Roon 1.8

Working fine for me, but I feel your pain. As you know, I’ve been fairly active on the Roon forum, and man, do those guys need a wake up call (or head out of you now what). IMO they totally lost the plot with 1.8, trying to take what was a pretty good DAM (digital asset manager) and trying to make it into a Spotify. But as somebody said over there, it’s as if they just let coders tack on whatever with no real large term plan or consistency across the software. They’re still fixing/not fixing things that should have been taken care of in 1.1 like going back to where one left off when scrolling instead of it taking you to the top (okay, they fixed it in albums and artist with this release but not elsewhere).

Really doesn’t instill a lot of confidence that they actually know what they’re doing other than tacking stuff on and casually moving things around for no good reason on an outdated framework. Oh well, still plays music to where I need it to go and I’m fully invested. Just glad I’m not having the display issues you are. perhaps it’s the difference between ROCK and running the Core on a Windows machine?

Sounds like some horrendous stuff there.

All pretty smooth for me and I have to say I’m finding much more new (to me) music with 1.8.

I really like the variety of little pushes towards exploring such as in their prime, recommended, collaborated etc.

In fairness they seem to have “rolled back” quite a few of the changes that annoyed users.

What happened your compilation albums, says he just about to rush off and check mine!

.sjb

I’ve set up a trial on my Mac and can’t get my UnitiCore set up as a network share. I can find the IP for the UnitiCore on the Naim app, but it won’t configure in the Roon settings? Any ideas people?

Edit: I got that to work, but now don’t know how to select an album from the UnitiCore, as it seems to default to the i-Tunes library.

Edit 2: Okay, I’ve added the Core folders and disabled the i_Tunes ones (I think). Onto the IOS apps now.

Edit 3: Can you import your favourites tags from the Naim app for the UnitiCore and Tidal libraries?

Edit 4: How do you get the Room app to control the volume output on a NDX2 or Nova?

My core is Rock , its just a windows remote.

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Favourites in Naim app are for Naim app only. Sign Roon in to Tidal then any Tidal favourites are automatically added to Roons library and wil start to appear with your local music. You can then organise them how you see fit. Roon has its own favourites system or you can build a focus to find them all and save this as a bookmark that will update automatically.

Naim expose volume control for the Nova so it will just work as the Naim app in Roon. NDX2 only allows digital volume control if it’s exposed it can’t control the pre volume via system integration. There are other ways around this buy using a harmony hub and a Roon Extension but it’s how Naim allowed it so Nothing Roon can do.

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On the NDX2 Roon will not have access to system automation which is a bit of an issue as you lose volume control within your music player app.

There is a way round this which you may wish to consider if you decide Roon is for you.

You can use a Logitech Harmony Hub. This is an IR blaster that connects to your wireless network which can control your pre-amp. Within Roon there is an extensions area in settings which allows the use of 3rd party extensions. There is one that will integrate with the Harmony Hub and give you mute and up/down volume control like you can do in the Naim app. It doesn’t control the volume in such big steps so is a little slow but ideal (in fact better!) for small volume adjustments. You do have to have a device to host the extension on, I use a container on my QNAP for this.

The other nice thing is that you can add a widget to your IOS home screen and also control the volume from there.

With regards the Nova I don’t know as I don’t own one but with volume built in to the device I would have thought Roon could control that, perhaps @anon91915252 can chime in as he uses an Atom?

Edit: I see that @anon91915252 had chimed in while I was composing my post!

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Thanks Guys, I’m on the NDX2 at the moment. I can use the Naim widget to control the volume, so it’s not a big issue. I’ll play around with Roon for the trial and see what I think.

Focus is a very powerful way to help organise your library. I would play with it and get used to it. You then can save these search parameters as bookmarks for use again at anytime. Once set they are applied to any new content as well so is handy to have one to show just hires content or just content from Tidal, or all albums by a certain producer etc.

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Yep no problems at all with me with my Core running on an iMac… seems quicker the new version, using clients on iOS.
Rather like the new features… note they say they have had bumper growth very recently (largest ever for the company) which tends to suggest their new customers are liking 1.8 … but they go to effort to say they are seriously taking onboard the feedback from some of their older customers who find some features of 1.8 less optimum than before.

I got the MQA working, which is one of the areas of interest for me:

Interestingly the file then shows up as a high res Tidal stream in the Naim app:

And, it does seem to sound better…

Yes, the volume thing is only worth it if you decide to proceed further.

The trial is quite short and not necessarily sufficient time to get used to Roon and understand its usefulness. The Roon team are pretty good at allowing extensions if you ask them.

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Shortly after I updated to the latest version of 1.8 (build 778), I initially couldn’t run the Roon app on my Win 10 devices. The app would open for maybe half a second and then shut down. However, I didn’t have a problem using my iPad - this worked fine.

I narrowed the problem down (with a few pointers from others in the Roon forum) to the fact that Roon developers had added a couple of new lines to the ‘Colors’ file in which Roon Theme colours are defined. I use a customized version of this (and one or two other files) in order to obtain a more pleasing (to my eye) and more subtly coloured Roon UI. Ever since I identified the two missing lines and updated my customized file with the two new elements my PC based Roon app has been working pretty much perfectly.

We’ve known that the ‘Atlas’ files in which ‘shapes’ (such as the choice of circles or squares etc for things like artist photos) are defined will change with most releases and customization will have to repeated after most new builds. However, this is the first time that Roon developers have changed the structure of the ‘Colors’ file as well.

A bit of a pain! - but very much worth the effort for a much improved and better looking UI!

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@trickydickie : which widget are you using with roon and logitech?

I just use the widget that can be created using the Logitech Harmony app.

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The first level of un processing (un folding) gives an reasonably accurate pcm stream, but it will contain in band digital artefacts to allow further MQA processing … these are disguised to look like digital noise, but these artefacts are in fact further processing information that allows an MQA DAC to process the file further to get a closer approximation to the native hires PCM encoding, the so called second unfold.
Obviously as far as Naim is concerned it will only see the base band encoding and any artefacts present, Naim won’t be able to decode these artefacts.
This method of dual encoding, although clearly not perfect, is rather clever… and I suspect most, unless critically listening on revealing equipment won’t be unduly impacted by the encoding noise. There is also the issue of aliasing components, which is a side effect of the MQA process, that seems to vary whether one finds objectionable/detracting or not.

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+1 here, it’s blinding late at night…there is a support ticket out… iPhone and iPad: refresh in white after reactivating the device[Ticket In] - Support - Roon Labs Community

Don’t hold your breath :roll_eyes:

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One issue I’ve encountered is that after using Roon, I can’t access my UnitiCore through the server option in the Naim app and have to reboot the Core…

Strange how that should affect anything in that regards. It’s just using the smb access the core has natively.

Thanks, @trickydickie, now this widget is working on my Ipad

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Yes, odd. I had to hard reset my iPhone in the end and that fixed thins. I’m wondering if it’s an issue with the Naim app?