How many times have you met people who know about Roon?
I was in a local HiFi shop a few weeks ago and overheard a customer asking the salesman what Roon Ready meant. The salesperson did a decent job explaining Roon. The customer asked if they sold Roon, and the salesman replied that they did in the past, but they no longer sold it. Asked why, the salesperson replied that it’s too difficult to support, and it breaks too often.
Afterwards, I chatted with the salesperson about his conversation. He said something along the lines of “less face it, it’s for someone like you, for the average Mom and Pop it’s a PITA. Once you get past supporting their poor home networks, there’s the constant issues with Roon with every release.”
Way off subject here, I get that, but the name is the least of worries.
I am not pessimistic about what Roon is to me. I use it frequently and often. My comments were merely to illustrate that it’s a tiny fraction of how people approach hifi.
When Qobuz Connect is released with access to local files, there’s going to be some interesting decisions to be made.
As long as it doesn’t let me edit and has some database features like Focus, Roon is safe
I don’t know really about all the problems people have. Mine have been minor in 2 years, both in the main app and the network, although I agree that minor issues can still be aggravating. But what doesn’t have minor issues in computing. My main complaints are about missing features that are at least conceivable here. Other apps don’t get these complaints because they can’t even dream of them.
ARC is another level though even if we overlook the port forwarding. They need to get their act together there, it’s been 6 months.
The Naim app though, that doesn’t do 5% of what Roon does, was entirely unusable to me on my regular Android phone because of severe lack of performance, after spending a few 10K on an (otherwise amazing) system and their answer was “2500 Qobuz favorites is too many”. Although that part got better, their forum is full of wailing after every one of the scarce updates either about some supposed technical issues or because the app background color or icon changed.
Elderly “audiophiles” apparently love complaining and the vast majority is technically challenged, which does not prevent them from making grandiose claims about network noise. Roon can’t tie itself to that demographic.
My Naim dealer supports the Naim app (they have to) and Roon, but they tend to demo for their customers with Roon, or otherwise only the Naim app on iOS because the Android one is still missing album/artist reviews several years after release and is generally much more unpolished.
So I dunno, the Roon camp doesn’t seem so dark to me. I haven’t looked back.
My intention wasn’t meant to be “dark”. It’s more of a reminder that we collectively are in a very narrow niche. A niche so narrow that a local dealer who has motivation to sell products, stopped selling the product that many of us use daily, because it’s a challenge to support for casual users.
I am perfectly happy to be in this niche. I have invested quite a bit to enhance my Roon experience with a Nucleus Plus, storage, a Signature Rendu and dCS Bartók.
I didn’t mean you saying it’s dark but that dealer did. Maybe a narrow niche yeah, but that’s what we are anyway Just sayin’ my dealer didn’t stop and that the Naim app is not much less of a headache for them really. I wouldn’t just plop Roon setups into people’s poor home networks, but for dealers selling many-K or several-10-K systems I don’t see the issue really to help people get set up for a fee. And the “issues with every update” is a big exaggeration
I think the dealer I spoke with simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with home networks and finicky software. From there perspective, how much sunk cost do you carry troubleshooting inadequate home networks, especially when that’s not their core competency. We did talk about innuos, Aurender, Lumin, and Bluesound. Their response was with those products, the rarely if ever have issues once installed.
They have to make their choices. It’s easier in some ways for sure for instance with marginal wifi, but they are not immune to wifi setups, and if there are wires it’s not all that hard with Roon. I mean, I have a regular home network, I plugged it in and it has been chugging along for 2 years.
At work my Team supports ~200K unique users/month. We have tools that allow us to evaluate quite a number of key performance metrics for both on prem and remote users. Several of the metrics include OS, network connection, response time, etc… Even after several years, I am still surprised at how marginally home equipment and ISP’s actually perform.
This is where I think Sonos has an edge… to the entry level consumer you can wrap your streaming services and run it on an average network. You have to invest into their eco system and you do not get the quality/features of Roon but I can see the appeal.
I have a solution for ARC , maybe roon dev is over thinking it …
Have the Core to initiate the control channel outbound and find the ARC app on your device outside of network . If the control is initiated from inside the network , there will be no need for in bound port forwarding .
Once control is up, use light weight protocol such as DTLS for data channel.
I know I would sound too cocky … but what does it take to implement above ?
Innuos also do home support and log in to fix things, but you are buying expensive hardware with software developed to only run on them, this is Roons achilles heel its a multiplatform app that runs on many hardware architectures so a lot of uknowns. In fairness Innuos do have their fair share of software issues as I follow users of their kit on other forums, nothing is immune to issues, its how the company handles them thats key. Good customer support is key and have a proper support path. Roon well lets face it support really isnt its strong point at all and it relies on too many tech forumites to solve issues with non - techy people and this doesnt go well all the time. Roon fundamentally need a change of operation in support or they will run aground at some point as its not getting better if anything its getting worse, they are vastly under resourced to deal wih the size of the userbase these days, and ARC made it far worse.
I think one big issue is that new users try Roon on totally inappropriate kit. The dig out an old laptop, HDD and all, some old dodgy WiFi signal then moan mercilessly about c**p software
I too have invested i started on my hi spec ex dev PC so no issues there then went NUC ROCK and Naim Unity HE
But in reality you have to be convinced thats where you are going, a dodgy lap top really doesn’t give even a hint of Roon’s potential
We see it here Celerons even Atom CPU with HDD . The same with NAS sometimes it works mostly it gives a substandard view of what Roon is.
You can’t blame hi fi retailers they arent computer savvy enough. I bet a large % of the serious Roon uses are somehow involved in IT or with a deep interest in it enough to trouble shoot. The rest show the lack of savvy on these pages
I became interested in actually learning something about networking because of Roon. No expert, but have gone far deeper than I ever would have thought. After a journey from crap laptop to NAS to NUC/ROCK and from no attention to network to hard wired Unifi throughout my home and vlans for much as stuff as I can get off the “main segment” and attention to topology (ROCK into core switch, reduced layered switches, NAS via bonded GB into core switch), everything is, umm rock solid. Prior to this I had drop outs, laggy remote responsiveness.
The vast majority of people won’t start on Roon. Of those who do, only so many want to tune system and network performance. I guess I feel silly sometimes that I’ve gotten so into it. Other times I feel like Roon ought to give up some features and platforms so it can be fewer things more successfully to more people. Danny made some interesting statements recently about local music, despite my love of some of my recordings that can’t be found on streaming, I’m sympathetic. The world changes.
I started on the work iMac wifi to a Yamaha using airplay… upgrades later and with upgrades to come I’m still in love with the same thing as when I started: metadata and user interface
He might have some statistics. The forum I do not know if is a reflection of all roon users. I look at almost all of you in the forum and I feel in the minority for not having any local files (I have 4 sweeps from REW). I do not miss any of my vinyls, cassettes, cds, mds, iPods but you guys are amazing and the me wannabe it was almost buying a tt some months ago.
@CrystalGipsy found out why my roon was so slow, computer was stolen by HQP. I did lower from 256 to 128 an roon is better (60% better). Looks like I’m going to build a NUC/ROCK or a dedicated computer for HQP (or both)
Hmm… You have a good point. I’ll have to retest to be sure.
Speakers, amp, preamp I did upgrade in the last 2 years, is time to upgrade the dac (at least in the same price range) at the end of the year.
…
but what does it take to implement above ?