Thinking about canceling Roon and Tidal... can you help?

You cant sync Tidal playlists back in Plex either and that has similar Tidal integration to Roon so maybe its a limitiaton of how the API works. Sonos Tidal is not integrated into your own library so maybe this has something to do with it. Can Bluesound sync playlists back?

All of the apps use TIdal API (or whatever service they are using). If Sonos can use the API to update a Playlist (which it does), then Roon can do the same – *technically speaking. There may be licensing or partnership agreements that differ or Roon may just not want to based on their concept and design (which I think is the case here).

I am a happy Roon lifetime subscriber. I may be vocal on this one feature to build some crowd support, but I use Roon everyday. It just makes Playlist maintenance a significant challenge and really poor user experience that I have to maintain Playlists in Tidal.

Thanks @anon55914447 – I used Soundiiz between Spotify and Tidal. That would be a significant manual process, maybe good for once in a while, not continuous updating of playlists.

Getting back to this statement — is there a Roadmap of any kind?

Yes and no, Roon devs will sometimes state that something is on the roadmap but they dont provide dates with it, and they never will.

Just search on roadmap or road map in this community it’s shown in the subject for things that are well…on the road map or not

Like here Playlist sorting? [On Roadmap]

I think we’re having an operational definition miscommunication. A roadmap (usually) is communicated or authorized and/or owned by the vendor or solutions provider vs a bunch of cobbled together threads by very passionate stakeholders.

FWIW, the thread provided (playlist sorting) is fairly unclear as to whether sorting a Roon playlist is on the roadmap or delivered already… cause it’s mentioned back in 2016 as a request-- then Roon responds-- then a year later the conversation continues… If I got my dates right… Finally, there’s no definitive resolution to the matter…

And yes, I did a search… I did :slight_smile: And that’s where my phrase “cobbled together threads” comes from… I’ll rephrase though –

Question: Has Roon delivered a roadmap (high-level, directional, or otherwise)?

I think the answer is No.

For your definition of Roadmap, No.

Where a thread is labelled on the Roadmap, then the devs have indicated that Feature Request is coming. It’s to stop people pushing against open doors.

Hi @andybob — ok that’s helpful to know.

I didn’t think there was a communicated roadmap and I haven’t requested a roadmap either.

Just saw someone post that ‘it’s on the roadmap’ and that got my interest. I think I did an easily distracted move and asked for the roadmap… but my foci are the elements first documented in this thread.

But I will search for In:title “Roadmap” and “mobile” to see what comes up. Thx!!

Agree 100%. I’ve been with Roon for over a year now and those are still my major issues (plus cost) and I’ve been trialing Audirvana.

@Hank_Spraggins: Roon may not be the right solution for you. Sounds like maybe Apple Music may be the ticket. I prefer Apple Music streaming service over Spotify for a number of reasons but besides those in your case you can use iTunes to integrate your local library and the streaming service. If you ever want to get metadata on a specific album like Tidal and Roon offer you can search in Allmusic.com . Apple Music will work on your Apple TV and Echo devices (they just recently added an Alexa skill so you can use the same voice command interface as with Amazon Music).

Roon does have some limitations on the playlist TIDAL side, and some other limitations in search, correct.

If in your home you have:
1- Mostly Sonos, Airplay, Chromecast, and/or Echo
2- You’re not looking for lossless playback - TIDAL does sound better than Spotify
3- You’re not in need to manage a local library - especially the enhanced metadata in Roon

then I would recommend Spotify to you. However, do keep in mind that reality is a little less transparent - for example, Spotify has a tendency to drop off Echo endpoints after 30 mins, Sonos has a wonky way to determine the master speaker which sometimes causes dropoffs as well, Chromecast is a brilliant idea that still works as it if were in beta (as with most Google products), and finally, Spotify and Airplay don’t work as well since you cannot have Airplay devices connect to Spotify servers directly, your iOS device or computer always needs to be in the middle.

So if you go with the Spotify solution, do understand that you will get a nice (but sort of simple) phone/ipad app, connection oddities, no local file playing, and worse sound. YMMV.

Full disclosure: I am a Roon lifetime subscriber because - in spite of some issues - Roon metadata for local files and integration with TIDAL are magical to me. I subscribe to TIDAL because redbook is amazing, AND I subscribe to Spotify Premium because that is what I use on the road and at the gym. A more integrated setup would be nice, but so would it be not to have a pumpkin as president.

3 Likes

Hi @miguelito

@erich6

Since my original post many things have changed. I’ve had a lot of time to play with Tidal and Roon.

TIDAL
In a word— I’m keeping Tidal. In more than a few words: I’m a believer in Tidal- like the interface/UX; like that it’s not Apple; and like the lossless /Hifi access to songs.

ROON
Undecided. I’m a believer in Roon, but I’m not sure Roon believes in me :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I love the flexibility, but the nagging parts are there

  • limited playlist integration (synchronization) with Tidal — this may seem like a insignificant point given all of Roon’s positives- see below on the impact of this point…

  • lack of out of home access (of any sort)— as I understand it— the more I feed/use Roon the better it’ll get but I can’t feed / use Roon If synchronization doesn’t exist and if I cannot use outside of my home network. Consider these two things— Roon helps me discover a new song. I go to add a song to a playlist in Tidal. I’m now in Tidal and then I see another song — why go back to Roon at that point?
    Here’s the rub as I see it: if I play in Tidal then my play count in Roon is not updated so Roon is unaware of my interests and its ability to tailor new songs for me is limited. Same goes for out of home network playing of songs.

    _Maybe it’s a rounding error??_ And Roon’s engine is so good that it doesn’t need to know what I’m playing in Tidal — away from Roon but I think that should matter. 
    

A final small niggle is different features on a phone vs iPad or computer. I get the limited real estate on a phone but it’s a UX issue not having the same features on the phone. For example, Audeze makes these in ear somewhat Hifi phones (iSine20) and they have a special DSP for Roon. I can’t access DSP via my phone so I have to make my iPhone zone public, crack open the iPad, change the zone, and select DSP — and then pick back up my iPhone to hear the music. I think that’s a small deal, though, because if Roon remembers the zone settings cause I’m only likely to listen via my phone with the Audeze iSines

In the end, Roon is really cool and enables full home networking of your music. And it’s discover and Genre filtering features help limit the need to depend on a lot of playlists. Further, it’s UI is well maintained- albeit a bit dated in some areas. In all, if I decide to stay with Roon it’ll be the lifetime subscription. We’ll c.

2 Likes

The key value of Roon to me is for my main system:
1- Stellar audio quality
2- Roonready connection over ethernet allows my DAC to be fully decoupled from my computer
3- Roon controls the volume on my DAC directly
4- Integrates my high res files with TIDAL completely seamlessly - no other software does this
5- Pretty nice upsampling and convolution engine

I use Roon in two situations only: My main stereo and at my computer with my headphones - that’s it. Frankly mobile Roon is something I have no use for - I don’t see the point.

When I am not home, or when I am home not playing the main stereo, I have Airplay throughout the house and play from my computer. Usually this means Spotify on the computer —> Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil —> 4/5 Airplay speakers, and controling Spotify over Spotify Connect.

As for playlists for my main system / Roon, they fall in two categories:
1- Playlists that include local content (often not available on TIDAL or Spotify) sit in Roon
2- Playlists fully on TIDAL are created on TIDAL exclusively via the iPad or iPhone TIDAL app

Although this reads as messy, it has become natural to me and I am not bothered by other use cases to be honest.

One more bit: I am able to synchronize playlists with Soundiiz. I can sync TIDAL and Spotify playlists.

Long story short: If you don’t have a high end system, I would frankly not bother with Roon.

2 Likes

Ok - I have two high quality DACs in my system and a high end stereo system. And yes, Roon is very nice with those DACs / systems. I still think Auditvana sounds much better — it at least also have very high quality and integrates with Tidal as well as Roon. But yes the controlling of devices is a differentiating factor with Roon.

It’s interesting you’re not using or care about Roon for one of its chief claims: turning file listings into brochures and history on the music.

I guess everyone is diffferent but that claim is really cool to me— it’s unfortunate that feature isn’t available remotely.

I guess you don’t use the Discover feature, either.

Oh well everyone is different so I was just expressing what I wanted.

Maybe, psychologically since Roon is the only full option in town I’m hoping it’ll extend its features to remote usage. (at least some of them like the brochure/album view mentioned above). Even if I’m not listening to music I can read about it and understand it better — which sometimes makes music better to hear.

One last example— I am NOT a Led Zeppelin fan. Matter of fact, rock isn’t a genre I’d consider. However, after listening to one song (Whole Lotta Love) that was redone by Led Zeppelin I read why they re-used someone’s song and read that they were always on concert tours and didn’t have time to record or write— so they replayed old songs and to hear the guitar riff was (almost) life changing. And that would be cool to occur via Roon remotely but I guess if I feel so strongly about that maybe I should get a development team together and I could do a little coding and PM the effort and release a Roon competitor— so I guess I need to stop talking about it and accept Roon or create my own thing. Probably won’t happen. I’m just too busy. Lol

I was probably not complete in my description. Roon’s main advantage to me is indeed the metadata, which Audirvana (which I also own) does not help with at all. And I don’t find Audirvana’s integration of TIDAL/Qobuz anywhere close to Roon. Plus Audirvana would force me to connect my DAC to my computer over USB, which I would rather avoid.

As for mobile Roon, although I value the metadata tremendously when at home, I don’t care for that on mobile. Discover is a feature I use A LOT on the main system. On mobile I find Spotify’s recommendations are amazing most of the time.

Got it. But… if Roon offered it wouldn’t it be cool?? You could rid yourself of Spotify plus have your music under one UX / one UI / one toolset. :smile:

Roon’s design choices and development priorities seem better adapted to users who 1) have a significant investment in owned lossless music, 2) have made or are planning to make a switch to physically separating digital music storage from music playing, and 3) are not happy with existing proprietary or DYI music indexing and play control. I started down this path when I ripped my CD collection to a NAS to stream over Ethernet to a Naim UnitiQute, but had no iOS devices to serve as control points, so I had to struggle with flaky UPnP/DLNA server software, terrible metadata handling/indexing and Android apps. Then I upgraded the UnitiQute to a BelCanto integrated together with a succession of increasingly effective Ethernet>USB streamers. That’s when I found about Roon, and also got a second (headphone) system. My current configuration has a NAS, a fanless NUC for the Roon Core, two high-quality streamers, two DACs, and a variety of amps and transducers. I control my chosen endpoint(s) with whatever I have at hand (phone, tablet, laptop).

Roon is not perfect: Android endpoints have been flaky for too long (turning off IGMP snooping on my home network fixed it finally); automatic metadata identification is getting better but it is still problematic for some classical and more exotic jazz releases; no really efficient and clean method for exporting/maintaining a subcollection for offline use on DAP or work system.

I’ve not been tempted by Tidal, but I may explore Qobuz if it shows up. In the meanwhile, buying digital downloads and occasional CD-only releases keep me better stocked with new music than I can keep up with.

Actually, no, I don’t want that. Consider two feature sets:
1- Full Roon experience just like at home. What do I need?
- My whole physical library on my phone (impossible)
- Sync of my Roon database, and updates to this - massive bandwidth requirement
2- Simplified experience
- Now I see the interface and I don’t know where I am - do I have metadata or not?
- Oh darn this is a local file, can’t play it on my mobile
So no, it would be terrible.

Not at all, Miguel if done properly. Performance degradation is not a given — it’s a misstep in the design. Tidal does lossless music streaming today. And things will only get better with 5G and the like. Also, away from home does not necessary mean LTE or low bandwidth — it could be wired or high-end WiFi. It’s just not on my home network.

Room for file owners??
I get the whole “I own the music file” concept— I do— I feel the same way about my DVR and movie library on server via Plex. I just doubt if that’s the futurel. Case in point…

I remember a time when everyone said the same thing about DVDs and Blu-ray and Netflix and Apple came along and said “Streaming is the way to go.”

Does anyone complain about video quality via Netflix vs Blu-ray?? Who knows maybe they do. Haha. And does anyone complain about performance degradation via Apple or Netflix?? Doubt it. I know. Video is not audio but the premise is the same.

Anyway, we’ll see what the future brings but I’d imagine there’d be less people who own a large music library and more people who rent/subscribe to a large music library in the future. And… it’d be lossless / highest quality, too!

Still, even without that… performance degradation, file locking, synchronization, and all those elements are computer science stuff and can be addressed. I’m not talking from theory - I am a CompSci major so it’s possible to do without issue. Although, not knowing Roon’s design structure/architecture I could imagine it could require an entire re-write. Argh.

Anyway— I thought I read via this forum that mobile or away from home access was on the “roadmap”.