Roon Discussion

Discussion in 'Computer Audiophile: Software, Configs, Tools' started by AllanMarcus, Jul 3, 2016.

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  1. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    @rhythmdevils, thing is your's is not so much a "feature request" as it is a wholesale change in philosophy, direction and design. Roon and its fanboys (or put another way, its representative user base for whom roon just works) will just continue to point to Roon Radio, and perhaps functionality such as "Overview", "Genres", and "Discover" (as well as the "related artists" links when you search on a particular artist) as how Roon has incorporated browse/discovery needs. What Roon won't do is change wholesale away from an album (and associated metadata) centered tech and UI implementation to one centered around "Artists", not least of which is because that would mean a fundamental change/rewrite of their whole backend.
     
  2. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    There's an additional factor here, metadata licensing. Roon is not at liberty to use Tidal's or Qobuz's metadata for its own purposes, only to support streaming of Tidal or Qobuz-supplied content. That's why one can have the disconcerting experience of having an album with metadata on Qobuz, but the same album is unidentified in one's local library and Roon can't find metadata for it. This is pretty common with recent releases from small independent labels, which have no metadata yet on AllMusic/Rovi or Musicbrainz (which Roon can ingest) but of course have metadata on Qobuz since that's the only way for the album to be in their streaming database.
     
  3. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    This "siloing" of data, the creation of "ecosystems" and the lack of interoperability both philosophically and technically is of course as old as software and even machines themselves. This morning I was running (having been made a cohost) a Zoom meeting for the first time. On my Windows machine I was surprised and frustrated with how Zoom has implemented their UI against the the grain of general Windows environment expectations (no real/consistent right click functionality, hidden system/setting menus, etc.). I understand @rhythmdevils generic sense of "why does it not do this - is this just not normal when it comes to music interaction/manipulation?" It's really beyond their control however as both the market and technical limitations have forced them to make fundamental design choice(s) as you rightly point out.
     
  4. mkozlows

    mkozlows Friend

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    Also, though, if you're using software, it's worth understanding the mental model underlying it. RD here has been all "there's NO WAY to browse by artist, that's TOTALLY BROKEN, and this is UNUSABLE SOFTWARE," but the thing is, obviously you can in fact browse by artist, as it lets you browse the artists of all the albums/tracks in your library. It's not deficient in the way he thinks it is, and is so loudly complaining about.

    What it doesn't do is let you browse by artists as a separate first-class collection that is unrelated to albums in your collection. Obviously this matters a lot to RD; based on everyone else's reactions of bafflement to unconcern, it's pretty obviously the case that this doesn't matter much to most other people. (It would never have occurred to me to even use artists as a first-class entity separate from their music -- I can count on one hand the artists whose every single work I'd want to browse through on the regular, and then plus it'd be weird to have works that show up if you browse by artist, but don't show up if you browse by album or genre or whatever else; it seems far more sensible for every browse path to show the same albums and tracks.)
     
  5. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    lol this feels like the old days when I would say a headphone sounded like shit on head-if and all the fanboys would go nuts. In the end I was right in that case and I believe this one as well. I don’t really buy the argument that it’s not possible though I appreciate the matter of fact drama free explanation of why that may be the case. Keep in mind my proposed solution wouldn’t change how roon works for you.

    I’m in fact “preaching to the wrong choir” here as this thread as well as the roon forum is full of people for whom roon’s current system somehow works. So the sarcastic comment about me being a silent majority is just dumb. Once again I have not been screaming, just baffled and disappointed and trying to make sense of the situation. And trying to do what little I can to make a change so I could possibly be at peace with my music library.

    I’ll continue to make my case on the roon forum which is watched by roon. And let you guys jerk yourselves off in peace.
     
  6. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    Your apparently not grokking the explanation, not really understanding what it is you are proposing - how it is a wholesale change on both the technical level (for example the what/how technically of the source and use of metadata) and philosophically with respect to organization, UI, etc.

    You want a different product sure - Roon is not it, and its not trying to be as it self-consciously is serving a different need. This is why your headphone sound/HF fanboy analogy does not work.

    Well {honest and well deserving curse word self-edited because its not worth being banned over} you too.
     
  7. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    It's really pretty simple:
    1. Could Roon technically make Tidal artists a 1st-class object in their database: Yes, that's the beauty of object-oriented databases.
    2. Could they do it contractually? I very much doubt, given what I know (more than I'd like) about metadata closed gardens.
    3. Should they prioritize it? No, it's likely that it would be a contractual and financial morass.
    4. Does anyone care? Some people do, but there are other missing features, such as better handling of classical works and boxsets, that get a lot more interest, and Roon Labs is a small company.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2020
  8. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    Now that’s a fuckin good response. Though I still have my doubts.

    not sure why this is all so f'ing personal. I could give a shit if you love roon. Now damnit why didn’t I hit the unsubscribe button.
     
  9. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

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    Just got an email confirming i have developer status for the miniDSP SHD Studio so that’s a relief!
     
  10. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    I got mine for miniDSP SHD, and what ' even more important it still works.
    I checked the thread on Roon forums and have not seen any complains from the folks who filled the form. Roon handled it pretty well after initial huffing and puffing.
     
  11. Riotvan

    Riotvan Snoofer in the Woofer

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    Yeah of course my main reasoning was to keep the device working as well. Haven’t kept up with the thread at all really. In any case i’ll keep an eye on future firmware updates.
     
  12. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    Since some of you are still disliking my posts I feel the need to clarify and make peace and assuage damaged egos. Because I’ve got nothing against any of you. And haven’t throughout this thread until it turned personal.

    so let me explain what happened.

    I posted here for clarification about how roon works and was upset about how it turned out to work, which went on for many posts because it took experimenting and asking around not just here to figure it out. And I was so shocked and baffled by what I saw as a horribly stupid design decision that ruined the product for me which I had great hopes for.

    It’s ok to get upset when a product is designed in a way you think is idiotic and dysfunctional.

    then people started posting that it was not physically possible and referring back to my “Disgruntled” posts and saying I was upset about something that wasn’t possible and I was a dotard. But the idea that it wasn’t possible was a new idea in the thread. I wouldn’t have reacted the same way if that’s what I found out at the outset. Though I’m still skeptical but I won’t go into why because it won’t help anything.

    So I’m just trying to say that NONE of this was about any of you until you all started attacking me based on new ideas. I was upset and disappointed in roon. That’s it. This isn’t personal.

    many of you I think highly of and I think if this conversation was had over beers no one would have their feelings perturbed. We’d all just be laughing about me drunk ranting about roon and then talk about other stuff.

    so let’s make peace and move on. I don’t want discord for no reason like this. If I’m going to piss people off it should be for good higher purpose reasons.

    I salute the God within you (that’s the true meaning of Namaste despite all the neo hippie trippy contortions and misuse)
     
  13. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    On 2nd thought regarding importing streaming service artists into Roon, there's a subtle technical difficulty it makes that much harder than it seems at first sight that I should have noted earlier. This is a technical, not a contractual difficulty. It's also something I've worked professionally, and published technical papers on. The problem is that names are ambiguous, and can only be disambiguated in context. Roon tries hard to address that by anchoring artists to albums. Let's take an example. Suppose that your Tidal favorite artists include "Dave Holland" and you want to import that to Roon. Well, there are two well-known Dave Hollands in music, the jazz bassist who worked with Miles and continues to be very active, and the late heavy-metal drummer who played in Judas Priest among other bands. Roon would have to figure out which one to bring the artist into its database. But without album or other contextual information, it would not be able to. That is, the "Dave Holland" who played in "Conference of the Birds" and the "Dave Holland" who played on "Screaming for Vengeance" are clearly different, but you can't know that from the artist's name alone. So you start by importing not just the artist's name but also its identifying albums names in the the streaming service. But album names can also be ambiguous. And so on.

    Please trust me on this, record reconciliation (the technical term for this process) is hard, and trying to patch different databases together without full context information is a recipe for confusion. IOW, getting "artist import" to work reliably would be technically difficult, hard to implement, and often flaky.
     
  14. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    I missed that part completely although I should have known better. Working for large banks I did see at least two long and not very successful projects to consolidate and reconcile the product oriented customer information ( one database for credit cards, another for online banking etc...) into one customer information system that could be used for CRM. It was hard, took took a lot of time, and still ended up with big holes. Taking into account how much data the banks have on their clients, reconciling artists between two streaming services must be way more difficult.
     
  15. Metro

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    I saw that Roon is offering a Black Friday 3 month trial subscription. I am not knowledgeable about Roon and wondering whether it's worthwhile for me to give it a try.

    Almost all of my listening is on streaming services (Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify). My general practice is that I run the Qobuz/Tidal/Spotify apps on my laptop for exploration and discovery, and I favorite albums I find interesting or want to explore further. Most of my extended listening is through Pi2AES / Volumio to a Soekris dac1541. I have a MyVolumio subscription and I can easily play my favorited albums on Qobuz and Tidal (for Spotify I use Spotify Connect, also through Pi2AES).

    I have a good size CD collection from my CD buying days long ago, but none of it is ripped (the task seems too daunting). I may occasionally pull out a CD, but for all practical purposes my current listening is essentially all from streaming.

    So the question is what benefit I would get from Roon, as someone who listens almost exclusively to streaming on Qobuz/Tidal/Spotify. As I understand, I would need a Roon server running on a computer, and this would be an extra hurdle. I'd rather not leave it running on my laptop, and currently none of my other computers are left turned on all the time.
     
  16. bixby

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    Absolutely no benefit!
     
  17. Elnrik

    Elnrik Super Friendly

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    FWIW, You can run Roon like you would any other playback software like JRiver MC, Audirvana, foobar, etc. It doesn't have to run 24/7 on a dedicated pc.

    I use Qobuz mainly, and Tidal to fill in the gaps, and Roon provides a way to pull both into one interface. Spotify doesn't work with it though.

    If you ever do decide to rip your collection, it would centralize that into the library too. Hope that helps.
     
  18. gaspasser

    gaspasser Flatulence Maestro

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    Dew it.
    The most important benefits are RAAT, library organization and Roon Radio (which is the best predictive radio I’ve come across). I think RAAT sounds better than other software like Volumio, etc.
     
  19. wormcycle

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    If you use a single laptop or PC as a digital player, you will get some little benefit from Roon, not much. Actually, for the best sound quality they do not recommend playback from the server system. There still will be some advantages like library consolidation and Roon has superb DSP. But the main attraction for me is RAAT, I use miniDSP SHD and Bryston BDP-2 as Roon endpoints. Roon networking is first class, buffering is optimized for the endpoint hardware, and Roon server improves the streaming quality from Qobuz, Tidal. Roon does not support Spotify.
     
  20. gaspasser

    gaspasser Flatulence Maestro

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    I thought this Trumpian answer was sarcastic. Why the hate for Roon brutha? The cost? That’s the only downside I see.
     

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