Forgive my ignorance but how do things work in the US? Here in the UK, even in remote rural locations, we have a choice when it comes to ISPs. Some don’t like you messing with settings, but others are fine with it. Obviously speeds are faster in urban areas than they are in rural areas, but consumer choice is fairly widespread. I’m assuming that things are different in the US.
1 Like
Indeed they are! Vast swaths of the US are served by regionally monopolized cable/isp providers (like the execrable Comcast). I live in a coastal area of Florida that has a moderately dense population. Until earlier this year, my county (like many counties along Florida’s Atlantic Coast) had only one isp choice: Comcast. Speeds were okay for my Roon use, but Comcast outage statistics are frightful, thus I was alarmed when Roon went to 24/7 internet necessary status (and my need for upload speeds for other non-music/Roon use was impossible for Comcast to meet). I was heartened when ATT Fiber became available and immediately made the switch. MUCH faster, MUCH improved outage statistics (very reliable) but ATT uses a gateway that notoriously does not play well with Roon servers. Nightmarish. I would happily put up with the regular bugs and workarounds if there were more accessible qualified support. The Roon tech staff is EXCELLENT and exceptionally keen and competent. But there just are not enough of them. The ARC transition has put a great deal of strain on the tech team, I believe. Roon really needs to make some choices about what it wants to be and who it wants to serve. That could well mean paring down the platform/user-case profiles it will accommodate and that could well mean not me, but right now, it feels like Roon is dealing with some real growing pains…
2 Likes
This ain’t pretty. I am in the city and we have 4 isps. In some remote countryside they have at least one but usually 2.
If you’re talking about the US, this is not entirely accurate, sorry to say.
I’m not sure what the population breakdown looks like (% of users nationwide served by >1 isp), but the relevant stat wouldn’t look at population, since what we’re talking about is how well broadband service (>1 isp) is distributed in the regions where whoever lives there, no matter how sparsely populated that region may be, need competitive service choices.
Thus census blocks would be a more relevant way to look at how service is distributed, rather than raw population percentages…
According to a 2019 examination of FCC data, 68.2% of US census blocks are served by 1 or zero broadband providers (at least 25 Mbps of download) while only 9% had 3 or more (22% had two). https://www.groundedreason.com/does-the-u-s-have-a-broadband-monopoly-problem/
Anyone offering services that depend on broadband in the US needs to either design and plan around the fact that over 2/3 of the US is a digital third-world country (not because the population is incapable of basic literacy, but because US markets are in the grip of a bizarre economic ideology; this is a digital marketplace only Ayn Rand would admire), or simply write off the US market outside of metropolitan areas and surrounding suburbs.
Unfortunate, but true. So all the Roonians making broad proclamations about “overblown worries” about the need for 24/7 internet access (allegedly because “no place” has problems with outages), or other such dismissive “observations” based on regionally privileged views about how our new wired village ackshully works, or how “we” all live now might want to pipe down a bit. No?
Of, no US, sorry. I’m in Bucharest Romania.
I knew US is a weird place when talking about internet, I have close relatives, internet and Fanta they always told me are better in Europe 
I do not remember US Fanta.
Sounds pretty nasty
2 Likes
I only get one choice for Fibre loads for old ADSL which is pretty useless for UHD telly.
Interesting data on ISP availability in US.
But the report you cite is from 2019, I wonder how it has changed.
I commented recently on the centrality of internet for common life.
I just saw an article that NY Times has 8.8 million subscriptions, over 8 million of which are digital only. (On weekdays there are 350,000 print subscriptions.) I’m one of the transition, have had a print subscription for 35 years, recently went digital only.
1 Like
if you do not mind me asking, that one isp how much is charging? For 1G fiber I pay less than 10eur/month
My fibre costs me $80/mo.
This is a larger conversation, but one I think that is worth having and perhaps it should be in its own thread.
First, I think we all basically agree that Roon is a fantastic sophisticated product when it works. It may not do absolutely everything every user wants, and certainly there are parts that have been neglected and are half done. But there’s really nothing close in the market when Roon works.
My take is that Roon is currently a niche product that is most attractive to true digital music aficionados, but is trying desperately to become more mainstream. I see that because of (1) Roon mobile, which by its nature doesn’t relate to the fancy home systems we aficionados own, and (2) many of the new features and development efforts are centered around streaming and not locally stored collections we aficionados are more likely to have. That, and, well, now that Roon doesn’t reliably function without a constant internet connection, you cannot even use the local collection through Roon when streaming content isn’t available. So while Roon manages a local collection it is no more available than the streaming services, effectively turning Roon away from local collection owners.
I am highly, highly skeptical Roon will ever become mainstream as apparently desired by Roon’s management. Not because of the quality of the product (albeit the networking challenges don’t help) but because very few non-aficionados will care to pay anything near Roon’s subscription prices when it doesn’t include any music content and when its features are only incremental to what is offered by streaming services relative to mainstream users (it does offer features above and beyond streaming services that are attractive to our niche).
I understand that Roon’s founders want to sell for hundreds of millions or more. That requires mainstream. But I just don’t think Roon will ever be that.
What I think is a better plan for them would be to have a less than mainstream but still 6-7 figure group of core users with financial stability (audiophiles generally are in upper financial echelons) and the excellent cash flow that can produce. If Roon stopped their development sprint towards the mainstream, they could instead offer better support and a more stable product from a network and database perspective. And they could increase their prices. Frankly I would rather see them charge me more and provide something dedicated to our niche experience rather than try to grow their user group into the mainstream so they can reduce prices and further penetrate the mainstream markets.
I don’t care if Roon reaches mainstream - I don’t need to be alternative in my choice of software – but what I disagree with is this pursuit of mainstream, when I don’t see it as really possible, at the expense of the niche. Roon could end up with neither.
I suppose Roon could be bought by a large industry player even when not mainstream and that large player integrate Roon into something mainstream. But none of us are likely to be happy about that because then Roon becomes whatever that mainstream thing is, and then probably doesn’t even pay lip service to us niche folks anymore.
Just my $.02. I highly respect what Roon has developed. But in the last few years I see Roon developing away from its original user base, not towards it, and I think that is a mistake that will put Roon in the position of being successful with neither user base.
(BTW, I too have had many problems with Roon despite a super robust wired network. But I will say things improved a lot when I switched to an Ubuntu core. Now all that is left in terms of my challenges with Roon relate to Roon completing certain half-baked features and eliminating some flakiness in the interface).
7 Likes
Very well-reasoned essay. I too think it would be better to be a smallish private service with great cash flow targeted at a discerning audience.
Well, even aficionados usually have secondary systems, and some of us really like mobility as well! ARC actually satisfies a good chunk of the mobility issue, even without punching a hole in your firewall.
Supporting more services like Spotify and YouTube music would go a long way towards becoming mainstream.
Wasn’t ARC one of the most requested features?
1 Like
An inflexible guy.
Yes of course but I think it is naïve to think that Roon developed it to please the current user base that has already subscribed - this is to access more of the earbuds generation.
I don’t resent it being developed albeit it would have been nice if it didn’t come with the requirement for always-on Internet.
Super intriguing thoughts!
1 Like
I’m not like most of you as I do not have any local files. Also I am new to roon (1 year). But for me went like this:
I reinstalled my old system 1 and 1/2 years ago and use YT from a laptop. Took me 3 months to buy a Yamaha with streamer and started Spotify, +1 month to get to tidal, +1 month to get my first dac and try roon, subscribed immediately but always had to go back to tidal app for mobile listening. If at that time ARC was available Roon would have had me for life. Now I see that happening but at a slow pace. It is not everybody but it is a story.
It may be naive, but isn’t that what they’re supposed to do - develop what users actually want? And aren’t they saying the don’t distinguish between lifers and anybody else - which is the right thing to do?
Also, I don’t think the always-on Internet requirement was because of ARC; these two just happened to be part of 2.0.
1 Like
It’s a rip off here pay a lot more than that for 350mbs. You get best deals as a bundle with phone and TV but it’s not cheap.
1 Like
Yes, sure, but I have a hunch that the majority of users who wanted that feature are more the crowd that listens frequently through their phones on earbuds. That is not to say the aficionados aren’t also using it.
I realize many people wanted that feature. I don’t have a problem with it being developed, per se. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a strong data point in the direction of Roon attempting to move to a more mainstream subscriber base. And again that isn’t a problem except this thread is generally about, at this point, people having problems with Roon and lack of support, so my point is, rather than race to develop a mainstream product, better serve the current niche users and charge more if need be.
2 Likes
I don’t see that. Sure, it’s a data point, but I’d be unsure of what direction it indicates. If any.
1 Like
I’m totally cool with that demographic. To me, it’s the Gutenberg revolution for music. I rather have access to that music than not have access at all. (Of course, that’s not the case anymore, as high quality audio is now a commodity).
I personally don’t feel the need to belong to a niche. Roon is software, and as long as it’s not targeted to professionals, it shouldn’t be a luxury item. If Roon really wants to be a niche product - which I doubt - they should seriously consider removing the lifetime option, since the demographic that considers Roon just another component of their high-end audio setup seems to prefer a one-time payment.
1 Like