Superficial Roon Updates?

[Paula_Dickerson]

I remember looking for new updates with excitement, but now the updates are considered “maintenance”.

Still no ability to access Roon remotely.
Alexia integration? Roon says never going to happen.

[John_Aiello (Lifetime Subscription since 2016)]

To each their own. I have no desire for Roon to be accessible outside the home. I never want Alexa integration. I never use it. I for one am happy that Roon has matured into a product that only needs maintenance releases. So while these things appear to make you unhappy, they make me a very satisfied lifetime subscriber.

[Michael_Mowery]

@Paula_Dickerson. For critical listening I just want Roon to do its job which it does well. For daily listening throughout the home you are able to add Alexa capabilities to your system. Just get the echo link along with an echo dot and you are good to go. The caveat is the link only outputs 24/48 but it still sound great for general listening and the novelty of voice control. For mobile I use the Tidal app with an audioquest Dragonfly. I also downloaded the Alexa app to allow voice control in the car.

[rrwwss52 (Robert)]

Roon mobile seemed to be the horizon when I joined in 2016. Not much talk of it recently. That would be a huge asset to bring on new members and useful to current subscribers.

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

They aren’t ‘superficial’ if the maintenance update fixes a particular (bad) problem with your computer.

[Tim_Rhodes]

I do have some sympathy with the OP on this topic. I wouldnt say I was clamouring for lots of new features, like mobile and so on, because I dont feel a need for that.

But there are a few outstanding annoyances for me; like scrolling lists that dont remember the position you were at when you go back to them, and playlist handling that is very much second-rate compared to album browsing etc.

But instead we get auto-sleep, which I’m sure is great but wasnt top of my list of issues, and doesnt apply to any of my end points anyway,

[ged_hickman1]

With Roon mobile I think that originally back in 2015 plans would have been for offline roon somewhat like tidal/Spotify in downloading some of your library to a local device and keeping a roon like interface.
In other threads roon have talked about putting your library in the cloud so my thought is that the mobile roon would look at a cloud library and possibly your linked cloud tracks and play in an online mobile way. Plus the offline bit.
So I could see that they got somewhere along the line and then had to go into hold until all the infrastructure bits are done.
Pure speculation obviously.

[Krutsch (Recovering Audiophile & Snake-oil Addict)]

Hmmm… well, I for one am glad the product has settled down. The user experience isn’t perfect, but it’s way better than anything else on the market.

I want to focus on listening to music, not “working on” my music (as my wife used to say). Here is what that means:

1. I can finally use the same library everywhere: my head-fi rig, my 2-channel speaker rig, and my house-wide Sonos setup (which is there for my wife and daughter and background listening). And it all just works across a variety of gear, all running from my base model Mac Mini.

I would be embarrassed to describe the amount of time I’ve spent curating my FLAC collection for my Bryston, mostly due to compatibility issues with MPD and the Bryston software. Same for Bluesound, which is picky about album art.

2. I can finally stop buying/downloading music, which is saving me a lot of money and time (see below).

3. I can finally stop wasting my time tagging (and re-tagging) audio files. With classical box sets, this was an agonizing process (work & movement tags, et al.) and it was discouraging me from buying new music. Now, I just hunt & peck through Qobuz or TIDAL, and one-click-add to my collection. Done.

As for mobile: for me, that means in my car. Spotify is all I will ever need for that purpose. The auto-generated playlists are incredible (Spotify’s Daily Mix playlist seems to have correctly discovered my likes, across 4 or 5 different styles and they are updated from time-to-time). Voice recognition with Android Auto makes it possible for me to quickly bring up anything that comes to mind, all while keeping my eyes on the road. The sound quality is all I need for playback in a moving car.

[dhusky]

@Krutsch

, I for one am glad the product has settled down. The user experience isn’t perfect, but it’s way better than anything else on the market.

I agree with this and am generally very happy with my Roon experience.

@Krutsch

I can finally stop buying/downloading music, which is saving me a lot of money and tim

Then you’re very fortunate - some of us have to manage our frustration with albums disappearing at will with no notification or reporting via the Roon UI - that uncertainty has seen me buying more albums of late rather than less. On the plus side, that’s good for the artists in these uncertain times.

@Krutsch

As for mobile: for me, that means in my car. Spotify is all I will ever need for that purpose.

I can see that solution might work well, but I listen for probably 4x longer in my car than on my main rig and I’d really like a consistent UI across both, as well as feeling that the Roon AI engine is learning from the majority of my choices. It’s also one of the few roadmap commitments that Roon has made publicly in the past and I’m keen to see them stick to it.

[CrystalGipsy (Resisting the flow!)]

I just want proper bit perfect Android playback, not much to ask.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

Mostly agree -

Does the new Roon update work?

Wait, what? There was an update? You mean making some sort of change so that some connected devices could go into standby? Really, how big a population could that be? With all the outstanding problems Roon has, including this new set of problems seemingly caused by the latest update, I hope this somewhat limited appealing power save enhancement didn’t take longer than a man-day to design and code.

@xxx

Lately , the needed reboots that many people are experiencing, the rash of ‘No Audio Devices Found’, the ongoing complaints about the ineffectiveness of Search, the pain of trying to deal with Box Sets (classical or otherwise), the general fragility of the Roon database and now an update that impacts connection to the Core are things that can no longer be ignored.

What’s worse is the team can’t seem to code a release, no matter how insignificant, without creating new and numerous problems.

My disenchantment with Roon began when I found out that Roon’s backup logic will actually backup a corrupted database, thereby eventually migrating away any good backup.

However, that’s a topic for a Feature Request, if a request to make Roon more robust can be considered a feature request.

[Swisstrips]

Maybe I’m stating the obvious but one observation I see common throughout many threads that have to do with functionality problems, regressions, bugs, or operating normally but a third party issue etc… are people that stream and those who do not (e.g. local library)?

Adding in hooks for other platforms will undoubtedly create a more complex environment. I don’t know the correlation/metrics to problems, unhappiness etc…with those who stream vs non streamers, but would have to think it’s a high number? Again just an observation

[Speed_Racer (Threatened Dinosaur)]

I hear what the OP is saying. When I saw the release notes for the latest release I had to laugh. The last time Roon added a feature that improved my user experience was quite a while ago…

[Krutsch (Recovering Audiophile & Snake-oil Addict)]

@dhusky

I listen for probably 4x longer in my car than on my main rig and I’d really like a consistent UI across both,

Unless you are chauffeured about, and can stare at your phone while driving, why would you want that?

Voice command with CarPlay or Android Auto is far superior for navigating into music. I can see wanting your collection organized the way you like it… but then, again, wouldn’t it be easier to just “say” what you want in your car?

[Ken_Lesniak]

Or creates new ones.

[nugget (David McNett)]

@Krutsch

Voice command with CarPlay or Android Auto is far superior for navigating into music. I can see wanting your collection organized the way you like it… but then, again, wouldn’t it be easier to just “say” what you want in your car?

I would guess that for many of us, listening is not an interactive activity like you are envisioning. The vast majority of my listening is either listening to a full album, or shuffle play based on tags or playlists. I don’t really have to interact with Roon much at all when I’m doing either of those things.

[dhusky]

@Krutsch

Voice command with CarPlay or Android Auto is far superior for navigating into music. I can see wanting your collection organized the way you like it… but then, again, wouldn’t it be easier to just “say” what you want in your car?

I like the idea of some voice control if it worked with Tidal/CarPlay (not sure it does?) but I still miss out on all the Roon smarts (e.g. Roon Radio), as well as the familiar UI. The latter is important as I’m not great at remembering album details (for voice control) but do recognise and know how to find it within a familiar UI. As @nugget says, this doesn’t require any interaction after you’ve pressed play.

[Krutsch (Recovering Audiophile & Snake-oil Addict)]

@nugget

I would guess that for many of us, listening is not an interactive activity like you are envisioning.

I am describing a use case of listening to music while in the car. In that case, I literally say: “Play the playlist Frank Sinatra Mixer” (or whatever) and it just starts playing on Spotify. Or: “Play the new album from Fiona Apple” and “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” starts playing on Spotify.

That is as interactive as my car listening gets and it’s just like how I listen to music in my listening room, except replacing the voice commands with tapping in the Roon interface.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

@Krutsch

Play the new album from Fiona Apple” and “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”

Thanks for reminding me. I forgot I put that in my library.

The new incarnation of Fiona reminds me of a cross between Rickie Lee Jones and mid-career Marianne Faithful.

[nugget (David McNett)]

@Krutsch

I am describing a use case of listening to music while in the car. In that case, I literally say: “Play the playlist Frank Sinatra Mixer” (or whatever) and it just starts playing on Spotify.

Sure, I think I got that point. That doesn’t really sound like something I’d need a chauffeur to be able to replicate without using voice input, though. My car listening is about the same, although usually it just picks up whatever playlist was playing when I got out of the car the last time I drove. I think my car supports voice control, but I honestly don’t know. I’ve never been bothered enough to try.