The dilemma(s) of Roon

[Neil_Russell]

or maybe a reiteration.

[SKBubba]

With apologies to Churchill, roon is the worst music player, except all the others. I’ve tried them all, and roon is by far the best, warts and all. But it is definitely a niche market. But so are dacs, streamers and exotic speakers.

[xxx (Banned - toxicity)]

I’ve tried them all

“Americans will always do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.” - Churchill

[Jim_F (Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)]

For me, Roon is perfect as is. It allows me to stream Tidal and Qobuz from my Nucleus to my Oppo 203 and from there to a Bose sound system and Sennheiser headphones. I can also stream to my Raspberry Pi 4 to a Meridian Prime and Sony headphones. Both ways, I can listen to 24/192 and MQA. It works perfectly all the time.

I am 72 years old and a retired drummer (among other things) from way back. Years ago, music was a major part of my life, but I long ago got rid of all my vinyl and CD’s. Roon, Tidal, and Qobuz have allowed me to reawaken my love for music without spending a fortune. I could never get into Apple Music and Spotify.

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

As Roon stands today, if I were a subscriber it’d be highly unlikely I’d renew. Too many loose ends, too much unfinished, too much polish lacking.

So then you’d have two choices: Don’t listen to music via some form of software, or choose another software product. I doubt the former is your choice, so what would you use? What product has such a high level of polish that it makes up for what Roon has with warts? JRiver is pretty mature and has most bugs out, but what a dismal existence…
Your choice would be a bit (well, a LOT) simpler since you don’t care to use streaming, and that would make things easier.
Personally, I’d miss having you around the forum, even when you are being grumpy.

[evand]

Your choice would be a bit (well, a LOT) simpler since you don’t care to use streaming, and that would make things easier.

I don’t stream, so LMS with Squeezelite would be a drop in replacement. The vast majority of my music is tagged in a way LMS would hyperlink so I’d miss out on an incomplete set of biographies and album reviews and if my memory serves some artist pictures. To be honest I don’t recall ever being as frustrated with LMS as I find myself with Roon. LMS has limitations you learn to live with, Roon is littered with incomplete bits and bobs and in its current form reminds me every moment of its wasted potential.

[Yiannis_Kouropalatis (Yiannis K)]

Jim, out of curiosity, do you avoid using Apple Music / Spotify due to sound quality , usability or other reasons?

I find Spotify is great (sound quality and discovery) for when on the move and Apple Music is super comfortable to use in combination with an iOS device. Ergonomics are superior to Roon in my experience and definitely less technical issues to deal with.

No doubt Roon with lossless tracks sounds better but I recently realised that So far I have been on a 2.5 year debugging path with Roon. My dilemma has become… ergonomics and daily peace of mind vs superior sound quality but endless debugging with Roon.

Cheers

[Jim_F (Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)]

I have a free Apple Music account provided by Verizon Wireless. I have a free Spotify account provided by Bose. I use Apple Music in my car (the one that doesn’t have SiriusXM) streaming from my iPhone to a hands free device that transmits to my FM radio. I can also stream Apple Music through my Apple TV 4K to my Bose. However, when at home, I much prefer the SQ of Tidal and Qobuz.

[Jim_F (Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)]

By the way, I use free SongShift on my iPhone to sync my 500+ albums on Tidal and 500+ albums on Qobuz with Apple Music.

[Jazzfan_NJ (Listening to JAZZ since 1972!)]

As Roon stands today, if I were a subscriber it’d be highly unlikely I’d renew. Too many loose ends, too much unfinished, too much polish lacking.

I was going to write something similar to what @SKBubba wrote (see below) but he best me to it.

IMHO, Roon is targeted towards audiophiles, which, in and of itself, is a non-mainstream group. Mainstream, again IMHO, is listening to your phone using cheap earbuds

Exactly!!

With apologies to Churchill, roon is the worst music player, except all the others. I’ve tried them all, and roon is by far the best, warts and all. But it is definitely a niche market. But so are dacs, streamers and exotic speakers.

Again - exactly!

I don’t stream, so LMS with Squeezelite would be a drop in replacement. The vast majority of my music is tagged in a way LMS would hyperlink so I’d miss out on an incomplete set of biographies and album reviews and if my memory serves some artist pictures. To be honest I don’t recall ever being as frustrated with LMS as I find myself with Roon. LMS has limitations you learn to live with, Roon is littered with incomplete bits and bobs and in its current form reminds me every moment of its wasted potential.

I used LMS for over 12 years and the problems never stopped. Adding new music was a royal pain. Streaming at times very hit and miss. And I needed to third party apps (moose and Muso) to be able to have any control over my music library. Oh and did I mention that LMS was slow, oh so slow.

I use Apple Music in my car (the one that doesn’t have SiriusXM)

SiriusXM streams at really low bit rates, as per Wikipedia:

Each two-carrier group broadcast 100 8-kilobit-per-second streams in approximately 4 MHz of radio spectrum. These streams were combined using a patented process to form a variable number of channels using a variety of bitrates. Bandwidth is separated into segments of 4-kilobit-per-second virtual “streams” which are combined to form audio and data “channels” of varying bitrates from 4 to 64 kilobits-per-second.

In other words even a 128bps mp3 stream is higher audio quality.
Works fine for the car but not too useful at home.
On the plus side the SiriusXM “Real Jazz” channel is one of the best jazz stations in the world.

[Jim_F (Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)]

SiriusXM is in my wife’s Honda Odyssey. It’s easy for her to use and works well for us when we travel. It also doesn’t use up my cellular data. The streaming bit rates are fine. If I need more, I throw on my headphones and crank up my iPhone and Dragonfly.

[PatrickS (Patrick)]

for me, tidal and roon has since reawakened a love of music that was fast disappearing down the tubes - hostage to itunes, a stagnant music collection, not convinced by spotify or deezer, a believer in physical media rather than binary flows through anonymous cables. then i discovered tidal, seemed better put together, decent curation, even the promise of mqa. but then came the problem of integrating tidal with itunes rips and getting them to merge into one, cohesive library that i could control from a phone or tablet and play thru the rig. then i stumbled across a roon ad or box out in a magazine. 24 hours later i was a lifetime member, and no regrets. it reintroduced me to tunes long since unheard, with a simplicity and order bordering on the miraculous. it rekindled my adolescent love of hi fi, and even moved me to get the sl1200 out and spin some (very crackly, impossibly warped) vinyl.
Tidal has been replaced by Qobuz, mainly because i can buy the albums i want, instead of borrowing (especially when internet speeds are often sub 2mb/sec)

so roon is a very personal thing for me, does the business (except for classical meta dating, which is borderline disgraceful) and, to repeat, reawakened my passion for music, the stuff i knew like the back of my hand, and others i’d never heard before

how roon mutates going forward is anyone’s guess, but for this user, the current iteration is just fine

if you’ve read this far, thank you, i do ramble on

cheers

[tripleCrotchet (Tony)]

@PatrickS

so roon is a very personal thing for me, does the business (except for classical meta dating, which is borderline disgraceful) and, to repeat, reawakened my passion for music, the stuff i knew like the back of my hand, and others i’d never heard before

No Patrick. you are not rambling. You have caught it spot on. Roon is a life enhancing experience (just needs to be better ).

[evand]

used LMS for over 12 years and the problems never stopped

2000ish till Roon launched. Never had issues with performance or stability - ran it on Linux with plenty RAM and startup script copied the database to a ramdisk before launching LMS. Made light work of “rescanning” to add new tunes. I do recall rescan times were what drove me to ramdisk to begin with.

[DanMtsn (Dan Matiesanu)]

Guys
I just realized how to best describe our relationship with Roon: it’s like when you are married to the most beautiful woman in the world. But she hates you!

[Jim_F (Remember - It's easier to Keep a Customer than to get a New One)]

Worse yet, she can’t cook.

[DanMtsn (Dan Matiesanu)]

If you married your cook then indeed that would suck

[James_I (The truth is out there but not necessarily here)]

More like she keeps rearranging your stuff and you can’t find it

[mikeb]

they keep getting better… the analogies I mean.

[Neil_Russell]

IMHO, JRiver is useless for very large libraries, as their UI loses all usefulness.