I’m extremely new to Roon, and for a large part of my four-month trial I just didn’t get it, didn’t see the value. Then all of a sudden the advantages just fell into place and were plain as day:
First, Roon let’s me search across Qobuz and Tidal so that I can find the best quality version of any track to play.
Second, the integration of my small hi-res library allows me to supplement my streaming services easily and seamlessly.
Third, I can use Roon across my various different systems - my KEF LSX bedroom speakers, my Audioengine workspace speakers, my Sonos speakers in various rooms, and my KEF LS50 Wireless ii speakers (can’t wait for them to be certified as Roon Ready).
Fourth, the recommendations and annotations are valuable. I rarely get a recommendation of an artist I haven’t heard of, but the combination of Roon’s integration of streaming services and my home library lets me harness the recommendations as reminders, really, and to build wide-ranging queues on the fly.
Finally, the ability to follow the delivery of each track and assure myself that I’m getting bit-perfect, lossless delivery of all my music is interesting at first and ultimately addictive.
The best thing you can do is play with it and learn the rich features as you get more experienced with it. This is coming from someone who is very much at the beginning of that learning experience.
Completely happy with my annual sub I just purchased.
The only way is to temporarily disconnect streaming , even if the track in question is in your library Roon will opt for the Tidal one . Even if the local copy is higher res
Quite irritating especially if you have capped internet. I have uncapped so it doesn’t bother me too much.
One of the main advantages I appreciate most is its feature of suggesting new music to you. This feature is, to the best of my knowledge, unique to Roon. It allows me to discover new music every day. That’s fantastic, and for me the most important aspect of using Roon.
Library and metadata management with its myriads of import options and editing, however, is overblown and confusing. In that respect, Roon could well profit from leaner systems such as Audirvana and Euphony Stylus.
Paul while that works well, I have found more new music from the what are we listening to 202X thread. There have been some absolute blinders there that I have never heard of before reading that thread throughout the day, pretty much everyday now
True! I do follow this thread and, as you‘ve seen, also post there from time to time.
But it‘s nice when listening to an album/track and immediately having suggestions blended into your screen. Sometimes I got suggestions from artists I thought I knew all albums from, and yet, surprisingly, there happen to be some overseen gems around. I love this feature!
This is very true (some great jazz suggestions from @Paul_Jeno)… though the worse aspect of that thread is not being able to copy/paste text from the Roon screen shots.
Yes Paul I have listened to a number of your post’s and sometimes have not listened to many posted tracks in year’s.
I was just adding a little humour as I often pick up Album’s I did not know exist or side projects I was unaware of.
I was an early subscriber to Pandora and it cost me a fortune in new music purchases, so I was shocked when it was blocked in the UK for the exact opposite reason.
When I first signed up for Roon I didn’t have a subscription to Tidal or Qobuz and while I have a library of about 35k track’s, Roon sis not come into its own until lockdown came and I subscribed to the 4 months for £4 and it completely changed my listening.
I did not read much of the other comments but thought I should say that while I love Roon and its concept, Audirvana has better sound quality in comparison to Roon. However, Roon is more usable, and perfect in everything else. HQPlayer did not sound good for my system as I felt the upsampling made the sound less pure based on what I hear, however when I first started using HQplayer I was in love in it, just after the novelty wear off, I realised that Audirvana was better sounding (without upsampling too).
Thanks Stuart. I can see in your case Roon makes sense.
In my case, I only use Qobuz, I only have one system. (Or am on the go so Roon doesn’t help there) and I don’t tend to sit and read all the metadata.
The only feature I do enjoy is the Roon radio. But that picks tracks from Qobuz only. Wish it would also pick related music from my local library as well.
So at the moment I’m still not sure if it’s worth the investment.
What is making me consider Roon is what I see as the MAIN argument for it: the possibility to easily use iDevices as endpoints and actually listen to your music in an integrated fashion with the Roon app. I have tried Audirvana, Volumio and others, and none offers that possibility - all the “remote apps” are simply meant to control the computer where you have them installed, as if we could not do that from sitting in front of it already.
I think many existing users, especially ones that got in on lifetime early, its difficult to have the same perspective as someone new/considering roon/just starting out/building a playback system. Many of the points discussed here already have been pointed out in countless similar threads.
Playback has changed quite a bit in the last 5yrs and in some cases very significantly (source, wkst/upstream delivery). Many of us started with large local libraries and streaming wasn’t really a thing yet. Some still prefer local over streaming (myself included). However, streaming ain’t going away and will continue to mature and get better.
Agree or disagree, I also think there are different types of users - some are fine with “whatever” / sounds good enough / plug n play. Others have more complex setups and want to squeeze every once of quality from their setup. There is no right/wrong here, just different approaches. To that end, the value of any player will be a very individual preference and what works flawlessly and “perfectly” for one individual may be the total opposite for another. There are countless examples of this throughout roon community threads.
The advantages over other players as it relates to roon, will really come down indiv preferences, users home network, network gear as a whole and general workflow. I would also say that roon is a bit different then other player eco systems and one does need to approach network + server with some forethought.
Pardon my English, but why the heck would anyone use Euphony and Roon together? Why pay for Euphony when you can have the same with Roon plus more? Or alternatively, why pay for Roon if you can have almost the same with Euphony?
Please clarify.
P.S.: Can I play Euphony-controlled content ON an iDevice? Or can the latter be used just as a remote control, similarly to Volumio and Audirvana?
Well, you said yourself that Audirvana sounds better than Roon, and in my system, Euphony running Roon sounds better than Roon itself. That’s enough reason for me.
Besides, Euphony has a number of options, it has its own player called Stylus. And that one sounds VERY good, but Stylus is a bit clunky and I prefer Roon’s UI.
Have a look yourself, just google it.
You use an iDevice to control Euphony but it has to run on a PC, or Mac or any other computer.
So Roon is the only solution on Earth that allows for playback of your centrally-served, integrated content (local + Tidal + Qobuz) on your iDevices? There’s nothing else out there, paid or free?
What exactly does it change and when\where? Is it just the ReplayGain data?
Surely, this is something that should only ever be user authorized.
I installed the trial a while back, before committing to ROON. Didn’t spend much time on it, as it just looked and felt clumsy\unpolished compared to ROON. Haven’t noticed any changes to files (at least not on the albums I usually use for testing).
I Audirvana you can actively edit any tag that is exposed in the UI, its not by any means the entire tag set.
AFAIK the only tags written WITHOUT you permission are the various signal level tags that allow for volume levelling etc. Those tags in Roon are stored in the Roon db on your core so Roon never alters your file tags