Roon-have you switched to it and if so why?

[steve williams]

Lately I have been reading a lot about Roon and I have been hearing some great things. I still use J River which TBH satisfies my needs. Recently on my system blog a member almost implored me to consider the use of Roon. Its fees are not inexpensive but they do have a lifetime license for $500. Has anyone jumped on the bandwagon and if so, what do you like more about it than other software players

 

[asiufy]

I never liked JRiver (iTunes is far, far better, at least on a Mac), so that's not something I'd particularly use.
And the reason? The user interface. JRiver's is horrible. And Roon's is probably the best out there.
That said, Roon has a ways to go. It's still buggy, crashes often (well, no different than JRiver here), has trouble finding its remotes on the network, it also "forgets" albums it has already catalogued from my NAS, etc.
Roon is just a few months old. I'm hoping that, with a few more, they'd sort out all the basic issues, while gaining traction with the streamer/NAS crowd. I'd love for Auralic to support them, for instance... Or for them to create a server to be installed on NAS, obviating the need for a server computer.

 

[steve williams]

I have been hearing of people using a touch screen monitor with either a PC or a mini mac and when done properly it makes Auralic Aries seem primitive in comparison

 

[CGabriel]

Lately I have been reading a lot about Roon and I have been hearing some great things. I still use J River which TBH satisfies my needs. Recently on my system blog a member almost implored me to consider the use of Roon. Its fees are not inexpensive but they do have a lifetime license for $500. Has anyone jumped on the bandwagon and if so, what do you like more about it than other software players

Yes, I have switched and love it. I have a huge library of music in all different formats including a large DSD collection. Roon hides all of the file structure with the different folders and different drives and makes that all transparent to the user.

The user interface is what I have been wanting for years - a virtual clone of Sooloos.

I would like to have more online music sources available but there are other ways to get to those.

The sound quality is excellent.

Did I say it was easy to use! A big yes on that. You can use NAS servers but they are not necessary. NAS servers are one of if the the biggest impediments to getting a computer based music system running and keep it running. Roon is great for the IT challenged types.

And I like that it imported 90% of the album covers automatically with information about the artist, album and other interesting information including lyrics. All this with no effort.

Yes, there are other ways to do everything that it does. But that involves multiple apps and a lot of setup, work and effort.

Give me simple and I am happy - and I am.

 

[asiufy]

I have been hearing of people using a touch screen monitor with either a PC or a mini mac and when done properly it makes Auralic Aries seem primitive in comparison

Well, you'll have, in effect, a poor man's Meridian/Sooloos

And don't knock the Aries, as its hardware is better than 99% of the computer-based solutions out there (IMHO). And its app, Lightning DS, is excellent as well, with a great UI, that does a lot more than the other remote apps out there. But of course, the Roon UI is many times better still.

What I'd really like is for Auralic to build a Roon "server" in the Aries, so a computer would become optional, or we'd just use it to remote control the server.

alexandre

 

[still-one]

I tried it out for a few days when it was first released but then cancelled. For the time being I will stick with Sooloos even if it is not a powerful as Roon. Besides some hardware issues trying to run both Roon and Sooloos I found the interface for selecting music was a bit more cumbersome than what I am used to. In addition I never choose music to play because artist A played on all of these other albums.

Roon is powerful and there are plenty of people who will use all those "linking" features to find forgotten albums. At this time I am not one of them them, I might consider it again in the future if some of the promised small modifications to Sooloos do not appear. By that time Roon will offer iPad control and maybe I will find something I prefer to a Meridian endpoint.

 

[microstrip]

A silly question from a beginner - is Roon compatible with the Devialet?

 

[dallasjustice]

I have not tried it out. It is very limited with DSP so it wouldn't work for me. I love Jremote and Spotify for streaming. If there's a way to use Roon with Jriver, maybe that would work.

I think we will see jriver deliver a good native streaming client in the future.

 

[slowGEEZR]

I never liked JRiver (iTunes is far, far better, at least on a Mac), so that's not something I'd particularly use.
And the reason? The user interface. JRiver's is horrible. And Roon's is probably the best out there.
That said, Roon has a ways to go. It's still buggy, crashes often (well, no different than JRiver here), has trouble finding its remotes on the network, it also "forgets" albums it has already catalogued from my NAS, etc.
Roon is just a few months old. I'm hoping that, with a few more, they'd sort out all the basic issues, while gaining traction with the streamer/NAS crowd. I'd love for Auralic to support them, for instance... Or for them to create a server to be installed on NAS, obviating the need for a server computer.

I used to use Amarra and iTunes with my Mac, but have recently made the switch to JRiver and couldn't be happier. I don't know what version of JRiver you used, but the latest version is fantastic. The GUI is much better than iTunes and allows many more selection options. It also handles larger libraries much better than ITunes. I think the mode you use, makes the difference. I don't run it with iTunes at all.

 

[asiufy]

I used the latest, 20. It's simply not a Mac app, but a cumbersome Windows app. I'm not talking functions, as JRiver does a lot more than iTunes, with a lot more options.
It's visually a mess.

Different strokes, you know...

alexandre

 

[dallasjustice]

Jremote for enjoyable listening and browsing. Jriver for database management. I think jriver has neglected the UI for their app because their customers aren't using it as much as jremote.

I used the latest, 20. It's simply not a Mac app, but a cumbersome Windows app. I'm not talking functions, as JRiver does a lot more than iTunes, with a lot more options.
It's visually a mess.

Different strokes, you know...

alexandre

 

[slowGEEZR]

Right, JRemote is what works well with my iPad.

 

[asiufy]

Yes, to be fair, JRemote is quite good and powerful. The problem is going through the horrible JRiver interface to organize a sizeable collection...

 

[caesar]

Gentlemen,

I am confused about how Roon finds the music on your network. Does it only work through certain music management systems, like itunes?

Does Roon have the features to scan your network, identify your network bridge (such as Auralic Aries, etc.), and bring up the music on your NAS?

Thanks

 

[asiufy]

caesar,

Roon is able to find the files on your NAS, but it does that through your computer's network stack (regular file sharing). The benefit here is that you don't need extra software on your NAS for Roon to "see" your files. Once cataloged, Roon can read/write them as if they were locally on your computer.

The Aries, and other network players, rely on a different protocol, called UPNP/DLNA (or its extensions such as OpenHome). That's why you need extra software running on your NAS, the UPNP/DLNA server. Examples of such would be MinimServer, Twonky, Plex. That server will scan your NAS for music files, and make them available to other UPNP/DLNA devices on your network (such as the Aries).

So far, and AFAIK, Roon can't see UPNP/DLNA servers (to fetch the files), and it can't use UPNP/DLNA players/renderers (like the Aries) either, to output the music to.
Ideally, we'd be able to do just that. Use Roon only to cataloge, organize and tag our libraries, while hosting them on a NAS, and playing everything through a dedicated streamer.

alexandre

 

[dallasjustice]

Before Roon was released, it was touted to be a new frontier app as far as metadata. I thought (stupid me for thinking) that Roon would be able identify the audio file and find the metadata by sampling the file itself. IOW, I thought Roon would work like Shazam. Well I was wrong. It would be kewl if there was software which could find the correct metadata just like Shazam does it. All those files without metadata could easily be discovered and organized without any metadata at all.

Btw, I think it's possible to use Roon with ASIO. The Jriver Asio driver could be selected so Jriver could still be the sound engine. I'm not a fan of the Jriver WDM.

Overall, Roon seems like it's absurdly priced given the functionality.

 

[JackD201]

Before Roon was released, it was touted to be a new frontier app as far as metadata. I thought (stupid me for thinking) that Roon would be able identify the audio file and find the metadata by sampling the file itself. IOW, I thought Roon would work like Shazam. Well I was wrong. It would be kewl if there was software which could find the correct metadata just like Shazam does it. All those files without metadata could easily be discovered and organized without any metadata at all.

Btw, I think it's possible to use Roon with ASIO. The Jriver Asio driver could be selected so Jriver could still be the sound engine. I'm not a fan of the Jriver WDM.

Overall, Roon seems like it's absurdly priced given the functionality.

Hell yeah. That would be awesome indeed.

 

[patpend]

I use Roon exclusively now, and not going back. Used to use Audirvana+ on my mac mini but the ability of Roon to organize and serve (especially classical) music / metadata to every connected computer on my network, including my listening room, is unsurpassed on a Mac. There really isn't anything else on the market that is remotely close to it on the Mac side-and it now has DSD support etc as they add a lot of the configuration features that Audirvana has (integer support etc). Add to that the internal Tidal capability (if you use Tidal at all, you'd appreciate Roon). My favorite feature-History (everything you've recently played on that computer). I believe they have Android support now, and waiting on Apple to approve the IOS release...

 

[wisnon]

When will they integrate HQP as the playback engine in Roon?

 

[hifial]

When will they integrate HQP as the playback engine in Roon?

It is my understanding that they hope it will be in two to three months. Though it could be sooner and it could be a bit longer, I suspect it to be longer as it may not be easy to integrate them. But I hope it happens tomorrow. It is not 100% that it will happen but (last I heard was about two-three weeks ago) it is looking like it will. Roon (at least the principles that I have conversed with) seem to understand the need to work with the Audiophile community.

I gave them a list of must haves beyond what they planed on; DSD (not just 64 and 128 but 256 too) Native DSD not just DoP, ASIO, HQP and great sounding. So far they have responded to the requests of the Audiophile community at large so hopefully HQP will be the next big thing to happen.