Going a Roon One More Time

Mike

Mike

Audioshark
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As James Taylor sings on his wonderful 1985 That's Why I'm Here album, I'm going around one more time....with Roon.

When Roon was first quietly announced in the back pages of some audio magazine in 2015, I remember signing up as a beta tester. The former founders of Sooloos know a thing or two about building a sexy interface. I remember getting the beta up and running and frankly, it showed promise, but I wasn't impressed. I remember muttering something like, "I'll check back on these guys in a couple of years."

Well, here we are, a couple of years later. Earlier this week, I signed up as a Roon reseller, installed Roon on my MacBook Pro running 2.9 Ghz, Intel Core i7 with 8GB of RAM. As a proper Roon endpoint, I am using the Ayre QX-5 Twenty (connected via ethernet).

Install was a snap. No, seriously, a snap. If I'm being picky, there are probably too many options, but with a little patience you get through the various choices for backing up your music on a schedule, etc.

You select the directories where your music is located (locally or network) and Roon immediately starts building it's library. I especially like the fact that Roon works diligently to find all meta data - including album artwork and lyrics for your music collection. You then point Roon toward the Roon endpoint (Ayre QX-5 Twenty in my case) and you're good to go. Could it seriously be this easy? Well, so far, the answer is a resounding - yes!

I plan on testing Roon with the Lumin U1 and A1 over the next week as well.

At this stage, Roon has been building its directory with my music collection for 24 hours and it's not yet finished.

I tried an initial listen, but there were too many drop outs and hiccups. I suspect it was because my Macbook Pro was busy with processing the library.

I will report back once the library build is finished on listening and living with Roon.

But so far, so good.

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Your background processing shouldn't cause issues with playback if you have the analysis set to throttled. You have a decent cpu, not low end by any means.

Of course if you are trying to do all this over wifi that's a different story.
 
Dr Tone said:
Your background processing shouldn't cause issues with playback if you have the analysis set to throttled. You have a decent cpu, not low end by any means.

Of course if you are trying to do all this over wifi that's a different story.
Click to expand...

Ethernet. And it is jittery while Roon is tackling my library. Once it's done, I'll report back.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
A MacBook Pro roon core isn't going to cut it Mike. Get a dedicated core computer
 
Mike said:
Ethernet. And it is jittery while Roon is tackling my library. Once it's done, I'll report back.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't be. You are going to continually have problems with the various things Roon does if it's already stuttering.

What's your storage solution?
 
Dr Tone said:
It shouldn't be. You are going to continually have problems with the various things Roon does if it's already stuttering.

What's your storage solution?
Click to expand...

Synology 1812+. 8 x 8TB WD red spec drives.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Dr Tone said:
It shouldn't be. You are going to continually have problems with the various things Roon does if it's already stuttering.

What's your storage solution?
Click to expand...

It's finished, so it's fine now.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Mike said:
Synology 1812+. 8 x 8TB WD red spec drives.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

What does your network load look like when trying to play and scan at the same time?

Did you confirm that background and on-demand scanning are set to throttled? Settings->Library.
 
Dr Tone said:
What does your network load look like when trying to play and scan at the same time?

Did you confirm that background and on-demand scanning are set to throttled? Settings->Library.
Click to expand...

It's done loading, so it's good now.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Make sure you have the DSP Engine disabled for every audio output device you configure. The default is ON, rather unfortunately.
Click on the gears next to the device name, and choose "DSP Engine", then disable it. By having it on, you get worse sound, and more CPU usage.


cheers,
alex
 
asiufy said:
Make sure you have the DSP Engine disabled for every audio output device you configure. The default is ON, rather unfortunately.
Click on the gears next to the device name, and choose "DSP Engine", then disable it. By having it on, you get worse sound, and more CPU usage.


cheers,
alex
Click to expand...

It is.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I quite like Roon and use it extensively together with HQPlayer.
However, how it deals with classical music really bothers me, especially with compilations. It is most definitely sub par.
Nowadays there are many of those on the market, like complete works of Maria Callas or Richter and son on. They often add up to 20 or 50 CDs (sometimes even more). Most of the times Roon recognizes those publications, but if I click on the album, I only see a long list of Disc 1-50, without the possibility of choosing a particular work or composer. Let's say, however, that I remember that the particular Beethoven's piano concerto that I wish to listen to is on Disc 18, 19 or 20. Very often, if I click on any particular Disc, although the work is identified correctly, there is no composer tag which often makes it very difficult to choose from the library properly. On top of that, it is not possible to enter tag manually for single tracks or a whole CD with composer's name. Even if I do a "Beethoven piano concerto" search, that particular work I want cannot be found because it has no composer tag attached to it.
In short, classical compilations in Roon are a pain. It is better, if possible, to cut them down to single publication; however, it implies a considerable amount of manual work on the database.
 
bibo,

The idea with Roon is that you won't have to find in which CD that particular piano concerto is, just do a search for it, and it'll show you all the versions/performances of that piano concerto you have, including that one buried in Disc 18 of that compilation :)

The key is keeping all the metadata of your files correct, so Roon identifies which tracks belong to which piece/work.

Since I'm still learning about classical music in general, it's so easy to search for a given piece and see all the performances I have currently available (+ all the stuff on Tidal as well!), so it's very easy to compare the different performances and recordings.


cheers,
alex
 
asiufy said:
bibo,

The idea with Roon is that you won't have to find in which CD that particular piano concerto is, just do a search for it, and it'll show you all the versions/performances of that piano concerto you have, including that one buried in Disc 18 of that compilation :)

The key is keeping all the metadata of your files correct, so Roon identifies which tracks belong to which piece/work.

Since I'm still learning about classical music in general, it's so easy to search for a given piece and see all the performances I have currently available (+ all the stuff on Tidal as well!), so it's very easy to compare the different performances and recordings.


cheers,
alex
Click to expand...
I agree that it should be the norm in Roon. Unfortunately, for classical music the metadata in the database is often incomplete. Therefore, if you do a search by composer for a particular work, you probably are not going to find it if it was part of a compilation.
Furthermore, personally I may want to begin from a musician/singer/conductor and then make a selection of one of his/her works ...but if the works are not listed singularly, how can I make a selection?! :)
 
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