If failing to address the issues you posted about for over two years is not ignoring their users, then I don’t know what is.
Roon addresses issues that can be easily corrected, and proclaims these corrections as major releases that fix the concerns of customers, while ignoring fundamental flaws in the design.
My prediction is that this will not be fixed, either now, or in the next major release. Time will tell.
In the meantime, we will all move on with our lives and stop posting on these problems. And Roon knows that we will do so.
The irony is their implementation of circles was so poor in many cases.
When I scroll down the album pages, and then down the artist pages, I arrive at the same conclusion. Would squares look better? Or maybe the circles need to be a bit larger, or not spaced out with so much white space? Or is our reaction caused by the circles with butchered photos? Or the many empty circles with initials?
Whatever it is, the current design doesn’t work as well as it should.
That is not true! In 1.7 there were no circles for the representation of artists at any time. What was introduced with 1.7 was the automatic adjustment of the images in the different views. This didn’t work so well in the beginning either and was gradually improved.
This is true. There are also no circles in Plex for artists. Just noticed that the other day. If one could morph Plex, Plex amp, and roon together, I believe the result would be quite desirable.
That is not the problem and your own examples show that quite clearly. Both images are cropped from the same original (there is no second crop). The algorithm for the artist detail view works quite well by now; the one for the circle is - let’s call it - in need of improvement.
Your examples also show the problem areas: low contrast, especially for black and white images, very dark images, and images with multiple people (groups).
Maybe it was 1.6, but it happened. Introduction of circles then change back to squares after uproar.
Here’s one example thread from 2018. Same issues, arguments, etc.
Edit: Just looked through the thread. Started in 2018, but someone added a post in Feb 2021 and it continues with our present debate. Seamless, if you don’t look at post dates. Funny! (I laugh to keep from crying.)
Here’s a post where I first complained about it in 2019. It was 1.6.
Really Seth Godin??
Here’s the announcement of 1.6:
Here’s a screenshot within that announcement showing round artist pics. You can also see the “half waveform” that Roon changed back to full after feedback:
Many of us disagree, just read the above posts and the many threads on this topic. It is not “quite well” when it often slices the top off of heads or worse in order to get the brute force crop that is required. And it definitely does not work “quite well” when text covers the face of the artist, which happens frequently. Those results are just plain ugly.
These extreme “rule of thirds” pictures are very much en-vogue. When The face sits right, Its a nice balance between text/buttons and face. Maybe we need a feature that shifts the name / play button etc. to the other side for situations as.above?
Hearing you, then one can only use pictures where the face is always in / near the same place. Somewhat limits choice
Was just an idea. You could also invert pictures to move face from left to right, but that doesnt always work. Tried that on a pianist and the lid if his piano was suddenly opening to the wrong side
If so, the cropping was as good as any cropping could be, IMHO, given the aspect ratio the use for rectangular results. But they could have used a far better picture of her that would have given far superior results. I guess someone was in love with her eyes.
Having displayed data move is never a good idea. It is on par with having too many morphing options in settings menus. Or, like suppressing the In Library icon on the Library pages, like Albums or Overview. Yes, it is duplicative info, but, it can confuse users who have told the software to display that icon, as to WHY it is not showing on this screen.
