Roon is certainly not necessary but may be a nice to have. Definitely trial first!
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Is that a thing? I saw it was bumpy, but stillā¦
Some interesting comments and again, they seem to be centred around the āis it any good and value for money?ā
I was hoping that the thread may be a discussion for some of the key features and useful tips.
I know that the Roon site forum would cover this but I was hoping for something more specific to Naim users.
I started by pointing out that I discovered how to dismiss the iTunes library very easily - maybe not a big deal to many but I was chuffed to bits with myself! 
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By all means use this thread to ask questions on Roon. There are quite a few seasoned users on here, myself included who can help or advise on best practices.
I first would recommend going through all the knowledge bases so you get an understanding of the features available and how they can be used in everyday usage.
I strongly recommend you get to grips with focus searches and bookmarks as these can make navigating your library so much quicker. Takes a while to get used to it and setup some basic searches that can be used again and again, but once done you can get to want you want far quicker and the bonus that itās always up to date with your latest additions with no extra work.
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I suppose it is a glorified hard drive ā¦
I did consider building a Nuc, then realised the choice of OS and software made things more complex than I realised.
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I think you have made the right choice as the AudioStore kit is well specced out uses a minimum OS designed for audio offers a number of ways to use it and server options. Also you can upgrade it by using a linear PSU at some point if needed.
Indeed - but as I said not everyone who has trialled Roon has liked, some not liking it and some disliking it, seemingly quite polarising in that regard. It is simply a matter of taste, how you approach your music and itās choosing, how you like information presented, etc
But for those of you that find it good, the fact that others donāt is irrelevant, so enjoy!
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It was my intention to purchase a LPS, but Martin advised me to hold off as he was negotiating with a manufacturer to change its specification.
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Congrats.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
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Well done, I trialled Roon 3 times, the 4th I signed uploved it but sadly a new server setup meant I would not work the way I wanted due to Innuos to Roon Squeezelite integration.
IB, since I value your opinion and since Roon capability is something Iām currently considering Iād certainly be interested in your reasons why not. Please fire away!
Please donāt let my view stop you exploring Roon yourself - it is available as a free trial, so you can assess without risk. But as you ask:
I had two trials, the second earlier this year because several Roon advocates didnāt recognise some of my criticisms, and indeed I found that it had improved over the two years since my original trial. I thought Iād link to a post I did just after trialling this May, but canāt find it - I think it was in a thread that got deleted because people started getting quite unpleasant in their responses (Itās not just the political threads where that happens!). Whereas in my first trial there had been things that I found very irritating, it seems that they had been toned down, removed or made optional, so I wonāt mention them - this time it was more that for me it wasnāt as good as my present library/playing software (Audirvana), and there was nothing inspiring (to me) either to make up for it or to make me want to fork our a fair amount of money.
Roon reinforced to me how good Audirvana is - with the latterās recent introduction of the facility to use file location as a sort criterion, it has fixed the main gripe I used to have with it, and which Roon still has not fixed, allowing my music to fall into place naturally notwithstanding whatever metadata may or may not be set. My collection has poor metadata, and Roon was not good at finding everything, which is a bit of a killer. oddly, that was originally the reason for trialling it, because people said its metadata handling was good - but that is only if it recognises the music in your collectioion, it then apparently setting up its own metadata (but not attached to the files IIUC).
Also, having been used to it I hadnāt appreciated before Roon how nice it is to have artists appear in a simple alphabetic text list (filterable) allowing very rapid skimming through - Roon only seemed to allow browsing with pictures, requiring much more movement to skim though (Audirvana offers both). And Roon insisted on using many artist images that I donāt recognise, which made the images pointless (e.g. a present day image of the singer of a band from the 1960s.
Against that, Roon appears to integrate internet streaming from Tidal in a seemless way, as if it is part of your own library, which I am sure is beneficial - but no good for me as I donāt stream online! And if you like to have lots of information presented to you about the album or artist, that is not the sleeve notes, Roon provides that automatically. it has other bells and whistles and options that I am sure Roon converts will tell you about.
It seems to me that the benefits and flaws of Roon mean that people tend to either love it or hate it (though where I hated it after my first trial, it is not so strong a feeling now.) For the lovers, the seem to wonder how they ever managed to play music without it. For the rest of us, it simply doesnāt justify its expense, and may be worse to use than alternatives.
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Thanks for this IB. Helpful and clear. I donāt intent to start using streaming services, so Iām not sure that feature is relevant to me either. As you say, a trial might be in order. Kevin
Roon is helpful and helping you structure and access your collectionā¦ and provides useful meta data and information that is not solely reliant on what is defined in the media meta data itself.
It can also tune your audio replay for different devices and roomsā¦ ie Naim and non Naim.
However it is the integrating of locally stored content with cloud based content which is where it comes into its own in my opinionā¦ so if you are not going to use cloud based services such as Qobuz or Tidal, then it might not be good value for youā¦ but audition It and see, perhaps with a free trial from Qobuz, Tidal or both.
Now to whet your appetite with a use case, Qobuz has increasingly more content as 24 bit that it streams. I was listening to (Whatās the Story) Morning Glory by Oasis yesterdayā¦ a classic mid 90s album. On CD and 44.1/16 it was always enjoyable but was over compressed and in places in distinctā¦ the 44.1/24 bit master available on Qobuz really brings this album more alive ā¦ it still sounds loud and compressed, but you can enjoy the music and lyrics far more and really feel the verve in itā¦ I have now used Roon to prioritise the cloud 24 bit Qobuz version over my local ripped CD version on my NAS in my music library.
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As Simon and IB state, no harm in having a Roon trial and a streaming trial at the same time. You never know, you may find that you like streaming! It is very good SQ.
You may then decide to subscribe to a streaming service with or without Roon, or may choose neither but at least you will have tried for yourself.
I personally use Roon with ripped CDs and Quobuz and Tidal subscriptions. As Simon says, Quobuz has a great selection of 24 bit music - I may cancel my Tidal subscription. The only thing holding me back is Amazon HD - I donāt think that Amazon will care about audiophiles so I want to do my bit to keep their competitors in business!
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Hi Kevin - iād just trial it and see what you think. Youāll know soon enough is for you.
My two-pennethā¦ I didnāt think iād need Roon and had no interest in streaming services. I now have both and i really like what Roon does. Itās not for everyone (as you can see from this thread) but if you do like what it does then it really can provide a very nice way of interacting with your music collection (and finding more music). Iāll be interested in what you think if you give it a go.
James
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Thanks to all for replies. James, (and others?) I believe youāve gone the whole hog with a Roon Core(plus?) rather than just a Roon capable device such as an Audiostore or similar. What are the advantages of a Roon branded box vs cheaper options in your view?
Iād say the main thing is that the Nucleus is a plug and play solution that is guaranteed to work, with both hardware and software supported by Roon. The downside is that itās not very versatile. On a NUC, Mac etc. you can run other services too, such as UPnP servers, LMS, and whatever else you want a computer to do.
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I would echo this.
Plus as I was looking to stop using my NAS as my music library an Audiostore black box gives me that dedicated music server and leaves my NAS for office duties.
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