To answer the original question, what’s up next is clearly a lot more - regarding (hardware) compatibility & feature flexibility / tweaking - both as requested by the currently enthusiastic customer-base and necessarily for Roon’s business-model & long-term evolution.
What should be up next is Robustness, Stability, Reliability.
The software is phenomenally complex as it is already and judging by the multitude of problems that people are reporting, I think it’s time to slow the headlong rush and get the bug list down to the lowest possible level before moving on any further.
By no means alone Roland, I expect it would be a significant issue in each ongoing software project: what is the appropriate balance of programming resources between bug-squashing and implementing new features ? The balance will change from time to time and it’s possible to get it wrong in either direction !
The devs are currently working on implementing new features, but bug squashing continues and I expect new builds will continue to be released implementing various bug-fixes as they accumulate. Given the complexity of the computing environment and the huge number of possible software/hardware configurations I expect there will always be some level of bug-squashing required.
Obviously there will be some priority for bugs, anything that crashes the program or prevents use of a substantial feature could be expected to get a high priority. We saw the devs redesign the database for 1.1 in order to ensure stability and reliability where issues had arisen for a relatively limited number of users.
Some bugs are insidious and may not be capable of ready replication (the first step in bug-squashing). They can require an accumulation of data points before the conditions for replication emerge.
The level of hands on support for people who are having reliability issues is the second best I have seen for a software product (exceeded only by Witopia where there is a 24 hour help terminal). Not every reported issue is a bug in Roon and many are resolved without needing a bug fix.
So I don’t agree that bugs need to be reduced to the lowest possible level before moving on but where high priority bugs emerge I suspect that feature implementation is likely to slow as resources are reallocated to fix them in any event.
Edit: Nothing I have said should be viewed as discouraging anyone from reporting any issue or bug. The devs depend upon the community to bring problems to their attention as they arise and to enable them to properly prioritise bugs.
Any news regarding 64 bit version? Without it, Roon is virtually useless. Not only do I get garbled fonts, but I can only play part of my library. This should be high priority.
My Roon is running in a Windows 64 bit system, why are you getting garbled fonts and why is it virtually useless if not 64 bit as mine seems to work fine?
Just interested in why you state this no angst or inflection intended.
I have a very large collection. Roon appears to have a number of song size limit with the 32 bit version. This will not be an issue with the 64 bit version.
We don’t have a firm timeline quite yet, but a lot of the associated work is done. Still a bit more to do, but we’re getting closer and we’ll announce a timeline as soon it’s pinned down.
We have a list of everyone who’s had issues with large libraries and is waiting on 64bit builds @steveoat87 – expect to hear from us directly as soon as we have some more news. Appreciate your patience here!
Really like the product, but its frustrating not to be able to play my whole collection. Garbled fonts continues to be a big problem. Often have to restart the program several times to get a normal looking screen.
@steveoat87
I run a 300k+ track library too. I had garbled fonts on a couple of average machines.
Since running Roon and now Roonserver on an i5 NUC I have not had any issues.
It is a little machine dependent, but, 64bit will help a lot.
Mike, I have an NVidia Maxwell which is a discrete graphics card for the Alienware Alpha. It has 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. Certainly shouldn’t be an issue as this is more RAM than in a NUC.
@ncpl@steveoat87
Hi Nick
Do you have your Library split across several different directories??..I’m pretty sure that you do??
Assuming so Steve, have you tried splitting your Library into several “Watched” folders and see if it makes any difference to memory limitations and garbled fonts??
I also think that trying Roonserver is worth trying…as Roonserver will use both less RAM and less Video Memory…either or both of which could be causing the garbled font issue you’re referring to
I originally had my music split over 3 folders (+ Tidal). However, I continually had the garbled font problem. I then had roon read only one of my folders (I don’t use the other two because of garbled fonts), but still have the problem.
Will roon server still allow my to view roon on my monitor. Or does this work like headless and I need to use Ipad to see my albums?