@Dick_Vliek while I certainly understand the comment around patience, I think restraint in posting is an antithesis to a healthy community. We need to be declarative as users and make sure that Roon understands what the community is looking for. That’s not to say that they will address everything, but how can they know what our priorities and desires are for the product if we don’t tell them? I’ve bought into the vision of Roon as a lifetime subscriber, but I think @Sallah_48 has made some great points about how the product needs to continuously evolve. A key thing raised I think is “who is the customer”- is it for social users, or audiophiles, or everyone, etc? If you know that, and share it with your user base, you can be much more focused on what the priority is. I sure hope they don’t try to be everything for everyone . . .
I agree mostly, @Sallah_48 certainly made some good points. My point was that regularly a new thread is made where the discussions end up in being similar to other already existing threads.
This might be confusing for new users.
That makes sense, thanks for the clarification. One thread might get a little unwieldy, but I am sure there’s got to be a good way to manage such a thing.
Interesting point Edward. Where does Roon lie in terms of its target market? Another way to analyse it is to look at Roon’s key USPs and I would suggest from there one can define the demographic of the Roon User…
- As a highly effective audiophile software solution enabling “best sound” for a myriad of different equipment and network options.
- To provide a unique “experience” when browsing and listening to music thanks to its creative use of metadata
- To automatically catalogue huge libraries of stored music quickly and effectively, thus taking the drudgery of needing to manually tag music files and folder to a large extent
I think that subscribers to the Roon service are exploiting these USP’s to a larger or lesser extent. I’m more in the USP 2) and 3) camp, so of course seemingly relentless dev in the section 1) department makes me think that Roon is more biased to that market segment 
I’d agree with those USPs and #2 and #3 are what originally drew me to the product. I’ll admit I’ve become much more interested in #1 in the last year or so as the user experience makes you want to take advantage of it wherever you can. I haven’t been as impressed with the advances in #2 since first subscribing so I feel a bit disappointed. I don’t get that “browsing the album liner” feel that was promised, perhaps I’m using it wrong 
Sorry, I did forget a 4th, at least I think it’s a USP; ie the relatively seamless integration with Tidal albums. Love that; it took a while for me to get my head round, but I am trying to more agnostic when it comes to locally stored or tidal material.
Why so? A vpn connection from yor phone to your home server (roon core)should do the trick. Not exactly rocket science.
No. Not exactly rocket science. And not exactly sensible either.
The VPN solution doesn’t work well for much more than browsing a collection. Because a VPN network is configured with a different TCP/IP range in most VPN configurations, endpoint discovery from the core won’t find devices on the VPN network. OpenVPN TAP can get around this but isn’t supported on iOS, not sure about Android.
So all that Roon would have to do is adding an additional IP range to discovery. Doesn’t sound like a big deal.
No big deal and certainly not rocket science…So would Joachim be prepared to offer support for VPN access issues to individual Roon installations across all platforms and OS that Roon can run on?
I work in IT and everyone accesses via VPN through completely locked-down laptops and core infrastructure using a commercial VPN client and it still manages to be troublesome on a regular basis. VPNs also complicate troubleshooting.
If the suggestion is that Roon’s mobile solution depend on a VPN for every user between their home and their current location, I don’t think that is a commercially viable architecture.
I’m an annual subscriber as well and I won’t take the lifetime plunge until I know Roon can be a lifetime solution.
My big concern is to reinvest several years of my “library” into any one service only to find it has changed it’s business model, priced itself out, or become obsolete.
Records
Tapes
CDs
MP3s on WinAmp/MusicMatch
AAC on iTunes
ALAC on iTunes
FLAC
MQA
I’ve really had enough of all of that.
If I’m buying into Roon for life, I want to know it can be the way I browse my music for ~life. To me, I just need to know that:
- Eventually there will be more than one, redundant music service (Tidal + Spotify for example) so that if Tidal and I part ways, my Roon “library” will be able to find my “albums” on Spotify.
- I can take it with me (phone, car, cottage)… after all, that’s the value of digital/cloud/streaming.
- In the event some other media service or file type comes along, Roon will help me integrate that music into my library.
In short I want it to be my personal archive of music so that I don’t have to keep rebuilding it every 5 - 10 years… and forget significant periods of my tastes and discoveries.
Music is a powerful personal memory and I want Roon to be the guardian of those memories.
I’d be happy to provide support. My current rate is 125 Euro per hour plus VAT.
I believe there are only few users that really want to have access to their core while not in the local network. Why not enable access via VPN for these and let them use it on their own risk?
Will try access via Android and let you know how it goes.
Adam,
I certainly understand your position regarding Roon but I was really looking for a better way to listen to my music collection. I recently downloaded the trial and after trying it for a few days, I put down the money for the lifetime subscription. I did a little research and I figured that if Roon lasted 5 years, I would have gotten my money’s worth. While I would like Roon to be a lifetime source for music management, discovery, and play back - a lifetime is more than I expect most things to last. There is risk in all decisions and i’m happy with the choice I made purchasing Roon
For me it is essential that Roon refine what they have and not go chasing rainbows. There is a lot of good software out there that confused change with advancement and I would like for Roon to avoid that trap.
As far as new stuff, I think that Roon partnering with someone on voice control would be something I would like to see. I have been a fan of Yamaha for years and they are partnering with Amazon/Alexa/Echo. I have added Amazon Music unlimited at $8/month and will be trying this out as soon as available with the Yamaha/Alexa system. This will be a cheap experiment for me and if it does not pan out I will move on to something else. However, if Roon were to get involved with a project like this I would seriously consider buying new hardware (if needed) because I think that Roon would have a synergistic effect to many types of music “systems”.
It will be pretty easy for Roon to keep me happy for years to come. It is far better than the competition . . . at least anything that I have tried.
Hmmm… I guess our posts really illustrate the internal debate that must be happening at Roon.
It cannot be all things to all people and yet it could be many things… which things should it be.
For my part, I think voice integration falls in an entirely different bucket. There are apps (IFTTT) and echosystems (Siri, Alexa, Google home) and universal remote controls (physical or app based… like Harmony & SimpleRemote, Control4, etc)…
All of those guys need to get the “voice controlled home automation, including audio” issue sorted. While I’m all for Roon making sure they can integrate with whatever standard emerges, I wouldn’t want them to get too vested in something that is peripheral to their service, at the expense of the service itself.
And the service itself is:
- An integrated music database
- A brilliant GUI to control music in the home, and
- An audio streaming protocol that is ~not open source, but perhaps more hardware agnostic than elements of the competition (Bluesound, Sonos… requiring branded hardware) but not others (DLNA, Bluetooth… pretty ubiquitous) with Airplay (somewhere in the middle)
To me the common theme behind all of these elements above is a FREEDOM to explore and consume music. I would want their major initiatives to enhance/expand that ethos. Which is why:
- Mobility, and
- Lack of reliance on a single streaming service
Are key to me. You mention Amazon music. What if you build a library there, 1000 of albums, playlists, etc… only to find it go the way of the dodo-bird, or price itself out. You lose a piece of your life with those 1000 albums and will have to rebuild it.
Think about Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, etc… the content you can stream and build into your library is constantly changing… move to another country… it changes still.
My biggest concern is that we as consumers are being steered toward a “rental” of copyrights, rather than ownership. That’s fine and many of us are doing it willingly… but wouldn’t it be great if Roon allowed some insurance that my rental of a copyright, which becomes a part of my integrated music collection… were indexible across an alternate service should my relationship with Tidal cease (or be ceased for me).
Isn’t that what a good database does? Make data retrievable?
Roon are not responsible for your business relationship with your streaming provider. They are an interface, they have no obligation to protect you should that provider fail you. Clearly the best answer is choice so with luck others will allow Roon to integrate properly.
Henry,
Where did I imply Roon responsibility for Tidal?
I agree with you that choice is important and that IS on Roon to provide (I can’t negotiate the contract).
The fact of the matter is that there is a co-dependency btwn Roon and Tidal. And part of Roon’s service is that they want me to “build my library” in their proprietary app. And I want to do that too.
An integrated library is a major part of the value proposition. Right now a single streaming provider and (consequently) an inability to cross reference to an alternate provider puts this concept at risk.
I’m very happy with Roon, I’m only saying that to me it is an annual subscription and multi-stream service cross referencing would convince me it is worth the commitment
Yes EXACTLY!
Similar concerns were expressed in my long post a while back:
My concerns were a little different – the work it takes to modify metadata and get Roon to work with my collection like I want it to – but it is essentially the same point. My concern is that the work I put in is not portable either in or out (either would work and both directions are not necessary) and thus I would lose all of that work if or when Roon stops as a service, or they change direction in a way that I cannot follow, or if they are acquired by someone and the software is tied to something I don’t want. But that same concern applies if Tidal disappears or stops its integration with Roon.
Roon says that their goal is to take away the need to do that work. But I do not see that as realistic. Roon is light years away from there being no need to work with the collection and the library to function as many dedicated music hobbyists want it to work. So are all media players - this is not a ding on
Roon – but other media players are much more inter-operable by working better with custom metadata in files.
Even if Roon were to distribute a final version of the software that just works as they go out of business, I don’t want to use an unsupported service that isn’t integrated with anything and which will get more and more stale over time.
One way to reduce the concern about the instability of a Tidal partnership alone is to continue to work on integrating with other streaming services to provide more choices and more “Plan Bs.” Another, which I would really like whether or not more such integrations are done, would be to have Roon Focus be capable of Focusing on custom metatag data within the files, since we could then put our customizations in these tags, and then “import” them into Roon, and thus preserve this work if Roon is not a permanent fixture.
And yes, it would be great to find a way to make our favorites selections within Tidal portable to other streaming services so as to preserve the whole library.
Roon is great now in many areas, and shows great potential in others. But I don’t really love how proprietary and non-inter-operable it is at present. I know there are development priorities, etc., but I fear that users really have not grappled with the chaos that would be created by Roon failing as a business or the Tidal integration ceasing to exist at present. There’s no Plan B.
I am experiencing the alienation you are describing at the moment as I have been forced to abandon Tidal really because it’s not stable enough of a platform to use consistently for me on my PC and Android devices. It’s cutting out, stuttering, mainly on my Android player. I’m not sure if that’s Tidal’s fault or the player’s but it’s somewhat irrelevant as it’s taken me down the Qobuz route which is like a breath of fresh air, simply because it works consistently (for me).
I really am saddened to lose that interface I had for my Tidal albums within Roon. All the work I’d put into amassing and curating my Tidal collection is null and void and I just am not using Roon much as a result, mainly as I’m building up my parallel library in Qobuz’s ecosystem at the moment
The streaming issue is very important as we, as consumers, are being forced down a route of dependancy on such services and what Adam_B suggests is a really important aspect for the future: ie to offer some kind of indexation across services when/if further services are available within Roon of course
There are services which allow migration of playlists between streaming services and I have had success with this migrating a 5000-odd track playlist from Spotify to Tidal, but there’s a lot of randomness in the choosing of tracks from albums->greatest hits->erroneous live examples of the tracks, etc. Ie it was far from perfect, but it did certainly do the job, so to speak.
I would agree that work needs to be put in place to secure the work which goes into curating a collection, either local, or streaming, as this is not insignificant.