What's All The Fuss And Big Deal About Roon About Roon Being A Must-Have??

i agree, roon radio is a cool feature

on blu os, if you like a certain artist, you can click 'artist radio' under that artist's name, and the system will play you related/similar tracks from others in the same realm.... in for that (free) interface at least, there is something similar

I like the UI of Roon and all it can do, but for me the best part for me is Roon Radio.

I'd consider it more 'might want to have' rather than 'must have'....

i just decided to take the plunge (after so many friends/hifi buds urged me to do so, seemingly forever) and so will be trying roon out for the next several weeks, and i'll report back my learnings and experience after some time

my sense is it is a luxury -- a slick and well designed convenience, makes something we can do using other methods easier and done ’all in one place’, with the benefits of more handy side-info about the music (metadata, lyrics)... not quite as good as having lp album art or cd foldout for musicians on each track etc etc, (that is where blu os is quite weak... minimal zero info of that type there)

i am coming from blu os, which is really not bad and let’s one do much of the important stuff that roon lets us do more easily and more elegantly

that said, there is definitely a non trivial cost to this luxury, in the subscription and also the add’l hardware needed, so each of us has to assess whether the added expense is worth what it provides

mspot

You're correct.  I'm just getting started with this streaming thing, and I needed a simple slam-dunk application.  I'm not much of a guy for burning cd's and putting them on a hard drive just yet...we'll see how that comes along...but it's nice to have the capability anyway.  I only bought the hard drive because it was only $200 for 8 terabytes, I can't imagine ever using that much storage.  Mostly I listen to Tidal, Amazon and Napster on Bluesound...I listen on Pandora on my Sonos.  I'll only make copies on the hard drive if a recording on Tidal doesn't measure up to what I know what my cd sounds like.  Maybe in a couple of years I'll come back and take a look at Roon.

I've even bought an 8 terabyte hard drive and connected it to my Bluesound

In your current system, Bluesound should work fine. After you've accumulated a lot of music on the drive and your music library feels large and unwieldy, that's when you'll appreciate Roon.

It's from the song, Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the Roons 

I was an early adapter of Roon and had a Roon Nucleus and one of kids took it to University.

Bought a Node but had a lifetime subscription to Roon and used a laptop as a core just fro streaming. Blue OS is okay but preferred Roon.

Moved away from the Blue OS Node and now have a Bel Canto Stream and use the Seek application on my I pad with Qobuz and I am happy.

Roon is not all that but then again we will see after the Fall update.

You’ll probably get a number of responses, but no matter what anyone says here, pro or con, no matter how much research you do and no matter what people tell you, the only way to answer your question is by trying it for yourself. (They do a free trial.) The reason is that it probably doesn’t *do* anything that you can’t already do. I considered it for a few years and couldn’t figure out why I would need it. It turned out I don’t need it. But I’m doing a trial now and I love it. For me, it’s mostly a way of organizing my music, but Roon makes it brilliantly easy. Radio, stored files, Qobuz--all in sight and all ready to go. Give it a try and see for yourself; there’s no other way to know.

Edit: I was writing while erik_squires was posting. Basically: what he said.

sonic79

Thank you for the confirmation. 

After setting up the Bluesound Node (setup was a breeze), it seemed I already had all of the features that Roon offers....without a monthly fee.  I'm good.

Ditto mlsstl.

Not worth it.

I for one have never called Roon a "must have." I agree that it's more about music management and for me, with ~ 500 CD's ( I don't remember, don't count them) plus Tidal plus favorite Internet radio stations I find the metadata management and integration with Tidal just outstanding.

Yes, I can listen to all of my Peter Gabriel tracks, but I can also bring in music I don't own, or I can start listening to 1 artist and end up discovering lots more.

I also really like the DSP capabilities, and multi-room synchronization.

That's what I think it brings and makes a subscription worthwhile for me, but would I try to upsell it as THE feature you must have?  Nah. 

I write this as someone who tried Roon for two months and didn't stick with it.  Roon is more about music management and info concerning bands, artists and the like. Like the drummer on a particular track and want to find what other work he's done with other artists? Roon can help. Like a particular band and want to explore similar artists that you're not familiar with? Roon can help.  Want to play an album and then continue with unselected backgrouind music for the rest of the afternoon? Roon can do this.  There are other features along these lines including photos, artist bios, and the like.

I enjoyed these features but ultimately, for how I listen to music, didn't find it worth the price.  I am perfectly happy to explore new music in the fashion that Qobuz offers it, but I know others who really value and enjoy Roon's features in the areas noted above.

The Bluesound Node is Roon ready, meaning it can act as a Roon endpoint. You can not run Roon core on it, however. You will need a computer or music server for that. Roon core features integration of Tidal and Qobuz, DSP and upsampling, multi-source library management, network streaming, and the ability to imbed HQPlayer–all with a nice UI.

In your setup, Roon will not add anything.