Roon - do you use it? (Poll)

I used to. It worked very well (better than Roon). Then it stopped working… (it only controls Naim streamers!)

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I had it and found it too confusing however that may say more about me than Roon. The thing I don’t like is a) having to pay someone to manage my music when my Naim app does it already d) cost what am I actually paying for and does it really add valve to my listening experience and c) most annoyingly after I canceled it and detaching myself from the mailing list still get emails from them. They just don’t stop.

I’m a little over 3rd parties that just try to get in between you and whatever it is you’re doing.

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I have it and use it on my laptop through my Hugo TT2 to stream Quoboz and local music. I also use it on my laptop to stream local music to the ND555. I have not mastered it but I do like it as a great secondary source. I could be happy with it as a primary source long term. It sounds great.

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:sweat_smile:!

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It’s an interesting poll. An eye opener for me - albeit a real mystery to me though though :thinking:. Nice one @Innocent_Bystander

Ha ha. Fair enough @PeakMan :slight_smile: @Simon-in-Suffolk would agree with you here:

[quote=“Simon-in-Suffolk, post:58, topic:26376”]
‘[…] they already exist on social media forums elsewhere other than what we have here :grinning:
[/quote]’

Agree with you both - no appreciation thread from me then :+1:

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On a 7 hour round trip yesterday ARC played folk seamlessly on the outward bound leg, but stumbled with classical music on the return. I wondered if atmospheric conditions hindered the feed?

ARC. Yes yes. Works flawlessly for me too. Feels weird playing ripped cd’s from my Innuos Zen mini via my phone when I’m miles away from the house. :+1:

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Like any company they will email you to return its a business after all. Just unsubscribe to them it will have the option at the bottom of the email.

People choose to pay a lot for music servers like the Naim core that just holds and serves up your music files the same as any computer you already have will do for free. Why is this deemed acceptable where software that has as much if not more rnd poured into it is constantly being updated with new features and services be not worthy when it’s doing a similar job. They both bring advantages to a specific user and both has disadvantages to others.

I have unsubscribed several times and I still get emails, I’ve even got the sorry to see you go one. If you’re happy with a subscription that’s fine but I’d rather not. It’s about choice also these companies have little regard for your personal data.

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It is because people believe, or hopefully have listened and determined for themselves (with appropriate controls against bias), that the dedicated design, whether Naim Core, Melco or Innuos etc etc, sounds better than a bog standard computer doing essentially the same job, and/or is easier to use for them or others.

Then the same can be applied to Roon this is not unique to hardware. Same considerations apply.

I was unaware of claims that Roon sounds better than other playing software? I do recall some people reporting the converse a few years ago, but haven’t followed anything enough to know if Roon has improved sound quality, talk usually being about its features.

I think the biggest problem for anyone trying to decide what hardware/software or combined to use for streaming is the sheer plethora of options, worse where software and hardware are double variables. Perhaps one place where the dedicated hardware scores far better is the relative simplicity (buy a box, plug it in, and use the supplied control product) - I can certainly see the attraction of that, but even more so anyone who is not computer savvy.

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Some do I can’t hear the difference in it compared to any other bit perfect software or heard any different server make a difference either. But what about usability, flexibility and feature set which are all decoding factors in either scenario. To apply your logic to just hardware is little short sighted. Users of Roon choose it because it offers us something others don’t same as some hardware does compared to others.

It should be identical when used in lossless mode compared to anything else. :thinking:

I’ve not done any very recent comparisons against the Naim App or Bubble but I have found that switching from a Sonore Bridge to RooUPnP has made a small improvement in SQ, this was unexpected and became noticeable when doing some back to back testing to ensure RooUPnP was working properly.
My Roon and NAS are in the opposite end of my house in an upstairs cupboard multiple switches away. RooUPnP is (intentionally) in the Naim streamer segment of my network.

I was putting forward what I think is a view held by a significant proportion of the hifi fraternity - though of course there are many who look further.

To me any choice of hifi software has to have best possible sound quality as a base value, then comes ability to find and play my music (most of my streaming is from my own locally stored files, otherwise just occasional sampling of new music from free sources like Spotify and Utube). I want browsing by artist, album, track to be easy and searching near instant even if music files have minimal metadata (e.g. even if just track name in a folder named by album in a folder named by artist). I want gapless album play, never stuttering or interrupted. Given these requirements I want best value for money. And I want maximum longevity, with no need to remain connected to the internet, and zero requirement to subscribe in order to play music - don’t want dependance on anyone or anything. (Improvements or added features are acceptable to be charged - provided there is the option not to take).

As for other features of library/playing software, of those I’ve encountered most are spurious and lost on me. I have no use for playlists, simply playing what I fancy at time of playing. Ditto a list of favourites. I have no interest in knowing what other people like or find popular. Suggestions for other music I might like to investigate theoretically could be of interest but experience of the tool the Naim app used back in 2014-15 (Rovi?), and of Roon in a couple of trials, suggests that software will have great difficulty guessing what things not in my collection I’ll like, and the last thing I want is a lot of wasted time pursuing futile suggestions. Meanwhile no software can predict what I will be in the mood for when one album ends, and playing the wrong thing can be highly unpleasant, even if the choice is normally my favourite album - and because of this Roon Radio is absolutely not for me.

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No, of course it doesn’t. It simply uses non compressed local PCM media streams. Yes you can add effects, and tone controls via parametric eq - and you could argue its algorithms sound better than others - but these are options over and above the core lossless playout .

The real dependency here is how well the Roon endpoint software is developed into the receiving end point - and this is where you might hear a difference in perceived audio compared to other software rendering solutions - even on the same steamer - and some confuse this with Roon (or UPnP for example) itself.

It is funny how some go looking for mystique and mystery where none exists - present company excluded of course.

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I just go looking for music, think there’s a few here that spend too much time going beyond the simple pleasures music brings. It really doesn’t matter how one chooses to listen.

I’ll get my coat.

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The reason I pay extra for Roon is for its DSP functionality.
There are some useful features that Naim could adopt
To tag or otherwise, add your own notes to an album
To search by conductor or composer
To provide a link to information booklets as PDFs that are included with CDs
But much of it is gimmicky window, dressing, and Sam

And some of the features are annoying. The reviews include a huge number of references to influences to generate cross reference links so you get information overload
Also, it crashes regularly on my iPad
And finally, it has got worse recently since it’s latest update and is not as good as finding things as going to the streaming service direct.