I have been avidly reading the 1000+ message thread re 1.8 on the forum.
This is a summary of the issues from that thread:
Playlist/tag info for a track is not appearing on the album track listing
Tags: Removing the tick box list when tagging has made it very difficult to remove tags and slightly more difficult to add multiple tags
Focus: changing the function from OR to AND has meant many people’s bookmarks do not work. Though other people think AND is a better idea. (Someone has posted a hack using NOT to get around the change from OR to AND)
Classical track list: embedded tracks within tracks in the metadata (eg Movements) have disappeared making some classical track lists impossible to follow
Star ratings have disappeared from album listings
Too much wasted white space on 16:9 and wider desktops, especially as horizontal scrolling has now gone. Some requests for horizontal scrolling to come back. Far fewer albums appear on a desktop page than previously.
Waveform bar is too narrow. Plenty of room to expand it back to full width.
Tags: colour of roon-generated tag not distinct enough from user-generated tags
Box set navigation: the vertical sub-menu of CDs on box sets is apparently not so easy.
Font sizes too small (some of us are older folk with poorer eyesight)
Shuffle now only works on first 5000 tracks
The “Suggested Albums” which featured when playing an album (used to be on the right) has disappeared. Many (myself included) loved this and used this for music discovery.
Other than ios bugs (crashing apps) what have I missed?
I haven’t read all the 1000+ comments, but your list looks like a pretty good summary. All I would add, and this might already be implied in 6, is that far fewer artists appear on the artist page (I won’t mention the Audirvana like roundness ).
IOS app crashes when You select TRACKS in your library. App then can’t startup again. You have to delete and reinstall to get Roon remote running again.
App also crashes when hitting SETTINGS. But after this crash you can restart the app, without deleting and reinstalling.
Really serious bucks . Surprised that it ain’t mentioned.
Thanks for the summary. I think you’ve hit a lot of the major points.
For your #12 it’s now listed below the album under “Recommended Albums” “For You” compared to “Recommended For You” which was easy to see on the right.
Both 1.7 and 1.8 are limited to showing 10 albums. Thankfully I have 1.7 running on my work Macbook it’s easy to see what’s changed/different/broken.
IOS app crashes when You select TRACKS in your library. App then can’t startup again. You have to delete and reinstall to get Roon remote running again.
App also crashes when hitting SETTINGS. But after this crash you can restart the app, without deleting and reinstalling.
Really serious bucks . Surprised that it ain’t mentioned.
Settings on windows 10 app, can only become visible, if you change to English.I normally use Danish.
Forwarding the bugs I’ve noticed from another thread-
“Play Now” for albums (haven’t tested artist) simply doesn’t work. Clicking on the first track (or any other track in the album) resolves this and starts playback.
Clicking play on a paused track doesn’t work, but the spacebar shortcut for the same function does work.
Memory usage has almost doubled for me from ~20GB to ~35GB.
It is very difficult to scroll through all artists in my library with 1.8, indeed. There seems to be no option to allow for more images (artists, albums, etc.) to be displayed on a single screen anymore either. Also, the use of circles is controversial and somewhat disliked by quite a few.
Some more comments on the original post…
The workaround with negative focus criteria to get “OR” is not practical when you have to apply many negative conditions, as the whole screen (on my 10 inch tablet anyway) gets covered by the conditions… so you basically do not see anything else on the screen. (And Roon does not let me hide them.)
The text size and selected fonts are indeed controversial but it is possible to mitigate by adjusting display and text size of your device.
Bring back the ratings at least like it was with 1.7, please!
Bring back the “Recommended for you!”
The dark theme is somewhat uninvolving and its text difficult to read compared to 1.7, especially on “busier screens”. The white theme is better but too bright which is also not ideal. Both themes should allow for some custom selection of contrasting colours, rather than forcing the blue/purple/red on us.
Regardless of the above, I am enjoying the advertised improvements in Valence and related connections/exploration features a lot. Just please Roon do not dismiss the issues outlined in the original post, as they are valid topics for deeper investigations!
Apparently there are multiple hardware or setup specific issues as well. Some say the UI is snappy, on my 5950x + RTX3080 it looks like if it was running on an XT, has multiple video and configuration issues as well.
Some people (like me) have a problem with the changed tag filter which now is not able to combine tags (filter for two tags in a single search - a logical “OR”), also the vertical scrolling and the small number of albums per screen (also using unnecessary space previously shown on the graphics and not under it) makes previously managable libraries, filters, playlists just minutes of scrolling instead of a few pages of structured screens. The large amount of constantly moving data just causes headaches cannot concentrate on the real reason: finding an album to play in a set of filtered albums.
Just wanted to say “thank you” to @Duckworp (the original poster) for this list. It’s a great summary, and saved me the time of reading the 1000+ message thread before deciding whether to upgrade to 1.8 or wait for 1.8.1.
Plus, it’s well written and clear. Probably helpful for the Roon team too.
One more issue: Increased difference in height of artist images displayed in artist screen compared to Now playing screen. Many more artist heads get cut off with 1.8!
Hi there - I’ve not had any stability issues with the Roon 1.8 apps on my iPad Pro and iPhone, and even on my MBP.
However, I’ve had a few examples of albums not playing (message “tracks not available on Qobuz”), which is odd, as if I open the Qobuz app those very same albums are there and I can play them.
How can this be?
One example is the below
Cannonball Adderly - Something Else (24/192)
Very much on Qobuz, plays in the Qobuz app, not within Roon.
Language other than English as primary on device causes crashes in iOS devices when accessing “settings”
Language other than English as primary ALSO causes not being able to access settings in Mac OS X devices
Repeated crashes of Roon Core on Mac Mini (every +/- hour or so). Requires restarting of app, which in my case with +/-150k songs takes a looooot of time
A reasonable summary, my comments on some of your points
Point 4. the individual movements are listed for each work - they have not disappeared, they are no longer indented. They were not always separately listed in Roon 1.7.
Point 5. I am happy for star ratings to go
Point 6. look and feel is a matter of taste - I am happy with the new look and feel
Point 9. It could be that with new, much improved search facilities, our former need to scroll through a whole box set to locate an individual work is.no longer needed
Point 10. I have read some of the comments on font size - I am not sure that they are necessarily from older people with poor eyesight. My eyesight is not great but the text is large enough and overall is much easier on the eye.
Point 12. These are now down the bottom
I cannot understand the absolute hostility of some commenters. Yes - some of the ways I used to use Roon are no longer there or are not as easy but on the other hand there have been massive improvements which might mean that my overall experience is much enhanced as these new ways are in fact better than my old habits. We need to give it a few days, and go along for the ride, before we pass final judgment. (Perhaps a good analogy might be going from a manual car to an automatic - I am sure some of us reached for that gear stick, to be slightly bothered that it had gone. Of course there are still some people who will insist that manual transmission is the only way)
I have to say many of the issues that seem to have caused great angst for some commenters appear to be very much of the “first world” variety!
So I fixed the above problem - deleted the album from my library, added it back, and suddenly Roon can play it.
I’ll try this with any other Qobuz albums that Roon says are unavailable (but obviously are), and report back if this (deleting / re-adding) does continue to fix the problem.
).
ratings at least like it was with 1.7, please!
