Roon 1.8

This is the sort of comment that worries me, I’m afraid.

I have been almost uniformly gushing about how Roon has enhanced my music playing experience since I signed up some years ago. What made Roon so fantastic for me apart from the Tidal integration and other functional aspects was the timeless and (to my eyes) beautiful aesthetic and look and feel of the product. By comparison with other music apps, Roon to me was a thing of beauty.

By contrast, I absolutely detest the look and feel of some of the social media apps out there, and I can’t help feel that if 1.8 makes 1.7 look antiquated, then 1.8’s UI look and feel is probably designed to mirror some of these apps.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and I may actually quite like the new look once I have had a chance to sample the ‘Dark View’ version of some of the garish screen-shots I have seen. I really hope that this is the case, but I have a horrible feeling that Roon (and particularly Roon on a large monitor) may have lost its timeless and aesthetically beautiful appeal in a bid to pander to what is deemed to be current fashion.

Won’t please everyone, but I personally didn’t find the look particularly nice. It worked (after I got over the sideways scrolling :slight_smile: ) but that’s it. The new design principle of taking cues from museum displays makes sense to me. But either way, some people will like the new look and some will like the old look. In my experience from work (software) most people who say that they detest something new will be used to it a week later, and many of those will even start to like it. Some will prefer that everything stays the same as 1987, but you cannot let that hold you back (though of course it makes sense to understand what functionalities/behaviors should be carried over).

We saw this 2 years ago when the Naim forum platform was changed and even further back when Naim replaced their NStream software with what we see today.

There was plenty of moaning at the time but it’s now largely forgotten and I suspect only a few would want to revert to the old versions.

I’m really looking forward to the new version. I’m trying to listen to more classical and the new features look especially useful with regards to discovery and finding music to listen to. It will be nice to see a redesign remove some of the inconsistencies that have crept in as Roon has evolved.

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I meant functionality wise and it does display everything much better and in a more ordered uncluttered way.

The new focus everywhere addition could not work in the old UI due to how it was all laid out.

Re sound improvement, I hear it’s a 10 x improvement - but that’s in binary and has got to be right-shifted once…

However, more seriously, it seems like this is actually a 2.0 release, not a more minor upgrade…

Should be interesting.

Yep it pretty much feels like it.

Email just arrived from Dylan. :slight_smile:

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Yeah can’t join the beta forum which I need as I use Android remote and need beta access. :frowning: Have to wait until can get to the beta forum. Backing up my core now whilst I wait.

For me, that was the main focus of the demo (and it’s in the emails, but I found it more compelling while Mike was driving the interface and describing what he was doing).

Overall, it seems like a much more “discovery oriented” version - with collaborators, covers, similar artists, similar works, the “best years”, and (at least it appeared this way to me) more material per genre, and more sub-genres… all being suggested on the home discover page with nice layout, photos, etc.

There was also a section where he showed a view on “what you’ve been listening to lately”, again with an element of “if you liked that, you might like this”… I’d never seen that before, except when @Sloop_John_B posted his last_fm or possibly Qobuz “your last year in listening” summary. Now it’s right there with a sort of a calendar view, with dots sized according to your listening amount that day (they didn’t really explain that view) and a fractional circle graph of artists and genres you’ve been spending time with.

Hope this comes across more as “cool excitement” rather than “gushing”! Best wishes for fun next week with the release!

Regards alan

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It’ll be interesting to find out if 1.8 improves searches for Qobuz.

There are often times I know Qobuz has something but cannot find it with a Roon search whereas Audirvana manages. Odd.

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Yes I did wonder why if its such a major release they did not adopt convention and go 2.0

Not odd. Audivarna uses the standard Qobuz API so it gets fed updates instantly as its not a dtaabase of their own its a direct live window to Qobuz API and database. Roon works differnently they dont use the API due to how the integration into you local library works with all the metadata etc they need. They have to get full database dumps sent to them from Qobuz for updates to come through. Last minute releases that happen on Thursday night often miss the deadline when sending to Roon so it takes some days for Qobuz to send a database update to Roon. They have explained this many times. Its a side affect of having such an integrated approach unfortunately.

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Sounds plausible, but I must try again with some older obscure titles.

I have no issues finding albums, you do need to sometimes be a bit more specific with search but I dont find anything missing apart from cases I mentioned. There have been odd times when Qobuz have missed stuff and not sent Roon updates at all. TBH Qobuz does come across as a bit shoddy organisation wise as well as the service having a lot of down time.

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I really want to talk about 1.8 but can’t. Fight club rules apply. :hear_no_evil:

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Do we have a rollback option?

I guess not, you’ll probably have to reinstall the software.

Don’t forget to backup your database before upgrading. Not sure the database is retro compatible.

No they don’t ever support rolling back. But I think this version will be a mandatory update as lots of changes behind the scenes.

I think the installer might look for the latest build when installing. And this update is more than likely mandatory so it will update itself anyway on restart.

More short reviews:

Roon 1.8 update early look review | StereoNET United Kingdom

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