Why I will not buy Roon

Roon Software Discussion
174

Markus,

first let me thank you for your well thought out and well written post. It is, and I am not kidding, one of the highest quality posts I have read in a very long time.

I completely understand your frustration and share many of your issues. To me, Roon is like democracy. It’s a really stupid system but it’s the best we got if you can make it work for you. I have been collecting CDs since about 1985 or 1986 … it all started around that time. You can probably imagine that, over time, I amassed an amount of CDs that is close to impossible to manage physically. A very long time ago I started ripping CDs. And then did it again and again and then again because formats and quality kept getting better. Today I own about 12.000+ CDs. some of them very rare and impossible to buy, others common as dirt.

You are absolutely right, it’s my musical PAST and I value it … A LOT.

My collection has about 230.000 tracks. Impossible to manage, impossible to handle the discs physically. When I discovered Roon not long ago it was like the greates gift by the god of music for me. And even though Roon made A LOT of mistakes organizing my collection, it got 95% or more right.

Granted, those 5% still dwarf most music collections but … to me it is invaluable. So much so that I purchased Roon 3 days after I first tried it. So much so that, a few days later, I purchased a Nucleus+ to feed my Cambridge Edge NQ. If you have a collection this big at some point you actually stop listening to music because it becomes so tedious. Roon allows me to surf my music collection, travel back into the 80s and just enjoy the music again. It is no longer about contemplating what to listen to and where to find it and then getting it only to find out that my mood had changed and I felt like listening to something else.

Now, for me Roon radio is a feature that I do not really need or want. But so far, within the “boundaries” of my collection, it worked fairly well. But that is probably because it can only chose from a limited number of songs to begin with.

Roon has it’s flaws for sure. I experienced your EDM problem but there is an easy fix for it. Two actually. You could just edit the tags so Roon treats it as one collection/album (with multiple discs if you like) or you can just manually group all these songs in whichever way you want them. It’s not obvious how to do this at first but you can edit pretty much every detail about every album/collection. Make it a various artists album with, say, 100 discs and group the songs up in whatever way you prefer. You can do this with Roon. It can not get everything right and it will never be perfectly accurate.

It works for me because it offered so many benefits that I just had to make it work. There is nothing like it.

If Roon isn’t for you that’s fine. It can’t be a perfect solution for everybody. But maybe you too can make it work for you if the benefits outweigh the flaws for you. What is stopping you from using Roon to manage your musical past and Tidal to find new stuff that will enrich your present ?

Jens

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175

Just interested for discussion sake…what is the difference between the Valence algorithms approach versus how Pandora chooses music for the listener. I was always impressed on how Pandora made great classic jazz and smooth jazz music for my tastes. Did Roon Labs give any consideration to trying to license Pandora algorithms? (Not even sure if this would be agreed to by Pandora)…

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176

7 posts were split to a new topic: Nucleus+ and Large 230K+ Track Libraries

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That’s on you and nobody else.

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Feedback is a gift …

Hopefully the topics, thoughts and ideas that get discussed in these forms find there way to a list for future enhancements and updates.

We all have different wants and needs when it comes to Roon.

Hopefully you find something that works better for you Markus.

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180

Probably you didn’t read his post. Probably you didn’t even read his frist sentence. It’s all perfectly explained.

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181

I read it. I didn’t say I didn’t understand what he wrote. I will never understand the why.

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185

100% in agreement!
To blame Roon for problems often caused by settings elsewhere is shortsighted. Moreover, beefs with picayune matters trivializes the complaint.

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I have used Roon for some years now, and Roon radio is great for me.

Its great that people tell why a software is not for them, and that is fair. The problem for me is that i have seen alot of post like this on Roon over the years, and people expect that the software will work as they want, and are not willing to make adjustment themself. Then they loose before they try.

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187

I agree with what you have said. I was responding to the OP and @mitr about a way to respond to Roon without “ruffling feathers”. @Mike_O_Neill replied that he had actually PM’d Roon about his dissatisfaction before he left (and came back) and Roon asked him to take his concerns to the community. So I’ve learned a lot about Roon from this thread. Thanks.

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188

I think a 14 day free trial is long enough to see if Roon will even work with your current hardware. However, to really learn enough about how Roon works and what it can and cannot do takes much longer, IMHO. Maybe it would be good if Roon had a 90 day paid trial for $30 for first time users.

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66 posts were split to a new topic: Roon Radio and its choice of tracks

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Reposting my message here again as it seemes to included in the Rmoved Radio related posts

191

Me too red. Additionally, our libraries is what I like :grinning:

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I like perhaps the option to offer a $30 / 90 Day trial with a credit to the full year or automated roll over billed for full year if that’s even manageable in the Roon system. But that’s I guess up to Roon.

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That was my idea, so I’ll further suggest that it would not be complicated with a roll-over and credit. My thought is 14 day free trial. If you’re not convinced, buy a 90 day trial for $30. If you’re now convinced, but an annual subscription or lifetime subscription.

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John
I don’t think Roon is like the grocery store.
I think Roon is more like your local artisanal butcher.
This differentiation is very important.
If I discovered an issue with the binding of my butchers ground beef, I would tell them. And intellectually curious people who care passionately about what they do would really want to know if someone who was also intellectually curious and passionate had an issue. Sure, maybe not everyone likes a tightly packed patty, but some do. I’m not sure why I am bothering to engage you, but what bothers me, these days, is how everyone seems to think in very binary terms, endeavoring to shut anyone down whose approach to communication differs from your standards (those who stay are allowed to express opinion but those who plan to leave may not).

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197

I don’t mean to speak for John, but I think the exasperation is less about the suggestions the poster has for Roon, and more generally with these “THIS IS GOODBYE!” threads.

You see these in many forums; it’s not just here.

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The grocery store example was me being factious.

Here is a better example. Your artisanal butcher example is probably not applicable. This is your local and regular butcher. If you got something you didn’t like you would go back and tell them since you have a relationship. Here is a better example. You go to a new restaurant. It’s highly regarded. You get a bad meal. You leave and don’t go back. You don’t go back there and tell them why you are never going back. You just go somewhere else. I don’t believe that anyone goes up to the manager upon leaving to say I won’t be back. Maybe some of you do. I just leave and never come back.

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199

Good point.