They don’t need to. Roon runs perfectly fine all in one from just a PC or laptop. Many seem to have forgotten about this.
Out of my three friends that are really into their music:
One loves his vinyl and C.D’s, he likes the experience and the feel of the material product.
One is not bothered by quality and is happy with Spotify and mp3’s.
The other couldn’t justify the expense just to listen through his Sonos system and the he is happy with the apps he uses, he would also rather spend the money on supporting the artists by going to their gigs.
My cousin’s in this camp. He would be an ideal candidate for Roon. As obsessed and OCD about music as I am, but his OCD extends to a pathological refusal to pay for recorded music nor pay for software 
Roon isn’t for everyone nor does it strive to be. I have friends that, if asked, would say they love music, but put very little into audio gear nor a music collection. If they stream music, they use free sources or FM radio and could care less about high-res audio. It’s just not a priority for them.
If I examine why I love Roon, it’s because I love music, I love collecting music, I have high-end audio gear, I am computer-literate, and I had enough disposable funds to buy the lifetime license.
I’m certain there is still quite a sizable audience of potential Roon customers out there that think about and value music and audio as many of us do. Perhaps they are not computer literate and just spin CDs or vinyl. Or perhaps they simply feel they can’t afford it right now. And I suspect there are many that still don’t know about Roon or have yet to give it a try.
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Friends of mine dont use Roon due to the lack of ISO SACD support.
Most of them stay with JRiver or Audirvana.
In my opinion the problem is that Roon lost its focus.
Roon did a great start as software for music lovers with its rich metadata and visual appealing user interface.
But unfortunaltly there is not much developement in this direction in the last two years. Instead Roon is focusing mostly on features for equipment lovers with things like Dynamic Range display, DSP, MQA aso
For all the equipment fetishists it never will be enough and there exists other players with a rich functionality in this area, so to give my friends a recommentation for Roon, Roon have to remember their initial strengths and focus again on features for music lovers. As long as I have to use Spotify to discover new releases of my favorite artists and give me recommentations for new music based on my listening history, Roon is on a wrong way in my opinion.
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I understand what you mean, I don’t care about MQA, DSP etc. either. There are lots of shortcomings (tagging, playlists) and inconsistencies in the user interface, most of them discussed in several topics. To me it feels like the balance (development) between the first (MQA etc.) and the second (UX etc.) is not right at the moment.
I hopped on the bus mainly of the sophisticated way you can browse your Library, find connections between artists, rich metadata & multiroom.
My friends do like music (visit concerts and use streaming services) but they don’t see added value in Roon.
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The problem for me is that other than technical excellence the promise of sophistication hasn’t materialised, at all. Roon does nothing for me where exploring my library is concerned, it’s point and shoot, just like iPeng/LMS. Roon knows stuff about your music a mere mortal couldn’t hope to know, but it does very little to enable a journey of discovery. I keep hoping that it will change, but it’s a good thing I’m not holding my breath.
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I can browse for hours in Roon, with a beer or two, but that is some kind of point and shoot indeed. Maybe (never used it) MusicIP in LMS does even a better job in exploring. I hope (and expect) changes in user experience in the future.
I still love the Roon interface and ease of use. Maybe its gotten to the point “we users” are getting impatient for a new release and some new features to tinker with.
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Nope, that’s not it. I don’t need more features, most of what I posted here still applies:
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I am a 2nd year, yealy subcriber. I am a Roon convert for sure, but I have more or less given up making feature requests as coming up to 15months in, there’ve been no notable ergonomic changes other than the controversial Play button updates, etc. These were great and refreshing to see, but otherwise nada.
Thus I am using Roon without further expectation in this regard, but check the forums now and again for any hint of upgrades to come. I’ve lost count of the frustrating little things that could be updated with each release, things which would make lifer easier to use Roon on a daily basis and would make us all think “yeah, these guys are really listening to us and moving forward”. I know Im going to get flamed for being impatient and such, but honestly Im past caring, waiting around for such implementations. It’s just not worth the effort to type it all in these pages and keep banging on the closed doors.
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The exploration I’m referring to isn’t the MusicIP / Roon Radio kind. As an aside, I think Roon has improved considerably in this dept but without understanding something about the acoustic properties of the underlying tracks I don’t think it’ll approach what MusicIP does.
The exploration I’m referring to is Roon proactively presenting me with views and means of browsing my library that go way beyond the traditional Artist, Album, Composer, Composition, Genre browses offered in some way, shape or form in most music players. Every artist, song, album , etc. in your library is an amalgam of various participants that came together to make it possible. From a data perspective they can all be treated as objects with certain attributes. Wouldn’t it be nice to select a band / artist / song etc., and have a mind-map like view of its constituent parts appear - band members, albums, singles, related artists etc and suddenly you have a smorgasbord of stuff to pick from iro where you want to go. The traditional views of things hidden in lists may be appropriate as you drill down to the individual constituent objects etc. but they don’t lend themselves to discovery or sparking thoughts like, oh yeah… damn, I’d completely forgotten about X, which I love and haven’t listened to in ages, let’s take a trip together…
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I have to say, I have some sympathy with your view.
I seriously think y’all should take a look at what we have got in our Roon software systems! Of course there always will be small issues to fix but i could easily live with what Roon is today. Yes, i’d gladly buy it again if this is the end of development. (It needs maintenance to function in an everchanging world though)
MQA? Nah, just another middle man trying to grab a fortune…
DSP/upsampling? Nah, get your acoustics done instead. Otherwise its more of silk purse=sows ear…
Roon on the go? Nice, but i now i can survive a few hours/days/weeks away from my thingys and enjoy the experience.
etc etc
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We already do, and will continue to, but it’s become an appliance - point and shoot from my smartphone. It no longer warrants a tablet because screen size aside, it provides no additional utility. Nobody’s saying Roon isn’t good, it could just be sooooooo much better.
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Anyone tried Discovr? Development seems to have slowed but I used to find it pretty useful. Of course it relies on quality data underneath.
It would be neat to see connections between artists but also more granular than the artist. For example two artists are connected by certain albums that are similar rather than blanket saying the artists are similar. Or linked by musicians. So Bruce Springsteen links to Lady Gaga. Seems. Weird. But Clarence Clemens played with both (but not all tracks - so give me the ones they did, and explain to me why the link (Clarence). I may decide I don’t like Lady Gaga but thus Clarence guy deserves more investigation…
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Right, Evan, It’s not that we think Roon is bad, it’s just become unnecessary to partake in the ongoing development discussions, for the miniscule reward vs the time and effort to highlight issues or seriously important and minor-to-implement tweaks or additions, it really is just not worth the time and effort. That sounds far more negative than it really is. Still loving Roon, and still loving music, lol.
Like I love Tidal, use it daily on my Cellphone, there are loads of things Id like to see done better, features added, but Im simply not going to write to Mr Z to lobby for changes either; am realising Roon, despite the seeming interaction with staff, is the same. It’s a sort of Grand Illusion, lol.
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I thought I’d dump this here as a very rough illustration of what could be done. Objects are organised as nodes and all are contextual and collapsible/expandable or take you to a new screen based on context. Ignore the ugly, Roon can make it pretty like only Roon knows how, this is just intended to illustrate an idea/ different idiom for exploring a library. If you’ve used mind maps you’ll know what I mean.
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