What's your favourite Roon feature?

Hi. So I only installed this on a trial yesterday… So far I like what I see very much. But i thought the best way to familiarise myself with the software may be to ask what your favourite features are, particularly those not-so-well-known-about features?

Some advice how to access them would also be appreciated!

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Compared to other players I used in the past, I was pleasantly surprised to automatically get song lyrics for a significant part of my music collection, simply by clicking the ‘microphone’ icon!

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Ease of switching endpoint players. The community forum is favorite too.

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It’s hard to pick just one feature, but I really like the icons on the album page that let me quickly get to a list of other versions of a song, both in my collection and on Tidal.

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Having multiple Zones, and being able to group them in different ways for multi-zone synchronised playback is the feature that I like and use the most.

But a close second is being able to slice and dice the collection (using Focus) in a myriad of ways, and being able to save a Focus query as a bookmark. The icing on the cake is that the bookmark remains dynamic, so that when new material is added to the library that matches the query, it gets automatically included.

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Yep, I’m using to get to grips with this feature at the moment, particularly selecting more than one parameter, and including track format in the focus terms (especially to hone in on dsd hits). Is there a good tutorial anywhere?

For me it was the ability to access to my music anywhere at my home. I have different sound systems throughout and the ability to pull up my music catalog anywhere is really awesome for me. I moved to uncompressed CD quality music about 5 years ago and Roon really complimented my catalog with sound quality and meta data.

UPDATE: After posting above then the most aggravating feature happened and I thought I would share this also. Tidal integration sucks. The sound quality is very good and I can put up with its search limitations because I know it will get better. However I can go a long time (weeks) and no dropouts and then all of a sudden a network connection problem occurs and after a few days everything is ok again till the next time around. The network problems just started again after posting to this thread. It had been a couple of weeks since this occurred and it is back again. I am totally convinced that this a Tidal issue and has nothing to do with Roon.

MD

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Key for me was the broad support. I have bought Sonos in the past - and have 3 zones. I have 2 Apple TVs. And now a collection of Pi based DACs (and a Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital). Not high end audiophile stuff - but a mismatch of tech. Looking at new kit they all seem to support some “standard” but it requires you to invest in that particular ecosystem (eg AirPlay). With Roon being a software company and not tied to a technology its allowed me to integrate my mismatched tech, acquired over years, into one system. The alternative was choosing one, betting on it, and then replacing everything that doesn’t fit that.

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For me it’s clearly the metadata and the way it gives me recommendations from my own library. With Roon I’ve been listening to my own collection in a totally different way and I’ve been liking it.

Not complaining about the fact that my devices are pretty well supported and that if I need them getting new endpoints is cheap and easy.

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Yep can’t believe I got my ancient squeezebox classic up and running on the server, in no time at all…this particular one was custom modded, and has always been a royal PIA to set up… Not with roon though. Straight in, no worries.

Yep I’m having this problem too. Really badly. I’d assumed it was because my wireless connection is patchy and my endpoint was being affected by the library volume levelling using too much processing power…disappointing to hear otherwise.

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Me too! It’s like I’m a teenager again:-) first time that’s ever happened for me for digital music, as I’m more usually a vinyl nut…I’ve had history with iTunes, (and musicmatch, before this!), jriver, Spotify, Pandora, etc, so it’s not through lack of trying, but i never really got excited by any of them…this tidal/roon combination seems a different beast though.

Metadata. I love reading about an artist/album, credits and above all clicking on the links on the bios.

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Undoubtedly it is the links within bios to related artists and albums and therefore to other parts of your music collection. People are always going to have differences of opinion on the band and album reviews and certain reviewers but that is easily ignored if you just concentrate on the links within. A major annoyance therefore is when the bios don’t contain any or very few links.

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Agreed. Reviews are subjective. There’s been some posts to some fairly ridiculous ones on here - seems folks get paid for them and churning about 12,000 out in a short space is done. But the links are great. Other bands, collaborations, peers at the time etc. I’ve used that a lot to discover new music. It’s also why I don’t use my own library - I stream from Tidal. Renting music seems the new model :slight_smile:

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Love all of the above.

Having such a simple to use music tool that also has simple up sampling and DSP out of the box set this apart for me. I’m not sure I would have ever explored using HQplayer etc, but in Roon, it’s super easy to use and sounds great to my ears/

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Well if I had to pick one favourite it would be the possibilty of remote controlling my music from many devices. I like the fact that the remote is not just an ordinary remote control but a full-on interface with playback capabilty.

Second is streaming (Tidal for now) integration with your own library, but only from within the artist pages.

Third, playback zones

fourth… well there is a lot to like. Not everything is completely to my liking but so far I thinks it’s one of the best players out there.

Least favourite feature: The album browser, not an icnh better then I-tunes, j-river etc. Lots can be improved here. Don’t like the way it looks, don’t like the way it works

second least favourite feature is that Roon keeps playing one Velvet Undergound album over and over and over and over and over and over and over when on random play at a point where I almost start to hate that album.

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@Mike_Dubois

Have you tried direct wired Ethernet? That solved my issues.

Same problem happens to me on wired or wireless ethernet…then Roon won’t play numerous Tidal tracks at all, after its happened. Doesn’t seem to make a difference whether on wired or wireless ethernet connection.

Restarting the core seems to help, as well as disabling my VPN (which is a PIA, as I need it to listen to listen to higher quality geoblocked streams from where I am, in NZ). May start a separate thread to @support about the issue.

I have very little Wi-Fi associated with my setup except when I am using a tablet or phone as an endpoint of which I have a strong Wi-Fi signal. Entire house is hardwired.

The only network connection problem is with Tidal only. Roon works flawless everywhere else at all times even when this Tidal issue acts up. Wait a few days and then it straightens itself out. It is not my internet. I have 300MB download speed package which tops out at around 400MB down and 30MB up.

MD

UPDATE: After posting this about 1 hour ago, I have been listening to Tidal through Roon and no hiccups at all. All is good again until next time around when it has another hiccup.