I’m fine with paying more for a product that is continually improoving. But it’s not obvious that Roon is actually improving. They keep changing things, but how much of the changes from the last 2 years have really impacted the way I use Roon? Not much…
And I’ve spent more time recovering from broken / bad upgrades then I ever want from a product that I pay a monthly subscription to. They are lucky that they don’t have much competition.
This is my problem with it, not that I’ll drop it anytime soon.
I bitch about it a lot and I would really want a more focused offering, but it doesn’t exist.
I’ve said before ARC is 0 value to me, though I appreciate it isn’t for everyone, it’s a bit annoying that a good portion of my subscription money is going to develop an app I will never use.
if only Qobuz had an easy way to play directly to my Auralic I would’ve left Roon by now tbh
I got used to the combined price but this might be enough to push me to figure out if airplay is good enough or maybe even move to Tidal.
DLNA/UPNP and SqueezeLite are both lossless if the streamer supports the file format.
I think Airplay is capped at 44/16.
$700 USB cable, $1100 headphone cable, $30 increase in Roon. Priorities people! lol
I’m with you @Polygonhell ARC has been someone I’d use but it’s entirely not functional and no clue from support. I gave up on it. For what I get out of it, I still see it as net positive value, but it’s less attractive when they fuck up royally on an update and other than the non functional ARC there’s been little in the way of meaningful improvement in the twenty or so months I’ve been a subscriber.
lol true
I didn’t even remember how much I’m paying now for roon tbh had to check
but in the last few days I avoided updating the software because of this thread, then couldn’t find an album I wanted even though it was available in qobuz, and now they’re asking for more money. Today that rubs me the wrong way. By January I’ll likely forget lol
I’m pretty sure there’s an option for qobuz direct streaming in the streaming setting of the G1
you can use their lightning os app but I hate it, I want to use native apps with good user experience like Spotify, Tidal and obviously Roon provide.
Yeah it has an option like Spotify and tidal connect but for qobuz (in which you use their respective apps)…
Edit: streaming autoplay for qobuz not connect
hmm I’ll check, wasn’t aware of any of that.
it’s indeed through airplay and capped to 44/16.
I started thinking about that after I commented. In the grand scheme it’s not a killer. Also, I still pay for premium subs to Spotify and Amazon so if I was that concerned I would let one or both of those go.
I’m with @Polygonhell though, I tried out the Arc it’s OK was fun to have Roon in the Audi but it did not make that much of a difference in the long run and the novelty wore off fast. Paying for something I could care less about is sorta a bummer. If they made it an optional upgrade for those really interested in it that would be different.
Still, none of these “gripes” is enough to force me to cancel.
I use Roon many hours a day. Probably more than any other piece of software.
I use Roon ARC to play files offline while I’m driving. It turned out to be a perfectly functional replacement for PlexAmp for me. Not bad for an initial release.
There really isn’t any competition for what Roon does. Nothing integrates local/streaming collections as elegantly as Roon does. Nothing has such a flexible Core/Remote/Endpoint model.
I’ve had zero issues with upgrades, especially since building a ROCK.
There are a few behaviors that really piss me off (like skipping a track when there is a connection issue) but that’s a rare enough occasion.
Their search functionality isn’t great but at least they’re working on it.
Overall, still totally worth it. I won’t begrudge them an extra $3 per month.
winamp, squeezebox, mediamonkey, foobar, whatever, there is nothing that comes close to what Roon offers for me. I’ve been pretty lucky with the updates I guess, had some issues with the windows freeze bug, needed to restart the core 2 or 3 times and sometimes need to restart my remote app but that’s still fine for me. The others I’ve tried in the past weren’t any better, had other quirks and made me spend a lot of time fighting metadata devils.
Only wish they made it sound as good as audirvana, that sounds noticeably better to my ears. I’ve tried running it on a NUC and use the remote app but that always seemed to have issues connecting when I wanted to start listening and took me some fiddling. For me the audirvana use case is strictly to control it from their desktop client, they have solved the SQ but not the remote networking. Not sure why Roon isn’t looking into this, if audirvana adds more Roon’ish features the SQ issue could become their downfall.
But until then I’m a happy Roon lifer, bought it after 1 month, seemed a no brainer for me and break-even just came a bit closer. People seem to have no issue spending 1k on some fancy USB cable that they plug in and maybe forget but 600’ish for some nice piece of software that makes your life easier every day, that is to much. I’m guessing some have lost more on resale loss this year alone. You can be sure that more hours went (and are still going) into Roon than in that USB cable.
I think there’s a giant disconnect when it comes to software.
Electrical engineers and electronics workers who build hardware? Pay them well.
Software engineers who create Apps and systems engineers who keep data centers running? Fuck them.
People resent paying for an intangible product.
As someone who built both hardware and software products for a living I appreciate the challenges in both but they are incomparable. Hardware is so much harder to do right.
Good, Fast, Cheap pick any two, I believe it applies to both HW & SW.
I think the issue with Roon is that we’re paying for the “lux”. It doesn’t really do anything revolutionary, it just slick and polish and beautiful and well thought out. It’s like dating a hot chick that’s also a chess master and has a masters in philosophy.
I think the problem with the Roon sticker shock is that there are solutions out there that are FREE that do just about the same thing if you’re technical enough and don’t mind some sweat equity for setup and maintenance. Using that scale I can understand the reaction.
As a paying customer though I’m at the point where I expect better in the way of stability and performance. They’ve been lagging… no pun intended.
I worked on both at various points and on the software side of complex hardware products, and my take is very different. The hardware team for PS4 was a fraction of the size of the system software team when I worked for Sony.
I’ve worked on projects with 10M+ line codebases, and I honestly believe there is little as hard in any field of “engineering” (if you can even call it that) as managing the complexity in those systems.
Big software is “hard”.
Roon isn’t big software, but if you want continued support they have to pay developers, and I think a subscription model is probably the easiest way to guarantee that gets done. I bitch about it because I can.
They are both hard and with different challenges. I come from the medical space, it’s probably a very different set of challenges than your experience in Sony and why we look at it differently.
Doing anything right is hard, regardless of it being SW or HW.
What are these free (or even not free) solutions? I have poked around for Roon alternatives for a long time and really haven’t found any.
Basic requirements: