@Mike_O_Neill's comment that many of the support issues involve insufficient hardware and/or poorly configured networks led to the following speculation:
It seems to me that there are some ways that Roon Support could mitigate some of the most common problems before they are even brought into the Support realm. Comprehensive guides in networking and hardware requirements, perhaps with wizard-style guidance, could make the issues clear to the user/potential user, and could clear out the people who are starting from a bad state.
If a user works the wizard and finds that the hardware/network is misconfigured or is not sufficient, the wizard could say so clearly, and indicate that no support will be given if the user proceeds with that setup. Options such as âhire a network proâ or âconsult this list of known good setupsâ would go a long way towards making it clear how to proceed, and also on whose shoulders the solutions rest.
Some sort of network analysis tool partnership (Iâm guessing here that this sort of thing exists*) might be very useful.
All of this takes time, money and effort on the part of Roon, but perhaps the payoff would outweigh those investments. Chatting back and forth with the average consumer about hardware and logs and network configs is slow and burdensome, and Iâd guess that it fails utterly much if the time. Thatâs expensive, too.
*I know that, in the gaming world, there are little software packages that can analyze your setup and tell you whether or not it will work for a given game. I have no familiarity with them or any idea if they actually work.
As a relatively recent (<5 years) Roon user (now a very happy lifer), I have been first and foremost a beneficiary of the amazing expertise on these forums. But also tried to help where I can.
It does seem as though everyoneâs time (especially the amazingly patient unpaidvolunteer mods; and equally fantastic RoonLabs tech support staff) could be saved if there were crystal clear FAQs or wizards with, say, the ten most likely ways in which - for a start - NUC, Nucleus hard- and software should be configured to work with the Roon app.
Am I wrong in having the impression that the same questions (âI canât connectâŚâ, âRoon wonât recognizeâŚâ etc) questions come up time and again; and more than almost any (comparable) topic?
Itâs only human for users to panic (or appear to panic ) and turn here for support - often without searching for previous solutions (which are nearly always provided).
Nor will everyone have anything like the same experience and preparedness when things seem to go âwrongâ.
I wouldnât be surprised if RoonLabs were already working on this, and certainly that there are stats on which are the most common questions/problems.
Excellent though much of the Roon documentation is, I hope my comment that it could be made clearer and easier to use, better indexed and updated more regularly, ideally removing some ambiguities will be taken as a supportive one and not a criticism.
WAIT UNTIL A SOLID INTENET CONNECTION IS MADE BEFORE STARTING ROON
We all know modern computers should be left on 24/7 but there is no doubt in my mind that restarting the whole system is key.
I am convinced that my trouble free run is due to a daily restart for climatic and utility supply reasons.
It will be interesting as winter approaches (southern hemisphere) our chances of thunderstorms drops off . Add to that our power cuts seem to have temporarily resolved (our General Election is 29 May - no connection I am sure). All this combined means that I can leave my system on 24/7.
So far I have had to reboot twice (in 2 weeks) due to sluggish behavior.
Why are people so averse to restarting computers , no doubt someone will enlighten me
The fact that these messages come up time and again, is due to the requirement that everybody needs to open a separate topic for his problems.
This makes the forum completely useless for users to look for answers, especially in the area of networking problems.
An in-depth ânetworkâ documentation and toolkit is long overdue. (and in the documentation, a list of known configuration issues of different router manaufacturers/telco providersâ modems, should be included)
The Nucleus/Rock web admin page should show more info, perhaps ARC green dot style indicators for internet/remote/endpoint connections? Something like this was talked about years ago, but never came to anything.
Roon requires a âcustomer providedâ connection (layer 1) to local devices (layer 2) and the internet (layer 3) - which usually just means you plug it into your router, lol.
) and turn here for support - often without searching for previous solutions (which are nearly always provided).