Roon sees them like a charm. I can use an IPad as control, works great. I can even connect via Roon to the IPad‘s Bluetooth into Volumio or a Bluetooth speaker. Any PC can connect to the Roon core and be a bridge. Sure, setting up Multiroom with 2 IPads, 1iphone and 2 Volumios and two PC was not stable. But then my Roon CPU is over 10 year old…Amazing software.
We pretty much live in the Apple ecosystem but have left the Music App as we’ve found that the genius and iCloud library option in the app started to mess with our library and you’ll offen get the app playing the compressed format instead of the AIFF that’s stored in your library.
We’ve also done a test by playing the same AIFF file via Music app vs Roon, and it sounded better on Roon. The only annoyance of Roon is that it doesn’t support stereo pairing of homepods, our major problem as we have 2 sets of stereo set up.
I got an HomePod last December and was impressed with it so got a years subscription to try the streaming service, that’s where it all started going downhill,
Purchased a few so called mastered for iTunes albums but for some reason continually had to quit the OSX app as the downloads would stall.
Added a few of my own mp3 albums to the iTunes library, it screwed up the album art, messed up the id tags and the worst of all cannot seem to handle Muti disc sets ie, a two disc set would end up as three or four with the tracks split between them and seemingly with no way to correct it.
Not related really but trying to get music files other then mp3 or ALAC transferred to your IOS device is almost impossible.
I have moved the iTunes purchased albums into another folder and added as a watched folder within Roon. Will not be renewing the subscription and will stick to Qobuz and download albums to play offline when required and use Roon to stream to the HomePod and other speakers. Cannot feel the love for iTunes although I am in the Apple eco system.
@PatMaddox, @Pluto, @Jeff_Bellune: this seems very much what i would like to do since my workflow are very similar to yours. Would you (or anyone else using this Roon < >AM workflow) mind sharing in depth details on how you guys achieve this workflow?
My world isn’t so complex. I backup daily, but that’s about it. The only time I touch the server, running on a Mac Mini BTW, is when something goes wrong. Very rarely, or there’s a new version or I have MAC/OS maintenance. I use tags only to find the original CD which are strored in numbered bins. The tag corresponds to bin number. I upload new CDs through iTunes but beyond adding a location tag, or fixing artwork, It goes unused on the Mac.
With Wuhan, I’m mostly stuck at home and my driving has been greatly reduced. So, I’m not building playlists to put on my phone. I’m content with the basics.
Airplay is mono, which is why I’m growing even older waiting for AP2. I’m not interested in routing things through my iPad. Too much hassle. I just use Apple Music outside my Music room.
