Roon absolutely sucks for classical

amirm

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I had a 30 minute breakfast last week with Enno Vandemeer and Rob Darling and talked about Roon's roadmap for the future.

A big development that is coming, is a completely reworked database, which will be "extensible".

What this means is that in the future Roon will be able to add additional fields for meta data, fields for user information to hold information such as HQ Player filter settings for each track !

Roon are very aware that their current database structure does not handle classical music well. The new database structure will allow Roon to be one of the best classical music managers, sooner or later, and I would predict sooner :)
Most excellent. I hope more people would support them so that they continue this development. It is the only competently designed, music-focused, player out there. It needs all the money we can send their way to get the full feature set for us.
 
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hvbias

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I am curious what other primarily classical listeners now think of Roon? I am thinking about giving them another trial. Like Keith I have roughly 5000 classical albums.
 

godofwealth

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I use Roon quite a lot for classical music. I have been buying classical music CDs for over 35+ years, so I have an enormous amount of physical media scattered all over my 3500 sq ft house in the Bay Area. Here‘s my take on the good, bad, and ugly about Roon (I have a lifetime subscription BTW, which at $500 is a bargain in some ways). I’ve used Roon ever since it was available. I’ve suffered through all their terrible beta versions.

1. The good: Qobuz integration has improved greatly, and Roon updates are no longer guaranteed to wreck your streaming playback. Roon allows access to a good collection of new and old classical releases. It’s wonderful to be able to sample a large number of new releases. Also, I enjoy digging into a particular ensemble’s discography (I’m currently on a Stile Antico binge, having listened to most of their fabulously recorded choral music). But, keep in mind that Roon caters to the classical dilettante mostly. If you are a serious classical music listener, you’d never be happy with Roon’s offerings via Tidal or Qobuz. They just don’t go deep enough for a serious collector.

2. The bad: Get used to albums and tracks disappearing from your playlist all the time. One week you have access, the next week, POOF, it’s gone, just like that. I’m so glad, BTW, I hung on to my 7000+ CD/SACD library. I’d never trust my musical library to a streaming service. There’s no saying how long Qobuz will survive. I don’t think these make any money, frankly. The real money in streaming is low bit rate MP3 streaming of rap/disco/pop music: (my elitism shows, obviously, but most modern pop strikes me as elevator schmaltz or highly objectionable in its lyrics). Also, as the OP noted, Roon‘s cataloguing is abysmal and it’s next to hopeless to search your ripped collection. Opera suffers terribly. Each opera album sometimes splits into dozens of albums.

3, The ugly: Roon streaming quality sucks sonically. You want the best sound? Invest in a top notch CD transport. My reference TL0 belt driven two box CD transport runs rings around any Roon sourced media regardless of resolution. If you have a large SACD library, get an Esoteric transport. Roon is like cassette tape or an all you can eat diner. Convenient, yes. But if you want Michelin star quality food, you won’t find it at an all you can eat diner. Roon‘s priorities are catering to the mass market. I don‘t blame them. They need to survive. They are like Dolby Labs in the Bay Area, who want to be included in every mass market receiver. Roon would like nothing better than to be as well known as Dolby. But they’ll never match Spotify in the streaming world.

All in all, I’m happy I have Roon. But I’d never trade my physical media for Roon sourced playback. Besides the utter unpredictability of streaming software, the sound quality is not there yet. Better alternatives are emerging but will take time to mature. Streaming is still beta software and has a long way to go.
 

keithc

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3, The ugly: Roon streaming quality sucks sonically. You want the best sound? Invest in a top notch CD transport. My reference TL0 belt driven two box CD transport runs rings around any Roon sourced media regardless of resolution. If you have a large SACD library, get an Esoteric transport. Roon is like cassette tape or an all you can eat diner. Convenient, yes. But if you want Michelin star quality food, you won’t find it at an all you can eat diner. Roon‘s priorities are catering to the mass market. I don‘t blame them. They need to survive. They are like Dolby Labs in the Bay Area, who want to be included in every mass market receiver. Roon would like nothing better than to be as well known as Dolby. But they’ll never match Spotify in the streaming world.

All in all, I’m happy I have Roon. But I’d never trade my physical media for Roon sourced playback. Besides the utter unpredictability of streaming software, the sound quality is not there yet. Better alternatives are emerging but will take time to mature. Streaming is still beta software and has a long way to go.

I was looking for options in upgrading from my Aurender and was considering Roon+Qobuz+Tidal, but this pretty much nails the coffin. I'm only about 60-70% classical but care a lot about maximizing everything from my Eine Alpensinfonie or Mahler 5, and I'm disappointed to hear that Roon audio quality isn't top notch... which is surprising as it subjectively /seems/ like so many audiophiles have jumped onto their bandwagon.

Does this audio quality issue only pertain to Roon internet streaming? What about music transports that use Roon as merely the navigation / catalog but holds music on an attached physical drive?
 

Keith_W

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I would suggest that anybody interested in Classical should forget about Roon. It is now 7 years since I created this thread, and I recently downloaded the latest version to see if they have fixed their problems. In the intervening 7 years, I have also finished ripping my entire CD collection and spent a lot of effort tagging them.

In short: Roon is still plain garbage. It is supposed to find your music for you, but it can't even do that. All the issues I listed on page 1 are still present in the current version.

If they haven't done anything in 7 years, even with constant complaints and feedback on their forum, they never will. Do not reward them with your business. All classical listeners should stay away.

I am using JRiver and I am very happy.
 

Alrainbow

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To be honest it finds what I have an idea to look for
classical is way above my brain thinking in what to look for. so I’m surprised it finds this gs at all.
it finds names of conductors and concerts but this is very confusing for me. you can tag your stuff in roon I’ve done this. You can also merge same conductors and so on.
j River may work for you but to me it’s a limited GUI
now as for sound I don’t use either anymore
while Logitech is very simple
In gui the sound is best for me.
the continued issues of roon in memory and sound
And the need to use hq what player as well is too complex to keep fighting with
 

rdg

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I would suggest that anybody interested in Classical should forget about Roon. It is now 7 years since I created this thread, and I recently downloaded the latest version to see if they have fixed their problems. In the intervening 7 years, I have also finished ripping my entire CD collection and spent a lot of effort tagging them.

In short: Roon is still plain garbage. It is supposed to find your music for you, but it can't even do that. All the issues I listed on page 1 are still present in the current version.

If they haven't done anything in 7 years, even with constant complaints and feedback on their forum, they never will. Do not reward them with your business. All classical listeners should stay away.

I am using JRiver and I am very happy.
I largely listen to classical music, and the only problem I have had with Roon is with my very earliest downloads from Universal, which I downloaded over a decade ago. I don't think they were tagged. I have also had a few problems with some Testament rips, such as the Kempe Ring Cycle of 1957, but have learnt to upload discs to the server in small steps, correcting anything unusual. Yet this is not an issue with, say, Pristine downloads, that are perfectly identified.
I was pleased that a recent rip of the Jurowski 'Werther', which I don't think was in anyone streaming service, ever, as Roon correctly identified it.
TBH, using either dBpoweramp or EAC to rip CDs, it is still pretty random what metadata is identified for a disc. Can't speak for JRiver, as it is some years since I have used used it.
I have an Antipodes Oladra, and find Roon Server, with Squeezelite as player provides me with great sound. As far as I know, some servers (Grimm, Wadax?) have found a way of optimising Roon playback, and so there are probably other issues to consider.
The reason I most value Roon is that I also listen to Internet radio alot, and I can get higher bit rate radio via Roon than Squeeze.
This isn't to dismiss the concerns some have, but that not everyone experiences them.
 
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godofwealth

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To put things into perspective, I continue to use Roon/Qobuz for streaming classical as I’m always looking to hear new recordings and new composers. Qobuz is excellent because they often include the PDF liner notes. I find choral music — Stile Antico from the UK and Gloria del Cantoris from Cape Cod are two of my recent favorites — to be fairly enjoyable on Roon. Chamber music also is rendered sufficiently well. Symphonic music or opera are problematic. Roon often mangles opera tracks. Too many modern symphony recordings sound very compressed to me on Roon. i don’t understand why 24-bit recordings don’t sound great. Somehow the dynamic range gets squelched. Perhaps Roon is compressing things somewhere for efficiency reasons.

I have a sizable collection of CDs collected over 35+ years. On a top quality transport, these sound better to my ears than most of what I hear through Roon. I’m glad I have 3 good transports — the CEC TL0 belt drive two piece drive with outboard power supply, an ARC Reference CD8 and a Chord Blu Mk2 with Rob Watts M-scaler. These I’ll hang on to till the end of time. My spouse can identify whether I’m streaming or listening to CD playback, so I think it’s not just me.

I’m hoping someone comes along with a better alternative to Roon. There are proprietary ones, like Taiko’s XDMS or Auralic Conductor, but these only work on their hardware. I haven’t heard either.
 
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adyc

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I would suggest that anybody interested in Classical should forget about Roon. It is now 7 years since I created this thread, and I recently downloaded the latest version to see if they have fixed their problems. In the intervening 7 years, I have also finished ripping my entire CD collection and spent a lot of effort tagging them.

In short: Roon is still plain garbage. It is supposed to find your music for you, but it can't even do that. All the issues I listed on page 1 are still present in the current version.

If they haven't done anything in 7 years, even with constant complaints and feedback on their forum, they never will. Do not reward them with your business. All classical listeners should stay away.

I am using JRiver and I am very happy.
Totally agree with you. I have also spent a lot of time tagging my classical files. I also use Jriver. The main advantage of Jriver is to allow ones the flexibility how to display their files. JRiver rewards users with carefully prepared metadata.
 

Keith_W

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Keith, have you had a look at Idagio

I have the free subscription with 192kbps MP3 encoding because I am still trialling it. Positives:

- Library is quite extensive and includes many obscure recordings. However, not all recordings are available, e.g. Stockhausen Helikopter-Streichquartette, Mahler's 6th Symphony by Horenstein are a couple I have found. Sometimes, well known recordings are not available (might be a license issue?) e.g. Carlos Kleiber's Beethoven 7 with the Bavarian State Orchestra, on the Orfeo label.

- Even the 192kbps MP3 sounds quite good. I have not tried lossless streaming yet.

Negatives:

- That search function does not always put your search at the top. For example, doing a search for "Wagner Ring Solti" does not display the correct album at the top. In fact, the first 5 suggestions are not Solti, and 2 of them are not performances of The Ring. The search function is contaminated by a bunch of recordings irrelevant to your search. You have to get to no. 5 before you find the correct album:

1678926066343.png

In this example, I searched for Julia Fischer's album for the complete recordings of Bach's Violin Sonatas. The top result was for a single violin sonata.

1678926773955.png

The rest of the albums are irrelevant to the search, and you have to ask yourself why it saw fit to place Benjamin Britten as the top album, even though it does not contain ANY of the key words except for a singer named Bach. If you click on the top sonata to begin playing, you will see this:

1678927381767.jpeg

They have the correct album!! And for some reason, did not see fit to list it!

- Some albums have wrong tags. For example, Powaqqatsi does NOT have Gustavo Dudamel as a conductor. The conductor was Michael Riesman.

1678927381502.png

- The app for Android has no way to control the app on the PC. This is a problem if you are using your PC to listen to music and you want a remote control. Yes, you can use your phone to cast music on to your PC for playback, but that requires you to purchase a Chromecast device for your PC, and you will not be able to control your music from the PC. Your PC then becomes like a CD player without any buttons and you can only control it from your remote. The alternative is to launch the app and playback on your PC, in which case it acts like a CD player with buttons but without a remote.

- Offline listening has the same problem as all other streaming platforms. It saves it in a proprietary format, which you can not find on your device. It would be much better if they let you purchase the FLAC so that you can use it with any software you like. I can understand why they do this though, it might have something to do with their licensing agreement. But to me as a consumer, this kind of limitation smacks of the bad old days of DRM all over again.

- No DSD. If you want DSD, you have to buy it from a store that offers DSD downloads. This problem is not Idagio specific, I do not think any streaming service has DSD (correct me if I am wrong). I am not going to mark them down too harshly for this one, but it would be nice if they had a store where you could purchase additional high quality content if you desired.

Overall Idagio is the best classical streaming platform on the market ever since Primephonic was bought by Apple, and there is no way I would touch Apple anything or give them a cent of my money. I have looked at the alternatives (Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer) and they all have very serious strikes against them if you are a classical music listener - namely their collections are inadequate. My complaints are minor but I would like them to fix their search (after all, it is the prime way most listeners will interact with their program) and write a proper remote control for Android.
 

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godofwealth

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Idagio looks like Spotify for classical music. It’s serving a different niche. Roon is right now the default high end streaming service that supports an incredibly diverse set of manufacturers, from Chord to dCS to Devialet to Lampizator and hundreds of others. I don’t see any competition at this point for Roon. Qobuz has hundreds of thousands of classical albums. Even I listened 24/7 for the remainder of my life, I would barely scratch the surface. There are dozens of minor minor players in the streaming market, but nothing that can take on Roon right now. Since I was one of the early adopters, I have their lifetime subscription— cost me $500, a trifle in the realm of high end audio. Much as I wish their product was better, I don’t see idagio as an alternative, perhaps a niche product that serves a different clientele like Spotify.
 

godofwealth

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Roon allows streaming through a link up with Qobuz or Tidal. You can use Qobuz separately, but it does not have the same level of multi room device support that Roon provides. I don’t see a compelling alternative right now.
 

Kal Rubinson

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Roon allows streaming through a link up with Qobuz or Tidal. You can use Qobuz separately, but it does not have the same level of multi room device support that Roon provides. I don’t see a compelling alternative right now.
I cannot argue with the but it really depends on the user's personal needs. I use Roon and/or Qobuz but rarely.
 

Keith_W

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Qobuz has hundreds of thousands of classical albums. Even I listened 24/7 for the remainder of my life, I would barely scratch the surface.

Incidentally, I visited a friend today who was using Qobuz. I could not find a lot of my usual music on it, although there were alternatives by different performers. I suppose whether Qobuz or Idagio would be better suited for classical music listeners depends on how demanding you are. If you are happy to listen to any version by any performer, Qobuz would be suitable. But if you are the type who reads up about music and you want to hear specific performances, then the only option is Idagio. Or perhaps Primephonic when Apple gets around to debuting it.

I have found Youtube Music to be very good for finding obscure performances as well, and they are particularly good for music videos. However, the sound quality of YT Music is atrocious, even at the highest setting (I have a YT Premium subscription, which includes YT Music).
 

godofwealth

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Agreed. As a classical music collector for 35+ years, I have a very large collection of CDs and SACDs that still sound better to me than most streamed music. My CDs were collected over many years by reading reviews and visiting record stores all around the world, from Europe to Asia to the US and South America. My CDs are staying with me till I go into the metaverse.

Qobuz doesn’t have much of the music I’ve collected, which is fine since I get to listen to alternative performers. The situation is far worse for classic jazz and popular music recorded from the 1930s-1960s. Most of these I listen to in vinyl in mono on a specifically designed Miyajima Mono Zero cartridge. That’s still the best source in my house. It’s hard to believe that mono recordings from 70 years ago can trounce any of the modem recordings. The remastered classics from Frank Sinatra or John Coltrane or Duke Ellington or even Bob Dylan or The Beatles sound dreadful on CD or via streaming. To my, vinyl is the only way to listen to the greatest artists and performers from 1930s-1960s. On the right setup, it sounds so three dimensional. Despite all the distortions and colorations of vinyl, I still enjoy my turntables more than my very fancy tubed Lampizator Pacific DAC.
 

Kal Rubinson

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Qobuz doesn’t have much of the music I’ve collected, which is fine since I get to listen to alternative performers.
Indeed, my preferred use of Qobuz is to assess new performances and/or new music before purchase.
 
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hopkins

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Qobuz doesn’t have much of the music I’ve collected, which is fine since I get to listen to alternative performers. The situation is far worse for classic jazz and popular music recorded from the 1930s-1960s. Most of these I listen to in vinyl in mono on a specifically designed Miyajima Mono Zero cartridge. That’s still the best source in my house. It’s hard to believe that mono recordings from 70 years ago can trounce any of the modem recordings. The remastered classics from Frank Sinatra or John Coltrane or Duke Ellington or even Bob Dylan or The Beatles sound dreadful on CD or via streaming. To my, vinyl is the only way to listen to the greatest artists and performers from 1930s-1960s. On the right setup, it sounds so three dimensional. Despite all the distortions and colorations of vinyl, I still enjoy my turntables more than my very fancy tubed Lampizator Pacific DAC.

I understand your point of view, but to be fair, there have also been a lot of quality re-issues on CD. It really comes down to the label, and how concerned they are about sound quality.

Mosaic Records, for example (there are many other good ones), is an exemplary label: their CDs generally have very good sound quality (as good as the source material allows). They often include previously unissued tracks. Liner notes and artwork are high quality as well.

Supporting these labels is important, because there are so many dubious labels out there. This is one of the problems with streaming services: they look for ”volume” (to inflate their album count) and offer tons of crappy reissues.

There are also a lot of poor vinyl original pressings out there, which benefit from reissues on CD provided the master tapes exist and are in good condition.

As for Qobuz, I only use it for discovery as well, but not because of sound quality.
 
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godofwealth

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Agreed. I have some JVC K2 remastered CDs that sound very good. I’m told the XRCD line is good sounding, but I don’t have any. For a steep price, Esoteric has reissued some vintage classics, but I don’t have any of these either.

I remember almost 25 years ago auditioning the Sony SCD-1 statement player when it first came out. There were only a handful of SACDs then. I listened to Kind of Blue, the Miles Davis jazz warhorse and it sounded dreadful. Harsh and grainy. Fortunately SACDs recorded in true DSD sound much better, but the quality is all over the place. Too many classical SACDs sound awfully compressed to my ears.
 

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