Roon.... brilliant

Innocent Bystander posted:

WilcoFT posted: 

I get the impression that your regular references to a social media like interface could also be read as user friendly.   I guess it’s all subjective.  However this and your references to sharing pop ups which I’ve never seen in two years of use seem to be scaring people away from trying it out. 

I do agree with you that trial is the only way to decide if it works for you. 

Or attracting people who like what I felt was a social media media feel, or those who have a constant urge to tell friends what they're playing!  

Very strange, because if used in most basic views it’s still very Naim like, just more powerful. Sideways scrolling, but I have a feeling that down the road hopefully they will make some more user defined interfaces. I would definitely urge you to try it again if you have something powerful enough to run it on. You may have been on 1.3 or 1.2 which for me was why bother (compared to other free options). I then retrialled and was totally smitten with 1.5. FTR I also don’t run a Naim streamer so that app is out. 

Going forward in Roon’s future it appears as if some UI changes/fixes coming soon, Qobuz fingers crossed soon, possibly remote down the road. Lots they could do, but of course they need more subscriptions to keep moving forward. So please re-trial and lose whatever memory you might have of pop-ups. I bought a lifetime because it’s just something I don’t ever want to have to think about again. 

Roon gives some basic tips on how to use some of its features. I can only assume your referring to these. They don't show up after first few uses and are hardly popups just pointers. As for everpresent Tidal it's only there if your subscribe and have it linked to Roon  and and even then it's in the background and only offers up it's choices if your searching  lby keywords or go to the Tidal section. Hardly takes precedence of your own music tough Roon puts your own stuff front and centre. And one thing it never does is offer you to listen to anything that's not all ready in your library either from your own files or added from Tidal. I can't see what's wrong with it recommending your own music. If you have a large collection its nice to be reminded every now and again on some you have not played for a while.

SimonPeterArnold posted:

Roon gives some basic tips on how to use some of its features. I can only assume your referring to these. They don't show up after first few uses and are hardly popups just pointers. As for everpresent Tidal it's only there if your subscribe and have it linked to Roon  and and even then it's in the background and only offers up it's choices if your searching  lby keywords or go to the Tidal section. Hardly takes precedence of your own music tough Roon puts your own stuff front and centre. And one thing it never does is offer you to listen to anything that's not all ready in your library either from your own files or added from Tidal. I can't see what's wrong with it recommending your own music. If you have a large collection its nice to be reminded every now and again on some you have not played for a while.

I will respond to that, but prospective users please ignore this and try for yourself - this is not trying to persuade you one way or another, just clarifying what I saw. It is possible that Roon has tidied itself up since then, and if your metadata is OK or it successfully recognises your music the metadata angle need not worry you.

When I tried it in April/May 2017 Tidal was very visible in the interface, even though i have never used Tidal - the constant visibility was annoying because I have no interest in using it, though it looked as if it offered seemless integration so thst if someone uses it and has their own collection as well they need not worry which location something is in, which I guess would be positive - just not for non-subscribers, not letting me forget its existence.

In terms of suggesting other music, it wasn’t suggesting things I had in my collection (or had played on Tidal as I never have), but suggesting other music it thought I might be interested in, based on what I had played. Because I didn’t click on them I don’t know if the pop-ups led to information online, or places to download the music, or Tidal for someone subscribed. Tge other pop-ups were invitations to share with friends what  I was playing. IIRC I found a way to turn off one of these types of popup, though not the other, which continued over the period of my trial. Whether thare was also a way of stopping that, and hiding the Tidal side I didn’t discover - but I was more focused on whether Roon would do better with my collection’s metadata than my existing library software. My expectation was high as as it claimed to be able to recognise music and find missing metadata, and also that it could build metadata from the file structure (which is the track files in simple nested folders genre\artist or composer\album name) - it failed on both counts, That had been my only interest in Roon so I abandoned, and gave my ‘review’ on this forum.

I think I need to chime in again... given the interest in this thread I thought I’d give Roon a go with Naim, an NDX2 on loan and a Qb.   And I see what some of you guys have been talking about. it really is rather good, albeit perhaps a little pricey. It really does an added dimension to musical enjoyment.. in terms of replay as well as meta data and cross referencing...and the whole experience of listening of listening to your music... so thanks for bringing up the subject on the forum... and I guess thanks to Naim for supporting it...

Innocent Bystander posted:

When I tried it in April/May 2017 Tidal was very visible in the interface . . .

I appreciate that you're trying to help the readers, but in the year and 3/4 since then Roon HAS been updated. . . 

Bart posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

When I tried it in April/May 2017 Tidal was very visible in the interface . . .

I appreciate that you're trying to help the readers, but in the year and 3/4 since then Roon HAS been updated. . . 

Ok - and in my last post I tried to make it VERY clear that my observations were based on my trial of that date, and that as Roon may have changed they may no longer be valid, that last respons having been purely to clarify certain points following SPA’s post.

So, a big question - is it any better now with poor and missing metadata, and music maybe not in its database? A number of people have criticised it on that angle, while others have said it is great - which presumably depends on the collection concerned. What improvemenypts in metadata handling with problem files have people noticed since April 2017?

I just looked around roon and am probably being a moron but could not find any intrusive social media elements. There is a facebook/twitter icon for a given artist if you wish to 'connect' but that appears to be it.

Nope. And I don't recall those on the even earlier version I trailed. A few pointer pop ups at first just like any piece of new sophisticated software, but those usually went away after the first time I believe. 

Anyway, try Roon on a low powered NUC with even an inexpensive linear power supply, and it gets just that much better. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I think I need to chime in again... given the interest in this thread I thought I’d give Roon a go with Naim, an NDX2 on loan and a Qb.   And I see what some of you guys have been talking about. it really is rather good, albeit perhaps a little pricey. It really does an added dimension to musical enjoyment.. in terms of replay as well as meta data and cross referencing...and the whole experience of listening of listening to your music... so thanks for bringing up the subject on the forum... and I guess thanks to Naim for supporting it...

Glad you checked it out. A bit pricey? Honestly I think it will bring so much more enjoyment to a system than say an equivalently priced cable ($500 for lifetime sub). 

garyi posted:

I just looked around roon and am probably being a moron but could not find any intrusive social media elements. There is a facebook/twitter icon for a given artist if you wish to 'connect' but that appears to be it.

I didn’t say or suggest there were any references to facebook etc, but to me the feel to me was like that. However as people say Roon has changed since my trial of it I don’t want to put undue emphasis by repeating, so please refer back to what I said over the past 2 or 3 days.

SimonPeterArnold posted:

And one thing it never does is offer you to listen to anything that's not all ready in your library either from your own files or added from Tidal. I can't see what's wrong with it recommending your own music. 

For my part, and to emphasize the diversity of views on what is and what is not desirable, I would really love to see an added feature where Roon would recommend stuff that is not in my library or added from Tidal... the potential for discovering new music would be vastly expanded, and I would very much enjoy that! As a workaround, I have added the “Roon Recommended” curated lists for a few genres (blues, jazz, classical) to my Tidal collection... this gives more fodder for suggestions related to what I might be listening, but it clutters up the “My Collection” list in both the Tidal and Naim apps (so I am practicing adding them in then taking them back out using the Roon Tags sorting feature).

One other point: I find there to be little or no meaningful difference between the Naim app and the Roon app on an iPhone... but swap up to an iPad and it’s a much grander experience all around.

Regards, alan