Virgin Media Hub 3 connected to laptop via ethernet.
Connected Audio Devices
Raspberry Pi 4b with Allo BOSS DAC connected to router via ethernet & to analogue amp via standard phono.
Number of Tracks in Library
224,569
Description of Issue
My trial subscription is nearing its end & before I start throwing good money at something that, on the one hand is perfect for my needs & on the other, has some severe drawbacks, I’d like to find out more about some of these aspects to see which direction the owners see Roon going in without someone throwing a hissy fit because I dare criticise their beloved software.
Should this just be in the form of individual feature requests or is there a place for that sort of general discussion?
Yeah, it’s not really a “support” question… But can’t hurt to start a discussion about what you like, don’t like, would like to see. There are a lot of those, tho.
Can you provide details about those severe drawbacks?
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
6
Quite possibly support is not the best place as that just clogs up the actual support pipeline.
Suggest you let us know where your issues lay to decide best category to best assist your concerns
Okay, well I guess my main area of concern is how often Roon ignores my tags, regardless of the strategies I employ. I have honestly wasted so many hours adding, removing, identifying, un-identifying, cleaning, clearing & relaunching the app, only to find that Roon stubbornly refuses to show what’s in my file tags.
I’ve tried asking about it specifically in Metadata but all I get are dismissive answers about Roon only having to “prefer” my tags, not actually use them, which is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard & absolutely no use to me, going forward.
Other things include Roon being about the most delicate app I’ve ever used. If I’m scrolling through the app, it shouldn’t crash just because it can’t load the cover images quickly enough. But it does. All the time. I’ve learned not to edit anything while I’m playing music. That will often crash it, too.
Other things that get me down are more feature-request oriented. Things that ruin what is, on the whole, the best app for playing lossless music.
Yes, it’s a real number, but only because I’ve only added half my record collection.
(I’m exaggerating. It’s over 12,000 albums but I only have a couple of thousand to go.)
I have no idea what that means.
Also, thanks for the replies. I really love many things about Roon & would hate to have to find an alternative but not being able to view my music the way I prefer to is a real deal breaker.
Sounds like some issues specific to your remote your using could be be a bug but hard to tell as 8 don’t get crashes whilst scrolling across my windows remote nor Android phone and never had an issue whilst editing anything on my remotes but bugs come out in different use and environments. What remote are you using the macbook your cores on or something else? Might be best to raise a support ticket for that on its own and see if they can isolate the issue.
As for Tags can’t help much as i don’t use my own much, I let Roon do it all. You can set you entire library to use your tags to identify them from setting it in the library section of settings from full remotes on Mac or PC, but Roon will still match it to its metadata services for some of it, what exactly are you not getting that you want from your own tags? Is it not matching or you want something specific?
It’s very specific. Details. But I’m a details person. I’ll see if I can find the post with the screen shots I made from before (or start another one) but at the end of the day, if the people who make Roon are aiming for something other than me being able to have my music showing how I want it to, I can’t see much will change.
Not sure I can agree here . I give criticise Roon when it needs it and don’t feel this. Perhaps it’s how you put things across. But never felt chastised for it.
Perhaps, Roon does have a specific way of organising that does not suit all and those that want their own bespoke curartion.
1 Like
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
16
No, probably not. Roon doesn’t really seem to be about that. They have an idea about what they want to do, and you can go along on their ride, but they’re still driving. If that’s a blocker for you, you’d better escape while you can!
SD, I have not seen hissy fits in this forum lately, unless you regard rebuttals to ones’ claims as a hissy fit.
Like most app developers, Roon does not discuss their future plans. And if they hint at any plans, Roon does not offer up timelines for their development. But I have gained some insights. From 3+ years of forum reading, I think 1) you will never see lists (a la Excel) within Roon except for exporting; 2) classical presentation is about as good as it will get; and 3) uPnP is a non-starter. Oh, and Apple and Spotify will never hook up with Roon.
To make your purchase decision, I would assume that whatever drawbacks you perceive now will persist indefinitely. Then decide whether $13/month is a fair price for what you are getting. Easy.
Roon may never be all that you need nor all things to all people. Roon’s Help Center explains their approach to tagging and metadata it may offer some understanding of their intent and whether you can achieve the result you want.
If you don’t need Roon RAAT then perhaps Plex or Audirvana may provide a suitable alternative.
My library is 1/5 the size of yours but fast scrolling from A-Z has never crashed the app or the core. Your Core Machine is certainly up to spec, mine is on a MacMini i7 2012 16GB and never comes close to being taxed while running 3 or more zones. I assume your Core is only being used as a Roon Core and not controller as well.
I use the app on the desktop of the laptop. (Occasionally the app on my iPhone.) I’m not sure if that means my Roon Core is being used as a controller as well.
I’ve read up on Roon’s approach & that’s all fine & dandy. I just think that when I elect to use my tags, it should bloody well use my tags & not “prefer” them but still basically do what it wants.
I think that I might have some idea of what you are referring to with respect to Roon “ignoring” one’s file tags.
I’m a big jazz fan and often (but not always) I will carefully add all the artists playing on a CD or even on individual tracks in the “artists” tag only to have Roon “identify” the recording and use the incomplete or just plain bad tags and metadata from the identified source. Then Roon says sure you can edit the tracks but only on an individual level, i.e. basically one at time. But the correct is already right there in the file tags. And of course this doesn’t happen if the recording is unidentified by Roon or if the indentified recording has really good metadata.
The thing about Roon is that it is all about the metadata and good metadata is becoming more and more rare with each passing day. Almost all new releases have scant metadata whereas older recordings have plenty of very good metadata. A 50 year old Miles Davis recording will have great metadata while a new release by a new jazz trio won’t even have the members of the trio in the metadata and Roon may or may not show the trio members that are in one’s file tags.
The larger one’s music library (mine is over 900,000 tracks) the more computing horsepower is needed for one’s Roon core. More RAM, SSDs and a better and faster processor. Even with all this one can expect Roon to crash or freeze or slow to a crawl every so often. My solution is to shut down and then restart Roon.
Yes this is a bit annoying but nowhere near as annoying as bad or incomplete metadata. Or the lack of a built-in text file viewer, similar to the way one can view PDFs and image files.
