My renewal is up again on 23rd of December, but this time around, I cancelled my renewal ahead of time.
What finally tipped the scale for me, is the one missing basic functionality, that is standard for all other remotely comparable and widely available software:
And this is graceful, artifact-free handling of track skipping, rewinding, fast forwarding, or DSP volume changes, by using a technique called zero-crossing-detection.
Instead, sudden jumps from one sample to the next result in more or less loud popping noises, especially when using a DAC output directly into an amp.
Roon staff acknowledged this issue years ago, but cautioned this would need an RAAT recode.
Implementing that necessitates firmware updates to all Roon ready devices, likely taking years for implementation and testing, not to speak of major support issues.
And that’s the reason why I think this’ll never change.
This is, where I’m at now:
I absolutely need rock solid synchronized multi room playback and extensively use REWs inversion method convolution with my main system.
Wanting free and open source software, as well as a reduction in carbon footprint by implementing all that on an RPi 5, I finally settled on Lyrion Music Server with CamillaDSP for my local and Qobuz media.
Lots of late night coffee ‘n curses finally resulted in a perfectly working, rock solid solution.
For me at least, the loss of Roon’s many nice-to-have features is more than compensated for by having fixed a nagging deficiency that muddied almost every listening session in the past five years.
I really enjoyed the ride, but the horse has run its course.
Fare well, dear fellow Roonies, and pursue whatever makes you happy!
Enjoy the greener grass, I guess.
. Every DAC since have been fine with all software options, connections etc.
, and I think many will miss your candour.