Brother, I say this with respect and no snark, but a $15k system is nothing (vis a vis expense) in this particular forum.
BTW - That is also a ballpark figure for my current system. Although, I’m always chasing the dragon.
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As I have posted a couple of times before, I am a recent convert - I like Roon. However - the one thing I like the least is yes, Library Management.
First, let me qualify, this is my opinion. If you love Roon’s library management, well, YOU DO YOU! 
It’s all good. But my opinion is this: How do I feel about it? I have the same contempt for it that I have for people that believe they know a lot about music, but they really don’t.
Specially for Classical - Hardcore fan here - listening to it all my life - father listened to nothing but Classical and I hold it in the same regard - everything else I listen to, I feel like I am slumming it.
With the knowledge I have accumulated, I know the albums, the performers, the composers, etc; which one is a classic, which one is a reference, which ones are just entries in the catalogue. And I learned it and keep learning from SPECIALIZED publications and sites.
Not from freaking Allmusic…Seriously.
And for us longtime music lovers, the ALBUM is the king. There are methods for filing them, according to main work, etc. Just like Tower Records Classical Annex and libraries used to do.
It feels like Roon’s approach to it is the one of a millennial that recently discovered Classical Music and instead of learning about it by going to specialized sources, is instead treating it is just the same as everything else - just a thumbnail in Spotify. And not only that, believes whatever his/her intuition is telling about it, is actual knowledge.
I don’t wan’t reviews, opinions, in my Library. I really don’t care. I know sh**t - I don’t need them.
It would be a VERY different thing if all of the sudden record companies or someone else would start offering full electronic booklets with the files. If there was a metadata service that provided that for every album - well that’s different. I know some do - What does Roon do with them?
It opens an external application instead of integrating it in its display. UGH - Missed opportunity.
THAT I would like Roon doing. Put the booklet together and display along the tracks, given the user an album-like experience. If you can’t give us this, I rather see my ONLY my tagging and COMPLETELY heed it to organize the library. I tag my tracks according to the principles described here.
Oh man. I finally said it. Roon peeps, if you are reading this, please understand is intended as constructive criticism, snark notwithstanding.
Like I said many times, before, I like the product and will continue being a subscriber. I have embraced it as my way of listening to digital music. Funny how you can positively despise one aspect of a product and LOVE everything else… then again, I am open enough to separate the bad parts and tolerant enough to use the product in spite of them.
v
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A few opinions. Don’t shoot me.
First, I didn’t spend a chunk of money on decent audio equipment to listen to lossy compression. So, I’m fine with Roon supporting Tidal and not Spotify.
Second, I get the same great user experience whether I’m playing my own local files or Tidal. That’s perfect.
Third, a lot of my local albums are available on Tidal. Going forward, I’d rather spend money on albums that aren’t on Tidal and use Tidal for the rest (unless I can only get hi-res by buying the album - I can tell the difference 44.1 and 96, and I actually kind of like MQA). After all, Tidal is less than 20 bucks a month. And for those that say local copies sound better than streaming even if they identical, they aren’t. Look up “digital” and “buffering”.
Finally, I listen to a lot of classical music (not exclusively - not averse to blasting the house out with AC/DC occasionally, for example). The great thing about Roon is it untethers me from albums and lets me play specific compositions - no searching through my CDs to find recordings of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. And Tidal integration is great here as well. For instance, I was listening to Jacqueline Du Pre’s recording of the aforementioned concerto a few days ago (the gold standard) and started to wonder just how good it was. With Roon, I could instantly pull up other versions on Tidal. Five minutes listening to the opening throes of a couple of recordings and it was blindingly obvious just how good Du Pre was - could hardly recognize it was the same piece of music
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Further comment. Agree that Spotify could change things if it delivers lossless later this year. But all streaming services are lousy at managing classical. So theyre all just data sources for something better (e.g. Roon) in my opinion.
Finally, for those who say the album is king, I don’t disagree in certain circumstances. Solti’s Ring Cycle comes to mind (4 albums, actually, even more CDs) if nothing else for its historical significance. However, that’s not always the case with shorter compositions. Some albums with shorter compositions stand alone (Horowitz in Moscow?) but others are just compilations. No value in the album format here - I’ve boought classical albums for a single track.
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I agree with ctbarr last paragraph 100%. I have nearly 18,000 CDs loaded and really have no need for streaming. So far with what I’ve seen in the initial announcements for 1.8 and the list of issues and desires, I’m going to try to stay with 1.7 as long as I can. I don’t really see anything that I need. Besides, I’m 70+ yrs old and like to keep things simple if possible.
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Okay. Couple of comments here On the one hand, I’ve spent a lot more on my audio system (not going to get into a discussion about who has bragging rights) but if someone has spent 15k on gear, they care enough to have a valid opinion. On the other hand, it’s a shame to waste to waste good gear on Spotify.
Yeah, I don’t think that follows. It just means they had 15k to spend on gear. For some people, that’s chickenfeed. And other people are just idiots. Neither case necessarily means that they have a valid opinion.
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Good gear can make Spotify sound something approaching acceptable, but also highlights the limitations. Tidal it is not, though. And I’m constantly amazed at how good some of my old iTunes AAC albums sound on a bit more than 15k gear (although we’re talking Canadian pesos here).
The more I use Roon 1.8 the more I am liking it. I have over 3000 albums - almost entirely Classical. I also stream using Qobuz, but I mostly prefer my own collection. I had concerns that some features I used regularly had disappeared. But I am now finding the new search facilities are proving to be much superior (it could be that they existed in 1.7 but I was unaware of them - and it took the change to break the habits of a lifetime). The one I particularly useful is organising my albums by title and then using the focus for the composer - this not only picks up the albums where the composer is the sole or main contributor but also albums where the composer is subsidiary contributor. I even identified an album that I had mistitled and a few duplicates (that I had named slightly differently) of which I was unaware.
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Yeah, @Simon_Worrall over-interpreted my post.
It’s true that anyone can have a valid opinion, but the cost of a system is not a support for a valid opinion.
Agree with this, at least for now. 
This (above) is all good. Your personal preferences. No worries.
No problem with personal preferences for lossless, but to say “it’s a shame to waste to waste good gear on Spotify” …
… if I swapped out your lossless files on your hard drive and replaced them in Spotify’s Ogg Vorbis format and let’s pretend you never looked at the Roon signal path to tell you the format, I doubt you would notice anything had changed 
The problem is trying to pull off something cheeky like this (without you ever knowing) would be tricky for me to do 
So, I have listened to the same piece on Spotify and in hi-res (more than once), and there is a difference. Spotify sounds somewhat lifeless and there’s a hint of pre-echo at times. You’re probably right I wouldn’t know if you swapped my files - I would just enjoy the music less and not know why. So why compromise? After all, it’s not like we have to ratio bandwidth and storage like we did in the past (which is why folks started using lossy compression in the first place).
I don’t want to bang on too much because personal preference is fine. Sh!t even I choose Qobuz and Tidal when I’m in ‘critical listening mode’ because it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside…
But I think you missed a key part of what I wrote… which was you not knowing that something had changed… but as I said, it’s not a practical prank to pull off.
I agreed I wouldn’t know if you did this. As I said, I would just enjoy the music less.
I don’t think you would notice anything had changed at all to be honest.
Let’s see if we can get your wife or kids to pull off this experiment !
So if there’s no difference, I guess everyone should just listen to Spotify. Perhaps we can get Roon to drop Tidal and Qobuz and add Spotify instead. It would be interesting to see the reaction.
Let’s just agree to disagree.
FYI, my wife knows that messing with my music is a recipe for divorce.
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Its a bit like wine tasting. Some notice the difference between Lidl wine and Chateau Lafite. Some dont. And thats ok
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Although not streaming I m going to chime in here.
I bought a used usb HDD from ebay and it was chock o block full of metal albums! Score I thought.
Until I found they were all WMA files.
So then I converted all to FLAC files ( 24 hours plus for program to finish this)
But they are still quite inferior to an original FLAC version of the same album to my ears.
So if anyone pulled a switcheroo with these files I know I would hear the difference.
Spotify lossy vs Qobuz hires?
I would HOPE I could tell the difference but who knows?