Although overlapping with Roon-on-the-go, mine #1 ask is multiple cores. With hybrid working now a thing, I, like many others, are working from home Mondays and Fridays, but in the office Tuesdays to Thursdays. However I want to play music using Roon in both locations. I don’t really want to have to VPN into work from home as it’s unreliable, and if I VPN’d into home from work, I’d be using my home’s rural connection.
So what I think a lot of us now do need is the ability to have two (or more - for second homes for example) locations for the Roon server. Of course only one can be used at once - that’s no problem at all (I can’t be in more then once place at once, quantum mechanics notwithstanding). I’m absolutely not wanting to ‘share’ my license or anything.
But I do think that you need to support people fully using their licenses in multiple locations, without having network connections between them, especially in the modern and flexible world in which we live. Ideally it would do this entirely automatically - the moment you play something in one location, it simply stops playing in the other. That’s all it needs to do. No signing in or out or de-authorising. Just a strict and dynamic “Only one Roon server per user account can be playing at once” rule.
This is already the case. The license “switch” is at Roon Labs. There’s no need to have a network connection between Roon Cores in different locations.
I said somewhere, perhaps there should be a buy one, get second half-price deal, but it would probably be abused - like Netflix with “family + friends” - which is probably why Roon don’t/can’t do it. Some sort of cloud authentication might be workable?
My suggestion to them is really simple - charge per simultaneous user. Many of us will only ever have one at a time, regardless of location. That’s completely unshareable, which as somebody with 40 years experience of working in the games industry, I wholeheartedly agree with as piracy has been the bane of my life!
So the default Roon sub would be for a cloud-served personal core, but with only one player at a time. You then charge extra for how many simultaneous players you allow from that virtual core. Not much, say +15% or something.
Yes, people could still share this, but it means collecting money off of friends, which socially-speaking is awkward. And if they do, hell, Roon (and the artists) are still at least getting something. Only issue is that current legitimate multi-room simultaneous users (i.e. families who really are playing different things in different rooms all at once) would need to pay slightly more. But seriously, what percentage of users is that? I mean compared to how many would want multi-location and/or mobile?
We don’t often but have on occasion played different music in different rooms at the same time e.g. someone getting dressed or working out in a different room. I think Roon has always been advertised as being able to play music in every room in the house.
Maybe they could check if Roon is playing over a different internet connection/ physical site and charge extra in that situation?
How about Roon give you the option? Multiple players but from a single core, or virtual core but with a single simultaneous play? That would fully protect them, and would satisfy the vast majority of users.
Yes, that indeed changes things Danny - off course full respect to Sarah and others doing the heavy lifting.
But I do want to point out that I was talking about the Daily Mixes…which seems like a great idea but the playlists often, well not so great pieces in there. I thought it was fed by Valence…hence the comment!
Sarah creates perhaps the Roon Playlists but I do feel some of us need to understand some of the value proposition Roon brings to the table.
I do feel we need to bring in some of the Tidal/ Qobuz (if there is any there) to Roon so we can choose which alogrithm runs our discovery session. At the moment, I have to switch to Tidal daily to go through their Daily Mixes and often their excellent curated Daily Mixes or their Master series playlists which are based on my listening habits. Let’s approach this constructively and increase the options for us folks!
For me, the real big thing is for Roon to play on Androids without resample and making it possible for a Android based DAP to act as an endpoint.
Please make it happen.
Ah - thank you. The problem is that I didn’t want to perform a destructive action. The interface doesn’t make it clear that you can freely switch. I will try this when I’m back in the office tomorrow.
Does it store your account on the cloud? I.e. do your Albums lists etc transfer over?
Been using Astell&Kern DAP which is Roon Ready, but WiFi on A&K machine is unstable and extremely weak, so I dropped the idea of using Roon with any DAP
Thanks for the info. In this case then, it would be useful if in future this could be migrated over from the core to the cloud, thus centralising everything and abstracting your account from your location. The core then becomes little more than a licensing tool, plus of course the conduit to your hardware.
I would suggest that this would be a good start towards a proper mobile version of Roon. I, for one, would love to use it in the car for example.
I’d prefer it wasn’t. I want my database to be held locally so I have immediate access to my choices without necessarily being slave to the vagaries of internet access and all of the background hardware needed to make it all run.
Easily fixed by being cached locally. Send any changes up to the cloud if and when connection is available. When you connect elsewhere, it uses the local cache whilst downloading these changes. You get the best of both worlds.
Plus a fade-out and fade-in option for when skipping tracks. It is just too harsh skipping without dropping the volume. These are the quality of life updates we need for a premium product. IMO.
I was looking for an “Official” Features Request pathway so hopefully this is it?
The biggest things I would upvote are:
My listening history in Roon should update the source (i.e. Tidal) so that I don’t lose their recommendations
Tidal daily mixes and recommendations should be available directly in Roon
I find I must flip to Tidal for access to these lists. Over time I fear my Tidal recommendations will become stale if I don’t.
Otherwise my favorite non-SQ features of Roon are:
Signal Path info
Tagging (using this create quasi-folder views of my playlists)
Listening Profiles (I created multiple profiles based on mood and audience. e.g. Me, Wife, Together, CardsNight, ListeningRoom, etc…) This also lets me have a single subscription for Tidal while leveraging Roon to simulate a Family subscription)
Pop-up view of artist bio, lyrics, credits, etc… Being able to read the liner notes style info is done better than most other streaming and music services
