Hello Roon community, I’m wondering if you might help me realize what I’m missing here. I have heard no end to the rave reviews for Roon, from reviewers and influencers alike, but never really saw a reason to have Roon as a sort of middle man between my streaming service and my systems. I finally decided it was time to take the plunge to find out what all the fuss is about and bought a year of Roon.
I initially setup a NAS at home and dropped my high-res music library onto it, installed the Roon server and set off to get a feel for it. When I realized that most of my digital music listening happens in my office at work, I decided to move the NAS there. (Mostly TV, Movies and Records listening at home) Surprise surprise, the network security at my office doesn’t allow Roon to function.
That said, I have an Eversolo DMP-A6 Gen 2 at home that has all of my music on a 4TB drive installed in the bottom and can access that without needing Roon. At work I have a WiiM Ultra with all my music on an external SSD drive, connected to a USB port on the back and can access all of my music without the need for Roon.
The vast majority of my digital listening these days is via Qobuz and I certainly don’t nee Roon to enjoy that. It’s a marvelous ecosystem on it’s own.
What am I missing here? What do you all use Roon for that actually adds value for you in your listening? How does it make sense to pay for yet another service, (not an insignificant price) that to my admittedly limited understanding, only seems to add; room EQ, music/artist discovery, one app to find all available music, and a few other features that are all largely available with the devices/apps I’m already using? What is the draw to Roon that fostered such ardent followers?
Apologies if this subject is already addressed in another thread. I would imagine I’m not the only person to ask these questions. Genuinely looking forward to your responses, and hopefully learning a thing or two.
Roon allows one to integrate your streaming service albums/tracks (Qobuz) with your local music albums/tracks and see, browse, search, and play from this integrated library.
Roon allows for you to perfectly synch playback to two or more different player/endpoints (e.g., music playing in living room and kitchen at same time). Or Roon allows you to play DIFFERENT things to different endpoints using the same library of music.
For me, it’s the user interface, the library management, the ability to have multiple end points, the DSP options it provides…to name but a few. Surprised you bought a year of it to begin with. I just tried the free trial, then a few months on a monthly plan before I decided to buy a one year subscription. If it doesn’t work out for you, you’ll have spent a chunk of cash for no real reason.
crosslinked credits, ability to edit credits that are missing or wrong.
ability to change genres of albums and genre hierarchy.
tagging of artists/albums/tracks/etc with custom tags
finer-grained personal album ratings than just a binary favorite yes/no that is too dumb to reflect reality
an understanding that Original Release Date and Release Date of a version are not the same thing and sorting by date should not necessarily use the Release Date of a reissue but the Original Release Date.
an understanding of the difference between compositions and recordings; ability to list all known recordings of a composition. (And ability to merge compositions if they are not automatically resolved)
integration of streaming and local files
built-in DSP options
multi-room sync; many supported endpoints
automatic metadata isn’t flawless or complete by any means but it is sufficient often enough to allow me the time to manually fix those few I really care a lot about.
Wow! I wasn’t aware anything could do that. This is something that constantly drives me crazy.
When I heard about Sly Stone passing, I wanted to remember and listen for a while, so I pulled up Sly & The Family Stone and just started playing through the top results in Apple Music. (I have about six Home Pods spread throughout my 960 sqft one bed apartment, so background listening is run with Apple Music for the sake of multi-room sync) A ton of the S&TFS’s stuff has been remastered, so a song that I know was from the 60s, shows as being released in 2021. !FACEPALM!
This is a, Roon feature that I was not aware of and is definitely a big plus for me. Thanks for the tip!
For me, I have a variety of endpoints (Naim, Wiim, Innuos, Chromecast) and Roon lets me have a single goto interface to send music to them. The music can be my own digital files (on a NAS) or streamed music (predominantly Qobuz). More than that though, if I play, for example the album “The Bones of a Long Dead World” by If These Trees Could Talk, when that album finishes, Roon serves up similar music by similar artists. Whilst I know there are other apps that do this, I’ve not found one that is as accurate as Roon in determining my listening preferences.
My only caveat about Roon is that it has cost me a fortune in new vinyl because it keeps finding new bands for me that are exactly the kind of thing I want.
Add to that that, for me, it just works and, here at least, it’s worth every penny
It was basically the sum of such annoyances that made me switch to Roon. Even more than the dates it was probably the favorite system. In streaming services, I am supposed to favorite every album I want to recall. But if I do that, I don’t find my real favorites anymore among all this stuff. It’s a completely inadequate approach.
I am running my Roon server at home on a small NUC with Roon ROCK. It serves 3 streamers (Cambridge CXN V2, Bluesound Node X and a WiiM Ultra) and when I am driving my forklift at work I am listening to my music on my iPhone through the Roon ARC app. The streamers are all accessible through Roon in a single interface. So no need to use 3 separate apps to get each of them working.
For me the greatest advantages of Roon are the integration of my extensive local library of music with Qobuz. Roon treats it as one big collection. It allows me to play different music at the same time using different endpoints. Or team them up so they’ll play the same music.
After 2 annual subscriptions I’ve decided to go for a lifetime commitment. I’ve never regretted that decision
For me, is a huge reason why I love Roon. Around 50-75% of my listening is to music that is new-to-me. Roon Radio, Daily Mixes, New Releases For You, and all of the recommendations and cross-linking from Valence are so helpful.
Music discovery. I use Roon in conjunction with a fairly modest personal library and Tidal. I get a lot of suggestions via Roon for new artists and music in genres I like. (wide range of taste) In the time I have had a subscription I have discovered a substantial library of music I would never have discovered otherwise, few of my friends have recommendations for music I like, and FM radio is now pretty hopeless.
Meta Data aggregation.
Music Discovery, is the best in the business.
Integrated DSP.
IIR and FIR Filters.
Headphone Filters.
Aggregation of local and streaming content.
Now Playing Visual Display Chromecast
Music Tagging
For me, one of the great features of Roon is listening to a track on Radio Paradise that I like and then clicking on the artists/album metadata link to be taken to that song on Qobuz where I can then add it to my collection for later listening and/or disappear down a rabbit hole reading more . about that artists and others who they have worked with. The metadata link doesn’t work all of the time but it’s a great way to discover new music.
Other features I utilise extensively are streaming to multiple different endpoints and Opra headphone EQ which I use most of the time with my Meze Empyrean headphones.
I also appreciate like how it seamlessly integrates my (700GB) music collection with Qobuz.
I can also see how there are a number of use cases in which Roon doesn’t add sufficient value to justify the expense on top of streaming platforms and / or local playback systems.
is a huge reason why I love Roon. Around 50-75% of my listening is to music that is new-to-me. Roon Radio, Daily Mixes, New Releases For You, and all of the recommendations and cross-linking from