The Suspense Is Killing Me

I don’t think going mobile is a path to explore for Roon. Everything is available for that already: DAP+DAC+TIDAL/Qobuz.

Where is the value of Roon ? None.

Instead I’d rather see the huge gap aligned between remote & core rather than an “on the go Roon”.

I tend to agree. I’d rather see a better sync between non-mobile locations (home and office) rather than an on-the-go solution. But others would like to see it and there is definitely some validity to it given that other music solutions offer it. And Roon has said they’re working on it, which indicates they may already be heavily invested in it.

For me if you could just echo your library and playlists in Tidal (Qobuz) that would be enough as all the rest of the infrastructure is there then. I’d happily go without the niceties of play counts etc.

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Tidal/Qobuz have very few of my best masters if you can figure that out at all. My local library contains confirmed versions of them. Tidal/Qobuz doesn’t have all my content.

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So what is preventing you to buy a DAP/DAC & use your own content?

Have you heard about Astell & Kern?

Honestly I don’t think it is relevant to listen to hi-res “on the go”: then environment is by nature noisy: metro, street…what’s the point of listening to hi-res audio when it’s noisy?

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I have a perfectly good iPhone, why would I want to carry around another device?

I agree hi-res is useless on the go but I didn’t mention that I said best masters. I’ll take my masters in mp3 over the compressed remaster crap found on most streaming providers.

Mobile Roon is very important to me and the reason most my friends won’t currently move from LMS/JRiver to Roon.

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Exactly my point, thanks!

I listen mainly to my music when flying and it’s often 13 hours direct flights. I am “okay” with my Sennheiser PXC 550 & mp3 even though the sound quality is remarkably good, I’d rather like a more “powerful” ANC.

Meaning that the HW will have a better value/effect than Roon itself.

Cant you take your masters out with you on-the-go anyway? Copy them to you mobile device? I personally don’t really see that as a compelling reason to require a ‘Roon-mobile’ solution specifically.

Is that June or October? (non UK date format confuses me)

They won’t fit. My collection in MP3 format is still over 1TB.

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… it doesn’t really matter, but it was meant to be October. :wink:

It will DEFINITELY NOT include at least one urgently wanted ‘critical’ feature. But, we’ll have to wait to find out which one(s) is/are missing.

Which is why Roon playlists and edits to Tidal playlists need to sync back to the streaming service!

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I would be interested in a new thread on this topic… how do you know what master you’re getting or might otherwise exist? What genres are you in?

And the increasing internal gb capacity of phones and tablets reaching 1TB now means you can download your entire music library into your cell phone

The DACs in mobile devices aren’t that bad, I use an old iPod Classic 160 and an iPad 128 without an external DAC and on MP3 it sounds fine

Ok not quite up to full scale stuff and my HD800s but perfectly listenable

In case this is helpful to anyone here regarding mobile options currently (although these options may be in some jeopardy now that Apple has just announced ‘the end of iTunes as we know it’, starting with the next Mac OS update; it will depend on whether the Apple Music options that replace it still allow the same functionality and whether that will still work with Roon; it sounds like they probably will still work similarly):

I rely completely on Roon at home and my mobile solutions have been very satisfactory. My approach has been to keep my Roon library in iTunes at home (in my case on an SSD in my Nucleus) and just have Roon watch the iTunes folder. I do all my organizing and playlist changes in iTunes. I add a few extra tags and things in Roon as a bonus. Basing my Roon library in iTunes this way allows the following two easy mobile options for shifting from my Roon setup while on the go. One of these options has quite good sound quality for a small investment, and one has superb sound quality for a larger investment:

  1. For very good and cheap mobile playback: I subscribe to Apple Music for $10/month. Apple syncs my entire iTunes library and playlists from the Nucleus SSD to Apple’s servers, including my albums that are not available in iTunes (for me, Tidal doesn’t have enough of my music, and it’s hard to sync playlists; haven’t tried Qobuz yet). All my albums and playlists are then easily available as decent-enough AAC files for streaming or download on my iPhone. In my backpack I keep a DragonFly Red, an Apple Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter (be careful not buy the older one without the extra charging port, it doesn’t work well with the DragonFly), and a nice pair of $200-$300 earbuds that block outside noise.

  2. For superb but pricier mobile playback: I use a Chord Mojo+Poly with a 400GB microSD card and pair of high-end audiophile earbuds that also block outside noise. It is a relatively simple matter to take the same iTunes playlists I’ve created (that are also the ones that appear in Roon), and from the iTunes window on my laptop drag ALAC or AIFF files, including hi-res files, into playlists in Doug’s Apps M3Unify running on my laptop and thus export them from the Nucleus SSD over my local network to the microSD card, which is plugged into an adapter on my laptop. For playback control of the microSD card in the Poly while on the go, I use the MPD player mode in the very good Glider app for iPhone (which has a few quirks; for one, be sure no song titles begin with letters that have diacritical marks). This is a terrific solution that in some ways I even enjoy more than listening through Roon on my main rigs at home!

Of course, some people have other needs or other setups, but after some initial trial and error these options have worked really well for me for now.

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I do something similar :slight_smile: only big issue is that playcounts don’t transfer between iTunes and Roon. I use this a lot to control / manage my library (smart playlists in iTunes and bookmarks with focus in roon) so if I am out and use itunes I would love the playcounts to sync with Roon.

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Hi Rune…plenty of 3rd party apps (some free) will provide a static external IP address…

Still no exciting update, hope this means something big for Christmas. Though if memory serves me well they won’t do an update during the holidays due to issues with support in the past.

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