Would love to see a ‘Zone Manager’ type screen - a single place for zone; selection for control, transfers, grouping/ungrouping, volume control, pause all, ‘what’s playing’.
I love zones (even though I only have two now I plan to have more), but this aspect doesn’t feel very intuitive to me at all. On the iPhone version even less so. Transferring whats currently playing from one zone to another for example is quite convoluted depending on what zone the iPhone is currently set to when you pick it up - the information is right there on the zones popup window, but you can’t interact beyond pausing.
I’d also really like group names to be saved (rather than lost when they’re ungrouped).
The Queue and the Zone (see Glossary) are separate but inter-related “objects” in Roon architecture.
Every Zone has a Queue, but Queues are transferable between Zones via the dropdown menu on the Queue screen, referred to by @rugby.
The Queue screen has Volume Normalization, Cross-fade and Radio controls because these parameters are set for a particular Queue and will follow that Queue when transferred to another Zone or Group. As other DSP features are added they will usually be managed on the Queue screen for the same reason, but there may be exceptions that are better set by Zone (Room EQ) or endpoint.
Great that it’s fast and convenient for you Rugby…
Let’s take zone transfer. It’s separated from other zone controls, and it’s not obvious that it’s at the top of the queue page - especially if you’re not viewing the queue at the time. Now let’s say you’re sitting in zone 2 and your iPhone (for arguments sake) is already set to that zone. Somethings playing in zone 1 downstairs and you want to transfer it to zone 2 upstairs. You have to set the phone to zone1. Then go to the queue page. Then transfer to zone 2. Then set your phone back to zone 2 to do anything else.
But at that very first zone selection pop up, you could see what was playing on both zones but couldn’t interact other than to pause zones.
Grouping gets lost when you ungroup too. I just think if zones get looked at in the future, zone control/management could be made a lot more obvious and intuitive.
Personally, I don’t think users wanting to transfer from zone to zone think about that logic personally - if I want music to go from zone A to zone B, the fact that it’s a queue is sort of irrelevant. It could equally be an obvious zone management page where you can quickly swap zones around.
As a test, give a stranger your iPhone with Roon remote and ask them to swap music from one zone to another for you. Then wait… That’s what I did watching someone try.
Ahh, My misunderstanding. I thought you were looking for how to just transfer zones. I agree that multi-zone management should get some review; especially with the explosion in end points that 1.2/RAAT has brought.
Currently, on the phone app you have to press the volume button which brings up the Zone/Volume info screen and then you have to press the zone button to get to what is now the current Roon zone screen. My suggestion would be to make it a long press to go directly to the zone screen.
I quite agree. I couldn’t understand why various controls were tucked away in the Queue until @brian explained the distinction between Zone and Queue to me. At that time (pre 1.2) it was less relevant, but with the wider variety of Zones or Groups it has come into its own.
The whole Queue screen still feels arbitrary to me rather than intuitive, but perhaps that’s partly a consequence of abstracting Queues from Zones.
Persistent named Groups sounds like a good idea, well worth exploring.
Also, the actual zone transfer drop down is on the Now Playing screen and NOT Queue in the Phone UI. So that is a bit of a disconnect between the phone and the desktop application actually.
I’ve been thinking about this more this morning (sad I know)…
I’m wondering what the advantage is of having a distinction between zones and queues from a users perspective in this context. Since (as far as I’m aware) there is only one queue at a time per zone, aren’t they essentially the same thing?
Actually, the radio setting caught me out last night in fact and I couldn’t work it out, but your post above has enlightened me. The thing is, it’s not what I wanted - when I added a new HQplayer test output last night, I was surprised that the radio kicked in at the end of play, because I’d already set it to ‘off’. Why would I want that to change because I was in a new output or zone or queue?
Volume levelling is less obvious to me. If I was listening in a ‘lesser zone’, like the bedroom, I might have chosen to have volume levelling (I never do personally, but I might I suppose), but transferring down to the main hifi I might or might not want it there, so I can see this one staying with the queue being most sensible choice in leu of any zone globals for these things. Actually it’s a bit OT, but I would prefer a setting to make volume levelling kick in ONLY when the radio feature starts - at that point I’m not actively managing the music so am happy to let the system take over as I might be somewhere else in the house. If I then stopped radio and started my own music, I would then want volume levelling to disable. A bit like autopilot in a plane, or cruise control in a car (bad analogies but, you know, I’m trying here). I;d be happy for these things to be set in global preferences myself: volume levelling follows queue on zone change - yes/no. etc And/or in zone setup: i.e. zone volume levelling setting overrides queue - yes/no. enable radio at end of playback yes/no.
On the zone/grouped volume setting, I’d have to check but I also seem to recall not being able to control individual volumes in a group?
[quote=“hifi_swlon, post:9, topic:11130”]
but I would prefer a setting to make volume levelling kick in ONLY when the radio feature starts
[/quote]+1 on that request.
