Roon users - Can we have your opinion?

Hey Joe,

I use Roon on my Antipodes DS server. I like it so far. Really nice job of integrating different sources together (hard drive/tidal/etc).

Sounds great as well.
 
I've been thinking about this as well, but just not sure its worth the $119 a year or even the Life time charge. I mean Jriver has been working for me for years and the Lumin and its app has been handling Tidal with ease. So I'm up in the air so to speak.
 
I tried it but can't see the value in something that is really just a player and search engine.

I used to have Tidal but once I dropped it in favour of a service the whole family could use there wasn't any point in having Roon, if Roon took on more services like Spotify, Amazon or Google then I might, just might try it again.

Note that when I tried Roon, I had access to a 3 month free trial to both Roon and Tidal, but I just uninstalled both after about a week as I just didn't see what it really gave me over how I ran my Raspberry Pi setup with MoOde software.

I'm cynical about the lifetime sub as well, as it could really stop at any time they decide, if you add up the costs of $500 lifetime sub plus say Tidal at $240 a year (1 person use) then it really becomes quite expensive compared to my current setup at $100 for the Pi and DAC and $35 (6 people sharing the $15 a month cost) a year for Google Music, albeit at 320k instead of lossless via Tidal.

As for Roon searching and finding lyrics, info and linking to other artists yeah it's good, but I can do that via Googling and finding new artists myself.

Please note that this just my Opinion and others will disagree with it and rightly so, we each want different things.

Try a trial of Roon, is easy enough to do so so well worth a try to see what you think.
 
I have probably half a dozen streaming services and need to figure out how to best integrate them with Roon. I have no issues with Lumin but if I change my dac in the future, I don't know if using them will be as simple.
 
For Tidal the interface is best I have ever used.

Playing music in my library not so much. I have many albums and tracks that are WAV files and do not have tags. Not having the option of a folder view I think is just crazy, especially when the code required to add that is stupid easy.

If all your music is AIFF or FLAC and properly tagged then go for it.

I would pay yearly mind you as things change fast in this business.
 
Earlier I was a bit thrown away by their price. I am relatively new Roon user and after biting the bullet all I can say now is I can't live without it. These days I use it with conjunction with HQP up-sampling and hence just uses it for library management and front end user interface - both of them are so superb that there is none that come even close. If I do not use up-sampling, I prefer to use Roon directly as backend and without HQP. Compared to other playback software, like MDP/DLNA/Squeezelight (I have compared them all), the audio quality of Roon is just superb. The other big benefit of Roon (which I don't use at the moment) is its capable of multi zone playback and very easy of use. A decent (not a fancy audiophile one) computer is all is needed for Roon to work smoothly. All in all, its worth every penny :)
 
What music do you listen to, Joe? How large is your music collection? Have you meticulously edited all your metadata?

If the answer is:

Classical
Very large
No

... then Roon is a nightmare.
 
I'm trying the trial right now and with Tidal it's pretty impressive but I have a long way to go. My music tastes are varied, don't have a huge collection and am terrible with being organized and meticulous re: metadata and my collection in general. I get a bit lazy.

I'd love Deezer support as well and at least it seems that I can add the URL to other music services but it will be quite cumbersome.


My system always seems to be in a state of flux and need to change that. Not sure I'm disciplined enough to make it work.
 
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I'm experimenting with Roon, the all in one version for OS X. It's giving me a great taste for what it can do. Tidal integration is superb. Having other streaming services, they seem to be left out in the cold. At least with my modified Sonos, other services are smoothly integrated but the feature set is a bit more limited. That's not a problem because I still have full access to that music on Sonos. Give me a Sonos with perfect digital output and the ability to pass hi res and I could be super happy.

I love some aspects of Roon and some not so much. I don't know if I'll continue or not. I'm using my LIO-8 with a Mac mini and Roon and having the full remote iPad experience is a godsend for that application because the Mac mini is headless. With a Lumin, none of this is even necessary. I need to weigh my options going forward.
 
I have a single box Roon player which also allows me to burn cds, download hd tracks and for me interface is better than jriver. I also really love the ability to use hd internet radio stations. I love jazz standards(wnyc-the Jonathan channel) and the quality is outstanding-no hiss just sublime sound.

Nick
 
My friend has a complicated digital playback system, using a Lampzator DAC. I was at his home and we were able to compare Roon to two other services, strictly for sound quality. My favorite was Roon but my friend did feel it was more complicated that what he was already using and complained as well about the subscription.

Sorry I don't have more detail on the services but I still spin old school so don't want to misspeak. I know his main thing is JRiver

Here's some info on my friend's playback scheme: So you were listening to
WSY2K12, AudiophileOptimizer, Fidelizer, ROON, and HQPlayer With microrendu as NAA.
 
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I am also using the trial version of Roon but ran into some issues with it during the Lampizator GTG yesterday. It kept disappearing off the network. I was using it Roon Core/Server and I have this funny feeling that the server does not run as a service on Windows system but requires you to manually start it. I did like the interface and ability to integrate with Tidal.
 
I absolutely love Roon... so much so that I bought a lifetime sub. I use Roon headless server on my dedicated server and Roon controller on my Surface Pro. Best remote control application I have tried. I also have JRiver and at one time picked up an Android tablet and JRemote to see if the remote functions were acceptable to me. Roon is just better.... BTW you can use any machine as a controller, ipad and Android I have heard but never tried, Surface Pro or any laptop for that matter.
 
Randy,
How did you get around of starting Roon automatically when it is running on head less server? I am assuming you are running it on WinOS.

TIA
 
The PC I use I modified to use only as a music server. The Headless Server install automatically starts Roon with the computer, which is what I want. There is a server only version of Roon that is available on their website. One of the options is to automatically launch at start up. I do not control Roon on the server itself, but instead I have Roon controller installed on my Surface Pro 3 and it controls all the Roon functionality.

To do any type of maintenance or "work" if needed on the machine I use remote desktop from my laptop. 99.99% of the time this works fine, but if I ever need it I do have a monitor, keyboard and mouse that I can hook up to the machine.
 
I tried room in one of its early iterations and gave up rather quickly. I understand that many improvements have been made and that some power users will find it right up their alley. I have not ruled it out for the future but here are my thoughts on the "early" version.
-It messed up all of my SooLoos files when Roon indexed them.
-At that time I would have need a PC to reconfigure my Meridian endpoints (turn on and off). I am only a Mac user.
-I don't need the many capabilities of Roon for searching my music. I could care less who played on other albums or a listing of all of a whether I own them or not. I have my Sooloos set up to easily find and select what I want to hear.
-I was not "easy" to quickly set up an album to play or create playlists.
-At the time it was too computer centric. 95% of my listening is done using the Meridian iPad app. I only want to need a laptop to load CD's to my MC200.

If you have your music on a NAS, computer, or server and don't mind having a computer near you. Roon is powerful.
 
For me, depending on if I update my dac I think I can easily be swayed by Roon because my trial is going rather well. I may opt for the lifetime subscription unless my first year can be rolled into the lifetime subscription. I really want to get away from a full fledged computer in my room so I need to do a little more research as to how to better integrate room into my system.
 
Joe,
When I signed up for the trial I am 99% sure that I saw an option to migrate from 1yr subscription to lifetime.
 
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