And then blames it on someone else!
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How do you reckon that , my library is 135k music tracks , (is that small I don’t know) properly tagged I have set up customizable views that give fine grain navigation to anything I want especially Classical
The main GUI is old yes but who listens sat at a computer?
JRemote and several other DLNA Control apps read the JRiver views
I use both JRiver and Roon they are VERY different animals and tough to compare
Obviously you are entitled to your opinion but I do say it differs from my experience. I have been using JRiver for nearly 10 years
I have tried JRiver 3-4 times over the last decade or so, because it is so highly touted. Each time, after a few days, I can’t put up with it any more, and stop using it, eventually uninstalling it. The way MY brain is wired, it is very difficult to use, and to look at. Roon is mostly intuitive for me, and I love the way it’s laid out. It’s like Windows 10 vs Mac OS, I guess. Most Mac users rave about Mac OS, but I have both a MacBook Pro, and a Dell PC, and, again because the way my brain is wired, to me, Windows totally blows away Mac OS, in both ease of use and functionality. Not that I’m any more right, or wrong than anyone else, just different.
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My experience as well. My brain works differently to those of the JRiver designers.
Well I think you have to be a tinkerer to really like JRiver. It is much better after you get under the hood and customize it, and the best interface is not on the desktop but rather the configurable iPad GUIs.
Very likely, I feel the same way about JRiver as I felt about IMatch (a photo library management application) when I tried it back in the day…
IMatch – well, what can I say. I’m sure this is a program that you either love or hate. As you might have gathered, I like software that fits my virtual hand like a well-designed tool. One that feels right, one that does its job without fuss, and without trying to impress me with the number of bells and whistles at its command. As you might also have gathered, I don’t think IMatch meets my criteria. If I right-click on a file, the lights in the house dim while a humungous menu unrolls and displays all the possible actions that I can do. Frankly, I have no idea why I would possibly want to do some of these actions. And wait, there’s more – the menus reveal drop downs that stretch out to the crack of doom. I confess I ran screaming from this piece of software and uninstalled it after one day. I’m sure there are many people who worship this program – I just ain’t got religion.
I used jriver until I realised that, to me, they added a switch or config option for anything that more than one user asked for. It felt like I was piloting a jet that needed a three man crew and a two hour pre-flight check.
I imagine those who are jriver devotees chafe at the lack of controls in roon which is more like a Tesla 3 and vice versa.
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These are fair opinions of JRiver in that it is highly configurable and offers loads and loads of options, sub-menus, etc. Every time I modify my collection I have to re-learn how to configure JRiver and where to find everything.
That said, I feel constrained by Roon in a way that doesn’t apply to JRiver, as above. I prefer every configuration option. Simplicity be damned…i.e. give me a switch for “simple” or “advanced.”
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I only use JRiver for maintenance and setting up views
The iPad and Android app are far more friendly, as I said JRiver and Roon can’t really be compared other than they play music. The UI is so different as to not allow comparison
For Classical box sets JRiver wins hands down because it can be customized, Roon really doesn’t handle box sets well, so much so any big boxes I have taken out of Roon
I see JRiver when I first went digital around 8 years ago , I still use it for my video content
I can’t decide between the 2 so I use both 
It would be really interesting to see Roon’s business plan, assuming they have a formal one. I’d love to understand what their target market really is, as that would help explain their allocation of development resources.
Other then the empirical evidence of their development results, the only data point I have seen is when one of the Roon team replied to my assumption that Roon was trying to attract the users of other music software like JRiver, MediaMonkey, Foobar, saying that was not their target.
Well, it seems like that’s who they got…
I think a lot of the users who post in the forum are the “interested in the tech” users who probably have tried a lot of the available software over the years.
Agreed. But are we Roon’s target market?
Based on the rate at which feature requests are ignored, no 
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Nope. I reckon not.
I dunno.
I look at the name of the company. It ends with “Labs”. That makes Roon an experiment. An ongoing experiment. They’re taking it in the directions they want to explore. It will never be finished in the sense of tying up all the little loose ends – experiments never are.
Thinking of it as a product that you bought is a mistake. Instead, think of it as a ticket to ride along with them on this great experiment.
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That’s a lovely thought. I don’t think we get enough insight or feedback from Roon for that to sway me, however. If this was going to be some startup/product development reality show, there needs to be more show.
Otherwise, it’s continually investing (time curating more than money, frankly) into something, the outcome of which is a little uncertain. That’s one reason I have been musing about Roon’s direction and target market. What really is Roon’s priority? What brass ring are they reaching for?
Historically I think there was a hit on another company name with Roon alone, but I enjoyed your take on it.
Don’t confuse me with facts. 
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I think you will find the clue in the origins of the company. Double ‘o’ anyone? Sooloos, roon. What does it mean? google, South Pacific archipelego, jellyfish, rock, metal, operating system? What does it all mean?
This from the original Sooloos manual.
> What’s the origin of the name Sooloos?
In the early days, when Sooloos was just something for the personal use of the founders, there came a point when they decided that simply calling it ‘The Software’ was no longer good enough.
In the ensuing debates, Danny Dulai, who became the lead developer, insisted that there be
‘double-o’s in the name. Enno Vandermeer, who became CEO, felt he had to have an equally
arbitrary requirement for the name and so insisted that it be a palindrome. After a quick consultation, the internet came back and said that the only word that was a palindrome with ‘double-o’s was ‘Sooloos’.
The Sooloos are the islands of the Sooloo Archipelago, a chain of islands in the South Pacific. And so Sooloos was named.
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OK, so Roon is spooon feeding uoosers muooosic so they can buy an island in the Souooth Pacific.
That certainly explains why they haven’t implemented vertical scrolling, since it would reverse in the southern hemisphere.
I guess they didn’t want to be named “boob” or “noon.”
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