Roon

[garyi]

Ok, so your contention is because I don't agree with you, I don't deserve to be here?

Your post categorically stated as fact PCs were shite for hifi replay, and yet you are calling me pompous?

'Brilliant engineers' in hifi companies make things to make money. Any story can be weaved for the marketing BS. I have '30 years of listening' experience as well, not sure how thats relevant. How much actual PC use have you used in music replay is the question?

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Ex Sooloos user and bought a lifetime license with Roon back in it’s early days.

Can’t remember ever having an issue in that time. As it sees my streamer as an end point, I get to avoid SPDIF/USB connections, which I believe can impact upon performance.

I’ve no idea why Roon gets negative press apart from its price.

Before Sooloos, I used LMS. Can that now stream to my phone whilst on the move and provide local parametric equalisation?

 

[Zombie]

Before Sooloos, I used LMS. Can that now stream to my phone whilst on the move and provide local parametric equalisation?

Myself, I have some 4500 tracks on my mobile, why mess with my NAS at home for that? Works well in cars, with earphones etc.
And yes, I use EQ with LMS. Had to buy a Umik and install REW, but that's maybe included in the price of Roon...

 

[Del monaco]

There is really little difference IMO.

 

[johnhunt]

I took roon off an old laptop and stuck it in a NUC . Runs much quicker and sounds better

 

[Riotvan]

I'm not going to pay anymore for the mess that is Roon. Besides the noticeable random bugs like high cpu usage and memory leaks there are some security implications that i can't abide. For example it runs with full privileges while at the same time communicating with their cloud whilst sending everything through plain text, no encryption nothing. To add insult to injury they have full access to any logs on your device and they can and will access any of that information without your consent, and they track a lot. And that is not even mentioning having to open up ports to use ARC if you're so inclined.
I used LMS ages ago and i'm considering making a nice low power box for it to play around with it, for now i use Tidal connect and just play files from my pc which is hooked up to the main system anyway.

 

[Brucedgoose]

…obviously no streaming system will work when your internet is down, so that’s an irrelevant criticism…

Not true! Its a key criticism! My Sony HAP-Z1ES is designed properly, meaning that once a CD is loaded onto its hard drive and the appropriate meta data retrieved, that music is available for playback *without* any internet connection. Any modern music management software that doesn’t function this way is poorly designed. (Looking at you, Bluesound and Roon!) The internet is flakey. Access to music you physically own should always be available.

 

[webster]

Music that I listen to is available with no internet as I buy it on CD before ripping it to my server.
Not as convenient but how often is the internet down? - rarely in my experience.

 

[evand]

I have been using Roon for nearly 4 years now with great success and pleasure and cannot identify ONE BUG. NOT ONE. There are features that might be improved, perhaps, but for listening to and discovering new music with loads of pertinent information and interactivity one would be hard pressed to find a solid competitor.
It would have been more honest and accurate had you stated roon is simply not your cup of tea.

If you've not encountered a bug in Roon you must be a really lightweight user. One look at their forum and all you see is users posting about problems. The idea is great, the execution terrible. As a pre-launch and subsequent lifetime licensee, you're right, it's not my cup of tea. If it actually did what it says on the tin and did it reliably it might be a different story.

 

[Brucedgoose]

…how often is the internet down? - rarely in my experience…

You’re fortunate. That’s not the case everywhere and good music server software should be designed to handle such a “corner case.”

Here in Hawaii, internet access is frequently interrupted by storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions! And sometimes for no apparent reason at all!

 

[evand]

Before Sooloos, I used LMS. Can that now stream to my phone whilst on the move and provide local parametric equalisation?

Stream to your phone, yes, local parametric EQ, yes.

Here's LMS playing tunes on a browser instance on my local PC. No different playing to a phone or tablet. Same Material interface. No need for a separate app that is the absolute pits in terms of continued connectivity and syncing libraries. Here there's no need to create a crippled copy of the db, the browser handles playback, much like it would for any audio on a bmile or tablet.

As long as the device has access to your LAN you just need to point your browser to http://ip_of_device_hosting_LMS:9000/stream.mp3 and it'll appear as a player in LMS. Select it and press play.

 

[webster]

A pc running dedicated software such as Rock (or indeed daphile for LMS) are indistinguishable from boutique hifi, support for which gets dropped just as soon as they can.

You've tried them all have you - or maybe you don't need to because you've already decided that's the case?
I've got a Innuos Zenith Mk3 - in what way would it make any sense for Innuos to stop supporting that piece of kit 'just as soon as they can'?

 

[garyi]

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive I have a node here, I also have a pc streamer.

 

[vacuum_tubes]

Can that now stream to my phone whilst on the move and provide local parametric equalisation?

Roon ARC has the added bonus that it uses port forwarding opening your router to the world with zero information from Roon about how (or if) they have secured the interface.

I've been using Roon since 2015 and like it but I would never enable and use ARC.

Great product but shit company and support.

 

[evand]

Great product but shit company and support.

I agree on the latter, not so much on the former. It should be great, but it's not.

 

[omers]

I've been using Roon for 3 years on a yearly subscription, I like its features but Roon weren't able to solve a bug which causes the core process to crash everytime the pc on which it runs awakes from sleep. It's a known issue, at first I felt they treated it seriously but then I was left alone.
So everytime I want to play music I have to go the pc and start roon again. Recently I figured I may as well use something slower and more cumbersome like bubbleupnp which doesn't requures a server process, and i'd still be on the credit side re time and money.

Not sure I"ll evetually throw it, time will tell.
Omer.

 

[garyi]

I like roon a lot, but I must say the not working when internet down is egregious. Coupled with the major price hike this year I am looking for other solutions. I have tried LMS with Material, but its so cludgy. Choices in this arena though appear to be sparse.

My end points are pcs, apple tvs, a node, Raspberry PIs, iphones etc. It really only leaves roon or LMS so far as I can see. PlexAmp is progressing but not there yet.

 

[Fourlegs]

A pc running dedicated software such as Rock (or indeed daphile for LMS) are indistinguishable from boutique hifi

Hmmn, well, possibly, in some situations and in some systems but it doesn’t take much experimenting to establish that is far from a universal truth!

The contrary view is that even the ‘boutique’ hifi streamers sound different to each other and indeed can sound very different to each other even when running the same software.

It is certainly worth people at least hearing for themselves just in case they agree with me rather than you.

 

[evand]

I have tried LMS with Material, but its so cludgy.

could you elaborate on this - having come from Roon I find it pretty good - fast, responsive, decent search, leverages metadata to drive browsing, auto detects endpoints etc. Not a loaded question, just really curious.

 

[TheFlash]

I have been using Roon for nearly 4 years now with great success and pleasure and cannot identify ONE BUG. NOT ONE. There are features that might be improved, perhaps, but for listening to and discovering new music with loads of pertinent information and interactivity one would be hard pressed to find a solid competitor.
It would have been more honest and accurate had you stated roon is simply not your cup of tea

A voodoo cable reseller claiming "LMS sounds so much better than roon"? Pretty sure now there is no hope for humanity.

Do you want to withdraw that libellous assertion? I believe we should be able to agree and disagree on this excellent forum, but let's do so as adults rather than sulking like a toddler and drawing irrelevant factors into the discussion.
Nick's system is nothing to do with his cables. I've heard the comparison between Roon and non-Roon twice at Nick's; the second time, he thought Roon has cracked it sonically with a new software release but to my ears it still sounded better without. He ultimately agreed.