Hardware manufacturers tend not to be so good at mobile software. Cambridge Audio Connect does a reasonable job , local DNLA , Tidal, Spotify but it’s a bit clunky
For a one zone set up like mine its workable but Roon shines but without DLNA, CA is not Roon Ready but it’s too good to bin
A dilemma
I see your point but I guess it is a matter of degree. This is not to be critical of those who use Roon for a local collection only. Putting aside Roon’s cost, if it were just a local collection manager and I only had a local collection, all other things being equal, I might still choose Roon.
But, it’s a matter of degree. If someone were shopping for an AVR and said they planned to use separate amplification, then I’m not sure it would make sense to buy an AVR and not use its internal amplifiers at all – there might be better choices especially relative to the cost of amps you’re not going to use. That was my only point, that half of Roon is its streaming integration, and if you’re not using that, then you are paying for a substantial portion of its value that you cannot use.
But I have wasted more on switch boxes, adapters, cables accidentally purchased CD duplicates, than the annual cost of Roon, so I know that just happens.
Most People do not even use asmuch as 10% of the functions of Microsoft office. If they would ever consider to release a cheaper version with only 10% functions they run into the probleem that most users use the same 5% but everyone wants another piece for the other 5% wich askes for personal customisation and support wich is even more expensive then the complete package.
Very interesting thread, with some great posts, thank you.
Use cases are different for everyone, and as mentioned if you are not a streaming subscriber you are paying for alot of functionality you don’t use.
When I signed up for Roon, there was no streaming service integration, I was hooked by the promise of great art and bios, and fantastic organisation, I was looking forward to seeing how Roon would develop using my own library. Sadly that function of the software seems to have been left behind and is no longer a focus of Roon.
There are some quite basics issues I have which haven’t been addressed for years, like the amount of artists that have no artist art, how Roon handles Box Sets and the curation of Various Artists, these seem like quite basic functionality for a music program.
I’m hanging around in the hope that these issues will be rectified, my hope is dwindling.
I agree completely. I used to own both Cambridge Audio (NP30), and Denon (DNP-720AE) Network Players in the past, and the control points/remotes on iOS were truly, truly awful. It actually made it hard using these bits of kit, and I ended up preferring to use the three-line LED display to select an album off the NAS, rather than using the app. It’s as if the apps were afterthoughts. Admittedly, that was the early-days of streaming, and things have moved on considerably.
But I still think that hardware manufacturers in general aren’t particularly good at designing and implementing control points/apps. The only exception to this rule appears to be Lumin, and their superb control point app was actually a major factor in me choosing Lumin a few years ago.
I can truly see the attraction of Roon, especially if the manufacturer’s control point is poor. I just wish it weren’t so expensive. However, the relatively high cost aside, I still see Roon as very good value, for the functionality it provides.
It seems like Roon is getting some momentum now. There is steady growth and refinement of the product and its ecosystem. The developers have done a good job (IMO) of keeping a vision and focus while being open-minded. They’ve had discipline. So we now have a really nice GUI, a rich database with both Qobuz and Tidal, and the array of compatible hardware that are close to plug and play.
Personally, I think when they get mobile figured out it can really crack open a lot of new opportunities. It’s probably very difficult and resource intensive to crack that nut with the same level of user-friendliness we’ve had from Roon in the past.
To your point Martin, I’d love to see some automotive companies license their front end. My car’s audio front end is a joke. This company clearly is clueless with that front end design even though the audio is great. They licensed the audio system from Burmester and upcharge for it. I’d pay the upcharge for Roon. Tidal tried to get into this and flopped. But that seemed to be technical. Most companies also license Gracenote for what it does in the ‘middle’.
The most recent Cambridge Connect is not too bad, I set up DLNA views in JRiver so navigation is customized. It’s just not very slick
Sounds like a way on from your experience. It was a big criticism of the Stream Magic which they addressed.
I can’t even imagine twiddling a knob to get at my collection
Yeah, especially with a 28-character alphanumeric display. YUK! 
On iPad it’s much more mature.
My greatest joy with Roon is what happens when my current ‘now playing ‘ ends. Roon continues playing, and damn if it doesn’t have a knack for playing absolute gems in my oversized collection that I never would have thought of selecting on my own. It does this so well- better than J River, Pandora, etc.
@Surge, It’s also worth bearing in mind that when using Focus it’s often easier/quicker to specify what you don’t want to play rather than laboriously selecting all the lossless options and bitrates:
Great, thank you @DaveN
It would be great if these could be saved in a custom search preset, so once the search criteria is set, you can just call it up on any device easily.
@Surge, just save it as a bookmark and then it will be available on all your devices, unless you mean that you’d like to be able to narrow a search using these criteria, which I don’t think you can do.
You might want to start a thread with @support as I keep seeing this issue around the forums and it’s been happening to me as well with the introduction of v1.6 Roon.
Your observations are right as far as I can tell. I got annoyed with my library/tidal integration as I couldn’t find a way to get it to default to use the tidal version of an album.
So I removed my library from Roon and use only tidal.
When searching artists it splits Tidal and your own library, which isn’t useful for me.
If I could find a way to use Tidal only with my SMS 200 streamer using the native Tidal app or something decent then I would do just that.
I wanted to search for 5 star Tidal albums the other day. Can’t do that either!
Really not sure I understand why you can’t do this. It works for me. Set the Tidal album as the primary version and it will play that one. If it doesn’t then Roon is likely seeing it as a different version of the album not a version of the same album. You can merge these entries Verizon’s into one album though and change which one you want to be primary.
5-star TIDAL albums can be found like this I think? At least it works for me…
Or do you mean you cant search for 5-star TIDAL albums that are not currently in your library?
AI. It can be a wonderful thing.
As a new Roon user, and one who relies on Qobuz/Tidal for hi-res tracks, the only feature I find lacking, like some of you, is that recommendations are made from my library, not the greater world of music. I’m a newbie here but not to music, and I know what I know about music, so I’d love Roon to show me what I don’t know more effectively.
Sure, Roon Radio is pretty awesome but (and I don’t mean this as a joke), I actually have to listen to the music rather than be presented with prospective artists. Sometimes I can learn a lot more from the bio info (who they’ve played with, who produced them), than an isolated track.
And I know the influenced-by info gets some of what I want, but that’s not the full “world of music” perspective I’m really looking for.
Maybe recommendations/influences get more interesting as I load up artists and albums and songs into my library, but I worry that Roon will only provide a richer dive into my own world, rather than act as a gateway to new worlds.
I believe Enno (Roon CEO) said there were something like 40 ‘Valence-driven’ features in the new release. So there should be more opportunities to explore new things. I find some of these Valence features work better for me than others. But it’s worth trying them all a couple times to see what suits you best. These recommendations should span your library, Tidal and Qobuz.
