The dilemma(s) of Roon

I think you are under estimating how much effort the back end AI bit took up. There is a reason they released 1.7 with a Named new option, Valence. Along with a snazzy new art just for it.

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I asked you to elaborate because, to me, saying that Roon

without saying what they are is totally meaningless and useless!

It’s just curiosity : Roon works fine for me, I’m just curious about what you think Roon does worse than software of two decades ago.

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Not really since that was pretty far from the point of this thread. I don’t want derail it so very quick:

(1) Winamp: skinable and visualizations

(2) Foobar; completely configurable interface layout, boolean tag logic, filters, .ISO support, list goes on

(3) JRiver:similar to Foobar, add video

I’m sure there were others with unique features…it was a long time ago.

This pithily expresses the central point and it is a very interesting one.

I believe that as users we continually underestimate the time and resources required to implement change. There is also an opportunity cost associated with each decision. Doing this first will necessarily delay that.

Development resources have increased with hires, but so has complexity. Cross-platform functionality is the mother of complexity. I believe a significant amount of resources have been spent on tools or improving efficiencies in order to avoid “running while standing still” maintenance problems.

I’m obviously not privy to development discussions, but I understand these are collegiate, with a necessary competition of priorities. I can imagine the devs looking enviously at the more nimble processes open to sole developers.

Development priorities have certainly been different from those I have had in mind. People will have different views about whether MQA was worth the effort.

Personally I would have focussed more on:

  • Profiles and security. Roon will remain “Dad’s thing” until these aspects are improved;

  • Classical. It is still too hard to find a particular Beethoven sonata or to view all Albums featuring Rachmaninov compositions. The industry metadata is pathetic and slow to improve. In my dreams Roon licenses the New Grove;

  • Enabling users to share references to music. The most popular thread on this Forum is “What we are listening to”, but I can’t just click and bring up the albums in Roon. I want tutorials, essays and playlists from my fellow users.

The devs have spent a lot of effort building an AI engine to learn the relationships between music. This is going in a direction I had never envisaged and I am intrigued to see what it opens up.

I think points 1 and 3 above might have gotten more work if a larger partner/owner was on board. Classical, however, is never likely to get any corporate love.

I agree with the proposition quoted above. A bigger corporation would do things differently to what we would prefer. But it is also true to say that independence has enabled the devs to pursue their own vision, which only occasionally intersects with users views. I expect that to continue.

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It would be very easy to pick significant fault with all of those examples too. All of those spent time on my desktop. None of them stayed, Foobar being the longest serving, lasting until I found Roon.

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I still have Foobar and JRiver on my computers; as well as Roon.

Are you typical though? I can’t run anything else because I chose to use ROCK, but even when I was on Windows prior to the release of ROCK, all I had on my NUC desktop was Roon and Tidal.

Does Roon have a typical user?

If the community is a cross section of Roon’s customer base, I’d be hard put to derive a typical user profile.

I think this is one of Roon’s basic problems. There are different user types, each with their own set of preferences. Trying to please them all seems an impossible task and - let’s be blunt - Roon is failing in this area. Loads of basic stuff is left untreated and many new developments aimed at fixing features are not fixing anything, like radio and search.

So, can Roon be cutting edge as long as these niggles aren’t resolved?

What is cutting edge anyway when talking about a music player/library manager?

The original post referred to individual features being better - nowhere does it say those are better programs (albeit Foobar and JRiver are undeniably better at certain things).

[What I don’t understand is the seeming compulsion, among a cross-section of the forum, to leap to Roon’s defense, as though it is being attacked, at any hint Roon may not be perfect.]

The conversation here is about whether A Perfect Roon For Us is possible, because We may not be a big enough market to provide enough subscription revenue to support a perfect Roon alone, and outside funding would set Roon on a course away from us, for the same reason (we are not a big enough market for a company like Amazon or Google to care about).

I remember posting a statement, a few years back, premised on the assumption that Roon was looking to dominate the music library management/playback software market. One of Roon management (don’t recall who) responded stating that was a false assumption. To me that means Roon looks to be more mainstream than “us” [at least how I view myself and those users like me]. Not curators, compulsive playlist editors, not those that have 10 versions of the same album.

Instead, I see Roon integrating Roon-Ready hardware and such, so that people other than those Googling “music curation software” may discover Roon via their hardware purchase from a third party.

I do believe there is a large market of music lovers who do not curate, and Roon could potentially reach those users by being the best network transport/whole house/[someday mobile?] solution for their streaming endpoints - I mean, Sonos is pretty mainstream these days, and Roon would be (is?) the alternative to their relatively closed system (mainstream wouldn’t care about hi res support and such). But to get there, Roon would need to be vastly cheaper than it is now.

I see Roon as presently catering to us curators because we’re a good source of funding; the only ones of any scale who will pay their high fees to continue development, hoping to catch fire with the mainstream to see that hockey-stick growth and reduce their fees to really embed in the mainstream. But where does that leave US? Will that result in the desired Perfect Roon Experience for Curators? Remember, we’re not the mainstream.

Great question. I may be off on this - I assume Roon’s typical user would be a watered-down version of the typical forum poster - someone who values some level of integration and organization (curation?) as between their streaming and stored sources of music.

I’d say I think there is a kind of typical user, but not a set of typical use cases among those users - i.e. vastly different, many home-brewed, methods of exploration, organization, and curation.

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Why am I reading this while listening via JRiver?

Simply because I can find my way around my classical albums much more simply

Don’t say Box Sets …

There are over 100,000 Roon subscribers and about 27,000 Forum users. Whatever the typical user looks like, they have little to do with the Forum.

I suppose it’s a matter of degree as to how you’d apply that assumption. I mean, if you were looking at two groups: (1) Roon Forum users, versus (2) the attendees at a professional hockey game, #1 would much more closely resemble the typical Roon user, whatever that is.

I think he is right. There is a significant but mostly silent majority who are happy with Roon and its direction. They come here for support and maybe to learn but not a great deal else. They certainly don’t get into philosophical discussions about Roon’s direction!

Roon have said a few times that the forum users aren’t typical of the majority.

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I can agree with you that there is a significant silent majority. The rest of your statement is unfounded speculation.

No one knows what the non vocal users think and feel about Roon. After all they’re not telling us.

It’s not because someone keeps renewing their subscription that they are wholly satisfied. I am proof of this.

No one but Roon knows how many lifetime subscribers have abandoned Roon in the mean time.

As to whether the most outspoken change-seeking members of this forum represent a significant part of the user base, that is another question.

One thing is certain, us vocally demanding users give the developers an indication of what doesn’t work as expected. By doing this, the developers get a reality check.

Blinkered defenders on the other hand, contribute nothing of value to Roon’s development. Knee jerk defence of Roon can only serve to lull the developers into a false sense of accomplishment.

Growth without resistance creates abominations, Google and Facebook being prime examples.

Yes, There are only 67 “regular” members of this forum. Ignoring roon staff and moderators 13 made more than 1,000 replies last year.

Well, there is a whole thread dedicated to people discussing using other programs as well as Roon. Hmm, let me check. Yep, starting in '16 and still going…You and Roon: Monogamy or Polygamy?

As for using the programs, I have a ROCK server as well. Doesn’t stop me from using the other programs in addition. My music is both local to the Rock for Roon. And on a NAS, where JRiver installs point. Foobar is used mainly for odds and ends.

To compare Roon to Facebook is more than a little extreme. They never had customers willing to hand over significant sums in order to be on the platform. If your best evidence is that the majority of silent users have some reservations like you, I won’t argue with that because I can’t. But I will say it isn’t any less speculative than what I said. You aren’t any better informed than I am.

I’m not familiar with that thread, I’ll have a read. I still don’t think you are typical though!

[Moderated]. I did not compare Roon to Facebook, I used Facebook as an extreme example of unchecked development, a rhetorical device.

Roon is different in that it isn’t offered for free, has a decent privacy policy and doesn’t use user data to generate income AFAIK but it shouldn’t be necessary for me to spell this out.