There is a lot to like about the New Roon. But as one of the “ungrateful sods” who has complained about removing (what certain of us perceive as) major functionalilty, maybe I should explain further about why people are a bit miffed.
Many people have invested ALOT of time investing in using Roon in a certain way (perhaps hundreds of hours to get it “just so” with a big collection) on a daily basis. When a major update comes along and changes the way you can use Roon, effective perhaps eliminating, I don’t know, 25% of the functionality of the system for those people, without really seeming to have any reason to do so, nor giving notice specifically of these changes, it sort of hurts.
Alot.
Rightly or wrongly, in others’ opinions, people feel the need to vent their upset at their, for some, raison d’être being tampered with in a negative way, for them. For no apparent reasons in many cases.
The curse of powerful software is that some people use it in very individual ways that the developers never anticipated. What may seem as a trivial change to the developers, below the announcement threshold, breaks the workflow of those users. The best answer is for those users to explain carefully what went wrong without making assumptions as to why the change happened. It may seem to those users there was no reason for the change, but in fact software this powerful is complex, and a desired change may be easier to make if a seemingly “minor” feature is removed.
That’s the nature of the software beast. We can work cooperatively to help each other tame it, or we can rant into the void. Your choice.
They’ll bring some of the features back, will be interesting to see which ones and in what form.
Designing for the ninety nine percent often harms the one percent work patterns, unfortunately.
I can summarize it this way. I’ve only used it for a few months. I’m technically capable (I’m a product manager of a digital music distribution platform…). And although I have specific needs I’m completely willing to adapt to what’s available.
I just had a 3 day weekend. I spent 16 hours of it figuring things out in Roon and troubleshooting bugs. I’m only typing this now in bed because I can’t get Roon playing in here.
There’s still enough of a unique cool factor to keep my attention (and in time some dust will settle) but I’ve never wrestled with software like this before.
There’s a synergy between bugs, opaque / inconsistent or just inscrutable UX and limited documentation that for me it’s all getting a bit Kafkaesque.
I’m still in it and would love to exercise my PM chops helping to sort it out til I realize I have that job already.
Im personally more worried about the fact that it suddenly fails to see my output devices half of the time since the update. But yeah I’m also not quite convinced by some of the functional changes. One reason people get upset at this software disappointing is the fact that they pay 150$ a year subscription for it, which kindof raises the bar compared to free software like foobar.
Personally I want it to at least play music before anything else though. It’s hard to keep paying for software that doesn’t do what you pay it to do
@Sallah_48 hi -I don’t understand the trivial complaints either-a lot of these people are 1) millennials 2) #1 with OCD 3) #s I&2 with far too complicated systems(or too much time on their hands) and just can’t stand enjoying ROON for what it is- a sometimes complicated system of it’s own but with some wonderful features and ease of having your own library,TIDAL and Qobuz at your fingertips same as and in some ways better than A+3.5(I have both). Take the high road and say congrats/atta guys&gals @ROON for a super job OR as @Fernando_Pereira says rant into the void… for me I am going have a wee dram of Logavulin and a NUB cigar and listen to music !
bobbmd
“Seemingly trivial” is in the eye of beholder. The Roon team provided solutions to the major issues in a short period of time. I was unable to view Roon on my laptop. I contacted support and within a few hours a solution was provided. The non-English language users systems continued to crash; within a day an update was pushed to resolve.
IMO there was a lot of piling on and overreaching “1.8 is a disaster”. I was interested in reading about the actual issues, but I found the comments negative enough that I had to leave the forum for a few days. When I checked back cooler heads prevailed as reality came back into focus.
It is human nature for folks to resist change vice focusing on the hard work the Roon team put into 1.8. Most forget that (IMO) the DSP engine alone is worth the cost of the lifetime subscription, let alone sophisticated music management, seamless integration of Roon and Tidal, and on and on. I am really happy with the 1.8 enhancements and love the spaciousness non cluttered look.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
9
Boy, you sure got that right!
But the trivial nature of the update is kind of disappointing. Over a year since 1.7 and the big deal is… portrait mode on tablets? Not that I’m not liking that, I am. Yeah, yeah, I know, the UI changes: well some are good, some are bad, nobody knows what’s right there. I don’t see them as much of a muchness.
What’s going on with that vaunted support for classical music? I’m still seeing some complaints about that. Wasn’t there some funky graph-traversal interface? I haven’t been able to find that.