SMH…if you don’t see the benefit of using Tidal/Qobuz with Roon, the frankly Roon isn’t for you.
1 Like
SMH…if you don’t see the benefit of using Tidal/Qobuz with Roon, the frankly Roon isn’t for you.
I disagree. If my only music source is Qobuz, then the Qobuz app does everything for me that I need, and almost everything that I want. And it’s portable in ways that Roon isn’t.
I don’t think I could justify the lifetime license or the monthly/annual subscription for Roon if all I was doing was streaming from Qobuz.
But eventually, as a sublime Qobuz subscriber, I would purchase digital copies of the best music I streamed. And once that Hi-Res Audio was on my hard drive, Roon would be all the more useful.
But for Premiere-level Qobuz streaming, I believe Roon is overkill in some ways, and in some cases, lacking.
I purchased a Roon Nucleus and lifetime Roon subscription for the sole purpose of streaming Tidal and Qobuz. I have no music files of my own. It was money well spent in my opinion. I also purchased a lifetime subscription to Audirvana for streaming Tidal and Qobuz when away from home. When walking my dog, I use the native Tidal and/or Qobuz apps.
1 Like
If you only want to play in one zone at a time, if you don’t want room correction or dsp of any kind, you don’t want the deeper meta data of Roon, and you don’t have a local library, then your are probably right. But very few here meet that set of criteria.
I have a mix of local and Qobuz but when I bought lifetime there was no integrated streaming.
I didn’t buy Roon for metadata, SQ, or music recommendations (which also didn’t exist where I first subscribed) or for any other of those features one might care to mention.
I bought it because of RAAT. Everything else is gravy, to me.
If you don’t care about endpoints or moving your listeniing post away from your music software machine, then you also don’t care about Roon for what RAAT offers.
2 Likes
Or, you don’t need/want Roon RAAT to send music across the room to your Roon Ready device.
Agree. Missed this in my post.
My listening post is my computer. It is how I listen to stereo Hi-Res Audio: through a DAC to quality headphones.
My “listening room” is my home theater, which is geared toward movie soundtracks, But it is also where I listen to my 5.1 audio. I have an Oppo 203 that is wired to my network and which pulls the 5.1 audio off the network or the inserted 5.1 DVD-A or BD-A. The Roon endpoint there can’t do that; I have to use DLNA when listening to networked 5.1 (boo).
The other thing I use Roon for is Airplay to my 25-year old whole house audio system. Each “zone” is controlled only by an analog volume control mounted in the wall, and all zones play the same thing because there is only one source amp feeding all the ceiling and wall-mounted speakers in the house. Roon has been far more reliable than any Apple iDevice for Airplay.
That said, I hope the 1.8 Apple TV Roon endpoint is better than earlier versions. It has been a disappointment so far. And that’s when running my Roon Core off a 2019 MacBook Pro.
Roon has been great for metadata and integrating my local library with my Qobuz library. I wouldn’t be without it. But I am the only one of 7 in my house who feels that way. If all I was going to do was stream music to my devices and Airplay it to the house, Roon would be a hard sell.
Good points. Just imagine if Roon could recommend albums from your general listening habits (like Spotify) and allow Focus to operate outside of your library.
How can I see a list of recommended or popular albums in a genre?
And why not allow subscribers to modify the content and order of items on the home page?
12 years ago or so, I was using a pice of software in Linux, the name now escapes me. Based solely on my listening habits and my own library - no streaming back then, it was able to define some pretty good playlists. So for example it created two playlists for the evening, one “chill” and one more for parties, and a playlist of uplifting tracks for the morning.
The algorithm was basic, it mostly recorded what I was listening to at a certain time and then selected similar tracks. But it actually worked rather well. I can’t help but wonder what would be possible nowadays with the type of computing power we now have and our access to tens of thousands of albums.
Just out of curiosity, and because I think he was very cogent, and had a needs space different than mine, I’d be really interested to hear what the OP @Kevin_Dufresne thinks of 1.8… If you get a chance, would love to hear!
From the Home screen click on Genre, and then click on one of the Genre’s you’re interested in. Scroll down past your albums, your artists. Then you’ll come to New Releases for You followed by Recommended Albums and Recommended Artists.
If you continue to scroll down you’ll see Sub Genres to choose from.
1 Like
Before Roon, I was a playlist kind of listener. Mostly just the hit songs off of various albums. With Roon, I started listening to full albums again like when I was young had vinyl. I greatly expanded my physical CD collection and started adding SACDs.
If I were still a playlist kind of listener, I would be very unhappy with Roon…
Thank you very much Scott. I did not notice that there. That is quite useful. Would be nice to get a bigger list but it is a start. So they could present a list of recommended albums from your listening habits quite easily on the Home Screen it would seem.
1 Like
I’m generally happy with Roon. I think it’s too expensive for what it is and how I use it, but I suck it up, because the zones work so flawlessly. I think 1.8 is nicer visually, but takes a step backwards in the rich metadata functionality. I don’t like the way the search algorithms work, I find the lack of new features (meaningful ones, like mobile Roon and progress on album art, etc) to be concerning considering how expensive the software is, but I hope the subscription model allows for support and modest improvements over time to occur. I get frustrated with digital audio in general, I’ve needed to pay for replacements for both my uRendu and the LPS I use it with, and recently my DAC died so it’s taking a round trip to California for repair. Digital headaches make me appreciate my analog vinyl rig side so much. TLDR: Roon is a useful, (but overpriced tool) if you have multiple zones, and just want it to work. If you use functionality like DSP, or have a very large collection of digital tracks and and multiple streaming services, it’s powerful and unrivaled in functionality. I’ll keep it as long as they keep innovating, but I’m frustrated mobile Roon and complete album art is still not a feature.