[Hoegaardener70]

Hi, I saw some previous discussions here on Roon, but most were somewhat older or not going into the direction I was seeking - which is to find out if it is worth the asking price of usd119,- or usd499,- lifelong. I am currently running the trial and I have found a lot of pros, but also some surprising cons. So I thought I'd open up a discussion thread here, also because there is less out there in the internet than one might think. Here my thoughts on it so far:

+ easy installation and connection to all devices. I had all of it up and running in less than an hour, which meant installation on my NAS,installing the apps on my iOS and other devices, connecting it to Sonos etc.. This is very impressive, in comparisomn to Plex etc.
+ beautiful and snappy interface which is very intuitive. As written, it is really well done and I will miss the nice presentation of my music

So far, so good. It is doing all what it is supposed to do...

But I also found some issues which I found hard to take:
- the trial asks for your credit card details, hate that! Plus of course the price is prohibitive in comparison to software doing similar things (Plex, JRiver's Media Center 24), half a grand for lifelong is a lot
- the headphone iq-ing for which I mostly wanted to get Roon for is not working from an iPhone. This seems very lame, since it does work on iPads. Of course, if you use a PC or MAc, no issue... but if you want to connect your iphone to a Hugo2 like me .... out of luck
- many titles are not found in the database, for sure less than Plex does (however, Plex does plenty of other things wrong). Since the deveopers give this as a reason why Roon is so expensive ... I am not impressed. And really, forget any oddities like audiobooks, Roon did find hardly any for me...

So, for me Roon is a highly functional and beautiful software, but at this point hardly worth the asking price. If they add iphone-eqing and better database matches, then I might reconsider.

What are your experiences with Roon? Any happy long-term users? Any recommended alternatives? I tried Plex and will also try Emby and the software provided by Synology, but I do not expect much at this point ...

 

[jcn3]

i guess it depends on what you're looking for from roon.

* roon was designed as high quality multi-room system for hi-rez audio. i think it does this in spades.
* roon was designed to seamlessly blend you music library with tidal and qobuz. i think it also does this in spades.
* roon was designed to allow you to explore beyond the music that you normally listen to. i think it does a very good job of this through all of the hyper-links and particularly the roon radio function.

roon has essentially the same capabilities around eq-ing, transcoding, convolving, etc. that other sofware players do. having said that, i don't use them a lot as i use dirac live on the endpoint in my main system.

tidal and qobuz certainly don't have the library that spotify and others do. however they do offer them at bit rates unmatched by other services.

roon wasn't designed to optimize the listening experience through a phone with headphones. many others have had great outcomes connecting to a dac from the usb port of their phones for two-channel systems. i'm surprised you can't get eq to work using the digital out from your phone to the hugo 2, but i haven't tried that configuration.

my one big complaint with roon is that it isn't great for library management for your local media. i find that jriver is much better to use in that situation.

bottom line, i think roon is a wonderful piece of software and a good value if you plan to stick with it. in my situation, $500 isn't that much relative to other components, but i think i've found much more than $500 worth of new artists and music that i would have never found otherwise.

i've used jriver, foobar, media monkey, and numerous dlna solutions -- i could easily live with those too, so i understand where you're coming from.

 

[Hoegaardener70]

i guess it depends on what you're looking for from roon.

roon wasn't designed to optimize the listening experience through a phone with headphones. many others have had great outcomes connecting to a dac from the usb port of their phones for two-channel systems. i'm surprised you can't get eq to work using the digital out from your phone to the hugo 2, but i haven't tried that configuration.

my one big complaint with roon is that it isn't great for library management for your local media. i find that jriver is much better to use in that situation.

bottom line, i think roon is a wonderful piece of software and a good value if you plan to stick with it. in my situation, $500 isn't that much relative to other components, but i think i've found much more than $500 worth of new artists and music that i would have never found otherwise.

i've used jriver, foobar, media monkey, and numerous dlna solutions -- i could easily live with those too, so i understand where you're coming from.

Thanks for your reply. Regarding the possibility to eq from an iPhone, they simply left it out. The DSP menu will come up, and you can turn the function on, but it has no effect. Roon acknowledged this in their forum and said it works only on iPads. I checked it and it is true, and find it lame. But that’s me since I run my music via the Hugo2 from the iPhone.

And yes, I agree with your complaint, JRiver and also Plex solve this with more efficient solutions. I spend some hours trying to find the unidentified albums and finally gave up. I noticed that a lot of classical music CDs from the 80s are plainly not in their database, including major releases e.g. by Karajan.

So far not that impressed, but I also very much understand why you like it.

 

[lesanderson]

I bought a lifetime sub after a few beers a couple of years ago and initially regretted it. However, one thing you can count on Roon to do is listen to the user base and improve the software which has gotten so much better over the last 12 months. 1.6 is the first version I can actually recommend and I highly recommend it.

I suggest posting your feedback at community.roonlabs.com. I would be surprised if someone was not able to provide you answers. Search was formally abysmal, and a lot of effort has gone into it recently. I have no issues at all.

 

[Hoegaardener70]

I bought a lifetime sub after a few beers a couple of years ago and initially regretted it. However, one thing you can count on Roon to do is listen to the user base (...) I suggest posting your feedback at community.roonlabs.com..

Haha, I know about these beer purchases, that’s how I bought (for a second time) my HD800S . Ok, I will bring my issues up in their forum, great idea.

 

[Hoegaardener70]

[QUOTE="lesanderson, post: 15013905, member: 155361"I suggest posting your feedback at community.roonlabs.com. I would be surprised if someone was not able to provide you answers. Search was formally abysmal, and a lot of effort has gone into it recently. I have no issues at all.[/QUOTE]

Ok, I posted my issue in the forum, which mostly is battling with the identification of multiple disk classical box sets. I seem to be one of many to struggle. Now I feel … I'll pay 500 and get many hours of dull work in addition. Hm, hm.

 

[starence]

Yeah, it’s not for everyone I guess. With the free trial, plus the 30 day refund window, at least you have the opportunity to put it through its paces without risk.

 

[lesanderson]

We’re you able to get any feedback from the Roon community?

 

[Hoegaardener70]

Yes

We’re you able to get any feedback from the Roon community?

Yes, I did. There were many complaints about classical box sets ... but overall I think I am going to bite the bullet. I am already mostly though tagging my library, if one doesn’t take it too serious it is kin of fun ... plugging the Empyrean into the iPad and test-listening to music I haven’t heard for years. But serious renaming will need to follow - sigh. Overall, Roon is not perfect, but it does it all a bit better than my other software. Half the price would be ok, but I think that of my Sony Z1R headphone as well

 

[Jon L]

* roon was designed as high quality multi-room system for hi-rez audio. i think it does this in spades.

I am actually surprised how many people stream music to multi rooms. I am far from poor, but I cannot afford to have "good-enough" audio gear in more than one main audio room. I could buy cheaper gear for other rooms, but why? When I listen to music, I sit down in my listening chair with 100% concentration and hate listening to my beloved music as background music, which "wears them out" for me.

 

[lesanderson]

I use ropieee endpoints in main 2ch system and my headphone system. I have a home theater system that uses airplay. Music on the patio and master bedroom are both Chromecast audios.

The fact that roon can control and for the most part unify all of these and I *don't* need to buy expensive gear everywhere is a MAJOR selling point to me.

 

[Hoegaardener70]

The fact that roon can control and for the most part unify all of these and I *don't* need to buy expensive gear everywhere is a MAJOR selling point to me.

Yes, I am also meanwhile highly inclined to buy Roon. I first saw it as a music server which presents my music better. But the real advantage is that I can ignore the terrible Sonos app (three endpoints) and select between my iPhone and iPad and pc in a simple way.

 

[CANiSLAYu]

Similar story to lesanderson for me. I bought a lifetime sub a couple of years back, mainly because of the streaming capabilities and the ability to control playback from any of my devices/computers. At $120 for a year, the lifetime subscription is the same as 4 years. I didn't want to pay for a year or two and then not like it and have nothing to show for it or like it and then end up buying a lifetime subscription anyways, so I just bit the bullet after my trial. I did end up regretting it initially because for my use case at the time it wasn't adding all that much value above what I could do with Lightning DS (owned an Auralic Altair at the time). But then Audeze released DSP filters for their headphones with Roon. Then I started messing around with other capabilities like upsampling. Then I subscribed to Tidal HIFI and Roon has great integration there. Like lesanderson said, the team continues to add features and make it better and better and now I really like it, even though it's still probably overkill for my needs.

 

[The Socialist Nerd]

Yes


Yes, I did. There were many complaints about classical box sets ... but overall I think I am going to bite the bullet. I am already mostly though tagging my library, if one doesn’t take it too serious it is kin of fun ... plugging the Empyrean into the iPad and test-listening to music I haven’t heard for years. But serious renaming will need to follow - sigh. Overall, Roon is not perfect, but it does it all a bit better than my other software. Half the price would be ok, but I think that of my Sony Z1R headphone as well

Thank goodness I buy all of my classical music box sets through ITunes. Saves me the hassle for tags .

 

[The Socialist Nerd]

Researching Roon possiblity as I just bought my first home a few weeks ago. So biggggggggggggggggggggg...