Thankful for Roon!

Forums like this are most commonly used to vent frustration, for whatever reasons, but I’d like to take a moment and thank the Roon team for, well, ROON!

I’ve been a Roon subscriber for a year-ish; migrated off an old Squeezebox hosted on my gaming PC. As the Squeezbox became harder to use, discovering Roon was a godsend.
My needs are meager compared to many, but Roon WORKS for me.

I don’t have a gigantic library, or a particularly complex music ecosystem. Roon runs on my Win10 PC, streams to various nodes in my home, and just works.
I love listening to music. Less so futzing with metadata. Roon makes it easy to find and connect to my music, then get it playing; the MUSIC makes me happy. For me, I want software that lets me get the music I want playing, then gets out of the way. The fact that I can use Roon to broker my Qobuz and local collections together is wonderful.

I’m a retiree from large-scale tech, and understand the complexity of software like Roon. Frankly, I’m pretty impressed it all works as well as it does.

So, why am I writing here? Few satisfied customers would bother to write, let alone even visit here. I get the weekly forum summary, see some of the discussions, and I want Roon and the community to know that Roon does work for some of us, that it’s appreciated.

My personal concern is fringe bloat; software “features” that are intended to satisfy a few, vocal power-users, but contribute to complexity, database and network traffic, and that most users will never need.

To be clear, I love useful new features and capabilities within a given application, but developers have to avoid the trap of diverting resources to satisfy a vocal few while missing the opportunity to fix bugs or develop features useful to the larger, often less vocal, customer base.

To Roon, I simply say “thank you”. You make it easy for me to enjoy the music I love.

To fellow readers (and this is rare for me, as I don’t tend to linger in forums) consider:

  • If you don’t like Roon, work with support on your issues, or unsubscribe. No one is twisting your arm.
  • If you have suggestions for new features, do let Roon know, and these forums are a means to gain broad support if your idea is well articulated and of use to a broad audience. But understand that while talk is cheap, good developers are not and your idea may be dismissed, shelved, or take time to code. Try to be OK with that.

Lastly, a plea for patience - Roon and in general.
While we’re all anxious to exit the pandemic toward normalcy, many businesses are seriously struggling to find staff. I see rants on reviews for restaurants citing slow service, when the one server trying their best to serve a space usually staffed by three is slammed. Patience and a warm smile, even a review citing how hard that person was working in the face of a challenging situation, go a long way toward us all getting along a little better.

Wishing you all a musical day.

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Great points Glen. However, we should tolerate a degree of venting as Roon relies on this forum for feedback and continuous improvement.
Some of the contributors have immense knowledge experience and wisdom and Roon would be a worse product without them.
But yeah, I’m thankful for Roon too!

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I’m also pleased with ROON… AND my setup is way lower than the recommended specifications!

I did have issues when I installed ROON for the first time, revealing network issues but since my experience is somewhat positive.

Congrats to the team.

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I, too, am thankful for Roon. I suspect most music lovers are.

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Great post and I entirely agree on all counts. Love Roon! And I have learned to be more patient with so many things these days too.

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We should be grateful and helpful on the days when everything works really well for us. Only shared and nurtured love can withstand crises.

Each of us can also run into problems that cannot be solved in a day, not in a week, but in cooperation with experiential knowledge of the community and program code of the team much later.

I’m always happy when a new face shows up in support and asks customers how he can help. It usually starts with guidance on what to share yourself to make help possible.

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Well said Musical Glen!

I do have a question, what is ROON written in? Java, C++, …? And is one code base used for all the supported platforms?

ROON has been around awhile and bugs have been addressed for sure, but what I have seen in the last year+ since been using it I have come to expect like Apple products “it just works!”

THANK YOU !!

Indeed it is very easy to miss the wood for the trees.

I don’t know what I’d do without Roon. I’d really miss it if it were to disappear.

It’s my most used software / program / app by a HUGE margin.

.sjb

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This was a long time ago so undoubtedly moved on but

As a current trial and first time user I feel the same. Its a really special piece of software which has impressed me very much.

For example. When a song is playing and you click on that album image then you get access to the Album art, lyrics, Artist bio, Artist pictures, track credits.

I thought wow, since I have Roon open 90% of the time I’d love to have Artist Bio showing all the time so I have a constantly updating Music Wikipedia where I can glance over when I feel like it. And you can even prioritise what you want to see first, so if the Bio is unavailable show me the Album art etc.

There is a lot of thinking and love baked into it which really does come across.

Now I need to find a way to get the money together to buy it outright since this ticks almost all of my boxes and I can see having a long relationship with it :slight_smile:

I’m really impressed and thankful for Roon.

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I was introduced to Roon almost 3 years ago with a free trial offer I found in the information for my OPPO 205 SACD player.

Tried it and found it to be just what I needed to manage my small CD collection and rekindle my interest in music with the Hi-Res offerings so easily accessible. Thought it was fantastic then and that hasn’t changed.

Of course one thing led to another with a lifetime subscription, NUC/ROCK dedicated server, Roon Ready speaker systems for whole house music, 8 channel DAC for multi-channel music and updated speakers for the surround system, and now remodeling my living room with soundproofing and new wiring so we can enjoy it in a quite space.

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Once on board…

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LMS, Squeezebox is no longer supported, and hasn’t being supported for a long time! It was introduced in 2001, when streaming was really still in diapers! Squeezebox was discontinued over 10 years ago.

Roon started off life at Meridian in 2005 and was spun off as an independent company in 2015. LMS is free software, and does receive 3rd party updates. Roon we pay for, and it is worth every penny, I have a lifetime subscription, and constantly get upgrades. I think I paid $400 quite a few years ago. My sources today are a Roon Endpoint and a Pink Triangle turntable.

The addition of DSD support on Roon along with my DSD DAC has made my journey a lot more enjoyable!

https://veddan.com/blog/what-is-roon/

I definitely wish Roon’s dev team would just spend a few months making everything work perfectly instead of adding new features.

But there’s no piece of gear I could have bought at any price that would have improved my day to day listening anywhere near as much as the $700 I spent on a Roon lifetime sub.

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Well said!

I also really enjoy Roon and understand the hard work from the creators. I like that they are releasing more updates. This means that they are working hard to have a better product!

So, good job roon team!

Keep going!

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I was introduced to Roon from a friend 3 1/2 years ago. Downloaded the trial and fell in love with the product. Bought the lifetime sub 30 days later for $499. I viewed it as an investment, and its really paid off. I have played and used it pretty much everyday since.
I have learned so much about the product and have grown musically along with its improvements and enhancements. When I play other music products, they just don’t sound as good. Period.
I also appreciate how much better the search engine has become. It was pretty bad in the beginning.

Thanks much Roon.

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I know my use case of Roon is extremely simple compared to many here which is partly the reason I usually have zero issues.

I have no interest in playlists at all, I listen to full albums start to finish in the order they were made in.
However the Roon generated daily mixes based on my listening habits do work for me and I have saved a few.
These act more like a voyage of discovery with always a few new to me artists so it’s my simplified Roon Radio if you like.

I also don’t use search much, I usually know what I want to listen to.
See point above…lol.

One of the main attractions of Roon for myself and will likely keep me with Roon is the ability to switch zones instantly to carry on playing no matter which area of the house I move to.
So for example this morning, I started off in the dining room, then needed to work on the PC, before I was halfway up the stairs it was playing on the PC room rig.
Then out to the garage and before I was across the drive it was playing out of the garage stereo.
Life is good.
Roon is here to stay for me.

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Can I also add - always read the Roon core and remote specification recommendations before complaining that Roon doesn’t work for you. I follow the community as well as facebook Roon groups and offer my help were possible. My observation is a significant proportion of issues are caused users attempting to install Roon on an unsupported platform and users pushing the boundaries while not having the technical skills to undertake what they are attempting. Keep it vanilla (e.g. Nucleus or Rock/NUC), avoid older PC’s especially windows laptops and you are far more likely to have a great Roon experience like most of have.

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Yeah - Roon is good! It really is quite a marvellous digital magazine. It reminds me of having those ‘have you heard this’ conversations. I still have those and they are now definitely enhanced by the Roon experience. I now preface these discussions with ‘I heard this is on Roon and you really might want to give this a listen’

My advice to any folk who are actively considering Roon is to ensure your network is robust and if you need to go beyond Ethernet do not expect too much of Wi-Fi.

Finally Roon Team keep those regular engineering updates coming. It’s gratifying to know that quality before quantity matters to you guys. Product Evolution makes for a sustainable consistent customer experience.

I want offline listening and podcast integration but not before it’s ready.

Interesting. I too found out about Roon from my OPPO 205. I remember wondering what “Roon Ready” meant and I looked it up. It sounded vaguely interesting, but I quickly forgot about it and I was using Plex. Once again, I ran across the “Roon Ready” notation, and then I seriously looked at Roon. I decided I’d try the trial offer, as I found Plex cumbersome, unwieldy, and unrewarding. Even “simple” searches seemed tedious. Once I gave Roon a trail run for a few days, I was sold and purchased a lifetime subscription. I have absolutely NO regrets.

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