What is the point of Profiles?

If the entire music library, all favorites, all playlists and all tags are all affected from one profile to another, what is the purpose of the profile in the first place?

In other words, how can two listeners with totally different music preferences use Roon effectively? Even the queue is affected…

4 Likes

What Roon’s profiles do and don’t do:

Related and already existing Feature Suggestions Search results for 'profile #feedback:feature-suggestions' - Roon Labs Community
Pick the ones that cover your use case and add a vote to them.

1 Like

Yeah but since the playlist feature update in March they have also started sharing playlists across profiles, which wasn’t the case before. I don’t really get that either, and it does decrease the already-weak profile separation:

1 Like

AFAIK it was possible to share playlists already before that change. But hey, I don’t use them so can’t really comment on that matter. If there is a changed situation here, someone should probably create a new feature suggestion for profiles and playlists specifically if none already exists?

Yes it was, but it was an optional setting. After this update they are always shared, as the quote from the release notes stated.

Probably, if someone is interested. IIRC the topic was brought up during Early Access and didn’t seem to garner any interest from the developers

@BlackJack This was posted already after the release:

2 Likes

As I feel, most feature suggestions do. Maybe Roon Labs could/should then at least correct the documentation?

Each person in your household can have their own profile, and we’ll store their playlists, tags, play history, and all of their favorites there, …

1 Like

In Early Access there usually is some interest in feedback for new features, but IIRC not for this behavior change. On the other hand, it also didn’t cause a huge user uproar. Though I still don’t see why it can’t be an option, even if the behavior is changed to shared by default.

In short: Depending on what the OP wants/needs to have, his best option with Roon is probably to have separate Roon servers and additional licensees (here one might have to think about different Roon accounts or not *) for this other profile. Also with different streaming service login and license if needed. In essence, have and pay it all double.

* The Roon DB is account bound. It is not possible to share backups between servers from different accounts. Given that “two listeners with totally different music preferences use Roon”, using separate Roon accounts might be the natural way to do it?

1 Like

Not sure what that is about to mean (the ellipsis implies that stuff left unsaid here), but Roon’s queues are per zone and not per (user) profile. You should be able to see which profile added what content to the queue though.
In case of using two Roon Servers, networked zones can be shared between, but not used/accessed/controlled from, different Servers at the same time.

Profiles used to be really useful, before all the recent playlist enhancements. I had separate profiles for different family members, and when you switched profiles there was meaning to it: you’d get only that person’s playlists, always presented predictably in the same alphabetical order (I used numbers at the beginning of playlist names to set the order just how everyone wanted, with favorite playlists at the top). This was great for switching between kid and parent use. Just changing the profile would put everything that person wanted instantly at their finger tips. Now with all the recent changes to playlists that have made all of them available everywhere in all sorts of folders and in different orders, profiles has completely lost its wonderful former usefulness for me. Kid & parent alike are now always frustrated navigating through many extra steps trying to find what they want.

4 Likes

Profiles in Roon are designed to tailor the listening experience for different users by customizing music recommendations, favorites, and playlists separately. This ensures that each listener gets a personalized experience without affecting others’ preferences and queues.

I hear you. I find profiles useless. For example, it would be nice if my spouse could use her profile to access her Tidal playlists. There’s no way to have a separate set of Tidal credentials tied to that other profile so it’s useless to me.

1 Like

That would be great but it’s non functional