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My first few days with Roon - thoughts and questions

I've no idea how I'd make Roon work, though I'm tempted by what people describe as its userfriendliness. I've got a WD Mybooklive as my NAS (.wav rips, mostly) and a Primare Pre32 with MM30 digital board. I also listen to internet radio via the Primare apps, especially La Baroque from France Musique. So far it all just works via the Primare apps, but how would/could Roon make it better ? No streaming services yet, though Qobuz always tempts, but there are only so many hours in a day. What am I missing ?
I’d try a free trial to Qobuz first. If the choice and quality take your fancy, take a monthly sub. If you find yourself sticking with it, consider making it an annual sub to save a few quid. If you get annoyed by the split between the music from Qobuz and your own rips, give Roon a punt. If you are really into artist biographies, album reviews, easily being able to follow links between albums to explore different kinds of music that you might be into, give Roon a trial a bit sooner.
 
I get the appeal but it is so expensive. That’s a lot of vinyl. Or gigs. Or a short holiday.

I use picoreplayer running lms. I slim it with Spotify which integrates just fine as do other services from what I have read. Control the lot with iPeng and it runs like a dream and cost peanuts.

It also sounds brilliant through an allo boss dac hat. I’d highly recommend checking it out before dropping the bomb on roon.
 
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Absolutely - just followed the detailed instructions here: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit. Couldn't be easier.
I imagine the answer will be “yes, of course!” but I currently have Roon installed on an HP MicroServer (on SSD with music on a set of HDDs in the same server). If I set up a NUC instead, and install ROCK on that, it will find my server shared music folder ok across our network, won’t it?
I fancy doing this as the MicroServer is now nine years old and a NUC *must* be faster than the 1.5GHz AMD Turion the MicroServer is running but just want to be sure a NUC would be happy serving music from a different piece of kit rather than something attached via USB.

Mick
 
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Dunno if you’ll notice any difference depends what parts of ROON you use , library size etc. As it’s already on SSD and assume 8GB plus of RAM it might not be a leap in responsiveness. You can add multiple network shares located on different devices in ROON, so sharing the folder and pointing ROON at it will work fine.
 
roon is like a hundy a year. Why does everyone keep saying its sossooo expensive, many of you are willing to spend 10 xs that on an ethernet cable ffs.

I like roon mostly for its capability with the devices in my house which means that everyone in the house is working from the same song sheet as it were. Everything from my hifi through to my little office, through to apple tvs and my iphone and any pc in the house, including the one in my little workshop, my lad has a pi feeding his amp and my wife a pi feeding a little class d amp at here workstation. All running one system and running faultlessly. Tidal, our home catalogue, internet radio, even the dreary Radio Paradise, all covered.

The DSP options and ability too tweek only add to it. Personally I have not found much use on all the bio's and crap and thats available everywhere and for free anyway, regardless of how they market it.

But for a hundred or so a year, I wouldnt consider anything else at this stage.

Also major discovery, it works with Daphile as well, which is a superb audiophile focussed LMS softwares. Happy days.
 
I guess the criticism over the Roon price is based on comparison with the likes of Audirvana, Amarra, Pure Music etc, all of which are cheaper.
Maybe decent software is undervalued & the assumption is that it should be free or much cheaper?
It’s not a necessity, it’s not always going to give you an upgrade in sound quality, it’s just a way of accessing & selecting music.
So is the price worth it for how & what it does?
For me, yes, definitely. It’s an extremely well thought out, slick & professional system that makes the others look very cottage-Industry.
But I can see how it’s not for everyone.
 
I guess the criticism over the Roon price is based on comparison with the likes of Audirvana, Amarra, Pure Music etc, all of which are cheaper.
Maybe decent software is undervalued & the assumption is that it should be free or much cheaper?

Sound quality is an issue I've rarely seen addressed. I have licenses for Pure Music and Audirvana, although it's a long time since I tried a version of the former. Back in the day, I set up a MacBook Pro for a third-party – a dealer actually – with those two plus Amarra.

One thing I've rarely seen addressed with regard to Roon – and I confess I'm not really interested enough to try it for myself – is how Roon compares with, say Audirvana on sound quality.

Nearly everything I read seems to focus on the ability to find/discover new music, but to be honest I find it very hard to find the time listen to the music I already own without wishing to be distracted by what I think of as 'Netflix syndrome' – ie. I fancy watching a movie tonight, but by the time I poke about at Netflix for 45 minutes I'm no nearer a decision other than it's getting late and I can't really be arsed anymore...
 
I agree that the blurb on Roon tends to be about the visual/ music search aspects rather than focusing on the sound quality.
I have tried Amarra, Pure Music & Audirvana+. I preferred Av+ to the other two.
Roon is at least the equal of Av+, if not better & the DSP EQ Facilities push this advantage further ahead of the pack.
 
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I pay monthly and it does not seem expensive to me. About the cost of a CD. Yes it is on top of the Quboz subscription. But the whole thing put together is rather wonderful and you can call up pretty well anything you can think of, and masses you would never think of, and just play it. You can spend all evening wandering around the music world. You can lock onto one piece and explore many different versions. You can find a classical piece and list all the versions available by date of recording, or by other factors. You can wander off to the new music areas, or pick up a playlist, or play one track and then let the 'radio' bit go off and find stuff for you - that can be most entertaining.
 
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Anyone running Roon on a Nuk? I am quite tempted to give Roon a proper go after trying a demo for a month but would prefer to have a dedicated device rather than running on my laptop.

The Roon Nucleus looks great but a bit expensive.
 
It is about a year since I used Roon together with Quobuz on a different computer. I've got a Mac and think the Core can be installed on it. I believe I can then use my iPad or iPhone as a remote.

Does anybody have any advice? I don't plan to buy a NUC immediately.

Jack.
 
It is about a year since I used Roon together with Quobuz on a different computer. I've got a Mac and think the Core can be installed on it. I believe I can then use my iPad or iPhone as a remote.

Does anybody have any advice? I don't plan to buy a NUC immediately.

Jack.

I run Roon/Qobuz on a Mac Mini and control it using the Roon iPad app. It works well.
 
It is about a year since I used Roon together with Quobuz on a different computer. I've got a Mac and think the Core can be installed on it. I believe I can then use my iPad or iPhone as a remote.

Does anybody have any advice? I don't plan to buy a NUC immediately.

Jack.
Yep, install Core on Mac and use the iThings as control points. Need to be newish - iOS11 and OS10.9 upwards

Info:
https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_What_are_the_minimum_requirements?
 
Anyone running Roon on a Nuk? I am quite tempted to give Roon a proper go after trying a demo for a month but would prefer to have a dedicated device rather than running on my laptop.

The Roon Nucleus looks great but a bit expensive.

Using a Nucleus here as I had no idea how to set it up otherwise. Just made things simpler. Could’ve been done cheaper in hindsight, but it just works great. Using an iPad for control and Pro-Ject’s fancy RPi (again, as I’d have no idea how to set up a real Pi) as an endpoint.

On a different note, I’ve never given any thought to the ‘sound’ of software. Just seems an absurd idea to me. I just don’t go there.
 
On a different note, I’ve never given any thought to the ‘sound’ of software. Just seems an absurd idea to me. I just don’t go there.
You may have a point, but as an example, I found Amarra to sound quite different to Audirvana, & Pure Music was different again.
And that was before any presets, EQ or DSP was selected.
 
I guess there should be some advantage to turning all the noisy computer crap off with Audirvana extreme mode so I use it. I think I hear an improvement using Audirvana to stream Qobuz in this mode but it’s very subtle.
 
It is about a year since I used Roon together with Quobuz on a different computer. I've got a Mac and think the Core can be installed on it. I believe I can then use my iPad or iPhone as a remote.

Does anybody have any advice? I don't plan to buy a NUC immediately.

Jack.
You certainly can run Roon Core and Qobuz on a Mac as a self-contained system. I don’t believe you need a super powerful machine unless you want to support lots of zones and do exotic DSP. I think the Roon library likes to be on an SSD; if your Mac hasn’t got one, you might want to add an external one. When you first start Roon it is quite intensive building your library, analyzing audio and building thumbnails and whatever, but after it’s done that it is much less demanding. Turn off the analyze audio option if you are impatient.
 
You certainly can run Roon Core and Qobuz on a Mac as a self-contained system. I don’t believe you need a super powerful machine unless you want to support lots of zones and do exotic DSP. I think the Roon library likes to be on an SSD; if your Mac hasn’t got one, you might want to add an external one. When you first start Roon it is quite intensive building your library, analyzing audio and building thumbnails and whatever, but after it’s done that it is much less demanding. Turn off the analyze audio option if you are impatient.

That's handy to know. The Mac Mini I'm using has a SSD, which I installed a while back. I will probably get an external one though and use that for the library.

Jack
 


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