Roon vs Plex - a serious discussion

True - its great discovering thrash metal or whatever when listening to chilled/ambient electronica trying to get to sleep :wink:

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Never had Ceiline Dion show up or anything that out of the ordinary. It goes off on a tangent sometimes but when I investigate in most regards it makes sense how it got there.

I use Plex for movies and Roon for audio. I wish there was a backup command in Plex like Roon. Tagging all those movies is daunting.

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I run both with a lifetime membership for each . So get best of both worlds.

Donā€™t have any problems with using either systems. But roon experience for listening at home is very hard to beat in every aspect.

And Plex is fine when Iā€™m away from home, but donā€™t use it for audio at all when at home.

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Like many others here, I use Plex for movies/TV series and Roon for music. I would like to use Plex for showing my photos, but after 10 years of requests in the Plex forums, it still doesnā€™t handle photo metadata properly; itā€™s just rubbish.

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Yep I gave up on that very quickly.

As someone who owns both Plex and Roon lifetime subscriptions, I completely agree with was said before. The only reason I added my music library to Plex is because I can use Plex to download albums from my library to my phone and listen on the go.
Hopefully Roon will add this feature soon so I can remove my music library from Plex and use only as a movie/tv show server.

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Like many people here, I use both Roon and Plex. I use Roon for my 7,000 or so albums and streaming Qobuz and Tidal. I love Roon and have no problems with the search function. I use Plex for music while outside of the house, and for video. Each has a function. IMHO, Plex works great, but could never be a Roon replacement for music. For me, Roon works great and I wouldnā€™t change it for anything.

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I too use both Plex and Roon. The Plex database and library management for music is very mediocre. But itā€™s worse than terrible for Classical Music. It gets everything wrong! It took me countless hours to fix all of the cataloging and even still, some titles just arenā€™t in the Plex database. So for those I had to just download the cover art and manually fix things to somewhat match the SACD/CDs. Iā€™ve stuck with Plex because I really wanted all of my media on the same NAS with Plex managing it. I do have over 900 bluray and 4k movies and for that, Plex is simply amazing. Itā€™s crazy how ā€˜Jekyll and Hydeā€™ Plex runs for these two media types.

For music playback, I use Plexamp while away from home. It integrates well with Tidal and sounds good. It also works great loading/playing back my server files. No real complaints thereā€¦ At home, I use Roon 100% of the time. No comparison between the two for playback within the LAN. Plex is buggy for music and I could never get it to find my PS Audio DS DAC. So I believe it can only ā€˜castā€™, which Iā€™ve found is very bad for sound quality anyway.

Iā€™ll make a brief comment otherwise Iā€™d be echoing many of the sentiments made here.

I use Plex and Roon, Lifetime subscriber to both. I love Plex for video, TV recording (DVR) etc. It does an amazing job. The photo gallery support is kind of basic and wonā€™t satisfy all, but for me being able to see all my photos online, from my phone or on my TV is huge. Plus I donā€™t have to look after another server for the purpose.

I still use Plex for music for the remote capability. Mostly playing in the car or on the train. It sources the same NAS as my Roon library and that works well. The servers run on an iMac i9.

Even if Plex did the meta data as well as Roon, its the control anywhere and play anywhere capability of Roon that I love. And the new feature to control the volume via your phone volume is a huge game-changer for me! It should have been like that from the start!

While I would love to only run one server, Roon for Music is an easy choice. But for me to stop using Plex for music as well Iā€™d like to see this:

Roon Labs: make a plexamp-like app seperate from the existing iPhone Roon control app. i.e. it only controls one endpoint: the phone itself. Make the UI simpler but leverage all that great metadata and smarts under the hood. Optimise the UI for simple control, like when youā€™re in. the car. Take a lesson from Plexamp, itā€™s pretty good.

Then we can use Roon in the home and ā€œRoon-ampā€ when away from home!

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I use Plex and Roon (still use jriver for syncing my music playlists to my phone and stream multi channel audio CDs - i.e. SACD multi channel rips) as Roon inexplicably doesnā€™t support streaming outside of the LAN (this is where Plex Amp is used) and doesnā€™t support syncing music to portable devices, or streaming multichannel audio (jriver). Also, jriver doesnā€™t force their users to buy an overpriced Roon player to stream multi channel audio (another reason to use jriver).

My music collection is on a Linux server running RAAT and I have no plans to change that so HDMI connects my music to my Lyngdorf as opposed to Ethernet. I want a music management program to rule them all, but thatā€™s not a reality at the moment so I juggle all
three of these programs.

If Roon offered streaming outside of the LAN, syncing to portable audio devices and streaming multi channel audio, Iā€™d switch to Roon 100% and even consider buying an overpriced Roon server if soā€¦ You listening Roon? :wink:

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Keep your eyes peeled, definitely on the horizonā€¦

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I run Plex (lifetime subscription) and Roon (yearly subscription), and I like them both. I use Plex and Dune for my Movies (Plex as a backup for my Roon and Tidal), and Roon for my music, and Tidal, I do it this way because it never fails when you have company something will happen and one will not work on a particular titleā€¦then I use the backup. I wish that Roon would come out with a Movie portion that gives all the info like they do with music.

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I took a look at Plexamp a couple of weeks ago due to this specific thread and man, I am absolutely blown away. It does everything for mobile that Iā€™ve wanted Roon to do for years.

Not only that, but Plexamp features smart playlists - another feature that I desperately wish Roon would implement. My preference for my daily listening is to mix 25 new songs with 75 older songs that I havenā€™t heard in awhile. This can be done with Roon, manually, but it also needs to be updated manually. Which I do. Daily. With Plexamp and smart playlists I set it up once, and it takes care of the rest (ie no need for daily updating).

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As time moves on and tidal/quboz seem to have got into a fight making streaming like total peanuts, I am struggling to see the point of streaming roon from my house. There is just nothing I am doing outside of my house that requires me to have access to some quirky recording that is not available on either of these platforms. It seems like a dead goose to me.
I suppose if you refuse to use any streaming services it could have value,. But equally there are free tools that have been around for years that will stream from your house to where ever. Dont need roon to do it.

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I have both roon and Plex lifetime licences, both are fantastic and the Antipodes CX server with its 4TB SSD storage (with its AMS3.1 firmware) handles both server softwares beautifully in one single half sized chassis.

I use Plex for movies and roon for music (obvs) - canā€™t fault either TBH.

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Does Plex do multiple endpoints, grouped audio devices or DSP? I searched their site and canā€™t see any of those features listed.

Hello.

Yes thats why i starte this discussion. For me its absolutely the sameā€¦

On the go there is nothing which beats plexamp. Speed appearence, TIDAL Integration, playlists, everything thereā€¦

Would live to See roon developing in this directionā€¦ Would love to have one which rukes them Allā€¦

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No it canā€™t. Your also stuck with airplay or Chromecast or a pc attached to your hifi which not all versions support exclusive mode.

Yes. Trueā€¦ Unfortunately a big drawback of plex when using for music at homeā€¦

Still chromecast with my kef ls50 wireless 2 works with out issues. Sound quality differences are audible but on a Day to Day listening i dont recognize them.