This is an organization that has developed software that consists of a Interface overlay to keep track of Music from streaming services. And create narratives about tons of albums. It’s amazing in all that it does. I have a lifetime membership.
They have a forum that provides assistance from others including all kinds of technical service which is really challenging to deal with should you have problems. They don’t offer phone service.
my question is is this some operation that operates out of someone’s basement? Do they employ thousands of people? Is it a nonprofit organization? Are they doing well financially? Is there a Mr. Roon?
Who are these people that have coordinated this service. Does anybody know anything about this organization?
A few quasi prophetic more....if you have roon for them.
"The girl in the other roon
She knows by now
There’s roon in all of her fears"- by Diana Krall
"May seem peculiar
How I think o’ you
If you want me darlin’
Here’s what you must do.
You gotta free me
’cause I can’t give the best
Unless I got roon to move." -John Mayall
"In a mirrored roon.
All alone I stand
Strip away the phantom fame
Exposing my sides to see
The good and bad in me" -Metallica
Anyway, if you are going to be in there for a while, I’d suggest bringing some good reading material in with you. It is probably a depressing read, but John Bolton’s The Roon Where It Happened might be interesting.
Ah, that made me think of a song title and lyrics by the Beatles, and it was NOT the one about us all living in a yellow latrine.
But regardless, @thecarpathian, if you truly have to go real bad, I’d say go and do what you have to do, as unlikely as it might be, I would not want you to induce a medical crisis that might require a trip to the emergency roon.
@immatthewjJust following @thecarpathian down the garden path. (Killing me not to keep punning) Please save me from the restroon humor too.
Back to the original OP’s Q. Any roon user could stop reading now.
Roon is a what and not a who (from whoville..oops it’s starred again) and the Roon what is music asset management and and an overly shell (far better than the native software) for Qobuz, KKBOX, radio stations and the other one that states with the letter T. The who is the robust support if needed. It’s a modern Pandora’s box in finding and tagging or play listing all sorts of music and a quick and spectacular way of finding all sorts of music. Naturally all of us Roon Coolaid drinkers are by and large thrilled especially by the easy of use (once you know how to use). I suspect that its algorithms learn individual tastes for auto play aka Roon radio. Given how well it does it’s thing, I feel the cost is reasonable. Think I’m in year five?
It might be a good exercise for those who contemplate streamlining their listening experience by subscribing to a "streaming" entity to consider this, instead.. If you are one of the many who relish the process of cueing up a vinyl recording, or choosing a CD for an hour of listening pleasure, you are the ones about whom I am writing. The process of being "involved" in the minutiae required to be physically part of the end result is far more important than the convenience of "streaming" ! Cueing up a vinyl disc, with all of the preparation necessary actually contributes to the enjoyment of the performance that you are about to enjoy. It is almost like saying that the performers have already experienced the privations and incredible hours of work involved to become such a focus to the audiophile but now I want to just revel in their accomplishments ! What a bummer !! Invest a bit of your own time into the choice of your listening target ! Be a PART of the experience, not just a bystander. The rewards are substantial and have no downside. THAT is what is called being involved in the listening experience. Try it ---- you'll like it !!
True fact! And who cares about that crowd anyway? They're not Audiophiles. They don't even understand basic facts, like, the more you pay for something the better it sounds. Let naysayers bleat and tinker with their computers. Ignore them.
Roon is great. Marvelous sound quality. Tunes both Qobuz and Tidal for me. As well as my own stuff. Roon radio is great; I just listen to something I'm in the mood for and it goes on to play tracks from albums I never considered. When it plays something I really like I add the album to my listen later group and move on.
Harmon has added a much more customer focused aspect to Roon. New software developments are better as is the customer service, still by forum though. Most of the time there are no issues except for the folks who want to design their own nucleus tuning process to run the core program. Usually to be clever and save a few dollars. Often their stuff doesn't work and they blame Roon. The program is based on a fairly complex internet access which seems to awry for some folks with less strong connections or fluky IP providers. That said, works great for me, Buy it on an annual subscription. It is not for the I want free music crowd.
Roon is a game changer. Period. Now tracks can be added to Qobuz playlists which to me was missing. @phishhhhh4 What? Support is excellent and often a roon moderator will answer. This has been my experience twice. @effischerI initially dismissed Roon. I gave it a second try and that was that. Like many software based things once the workings get known it’s easy. And there’s a you tube video too as well. Nothings perfect but if anything comes close it’s Roon. FYI, All things considered, the roon labs community crowd is a lot more civil and helpful than the Agon can be.
My gosh you're going through a lot of agony with all these details. roon and I think immigration may be worth monthly basis and come to terms with how you feel about it before going for a Life commitment.
Marriage provides the same opportunities where you never know what you're getting into and then it is too late.
I don't understand people who design interfaces for processors, tvs, streaming platforms, it is as if they never really try it or put it out there for A Focus group review. The underlying cake can be quite good and then it gets screwed up with frosting that's awful.
Roon has been great for me...allows me to stream my music library or internet radio to multiple rooms...and gives you "liner notes' on everything. I have not yet played with the DSP functions...but that may be in the future.
This thread has been a very interesting read. I had been strongly considering an investment in the Roon "lifetime" subscription because I've become so very frustrated with JRiver. My online research of Roon seemed to indicate most people really like it for streaming and say it handles their stored libraries well. I've held off because I hate subscription-based software business models, wasn't thrilled with $900 for a "purchase" (way more than MS Office, which actually does work) and do not stream anything except terrestrial radio station websites through my browser.
As a work-around experiment, I recently gave JRiver one last installment to "upgrade" to version 33 over the holidays. Same damn problems: Will not rip CDs into my internal SSHD library and will not retrieve metadata on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro running a fresh install of OS X 10.13. It won't even recognize a folder (album) ripped on a different Mac computer and then copied into the library. Shows and plays in Finder and in Windows Files but neither JR27, 28 nor 33 saw/see it. And their forum "help" flatly isn't.
I'm going to try installing JR33 on both my 2016 Mac Air and 2024 Mac Air to see if the newer system architectures can resolve the ripping problem using an external DVD drive through the laptop to an external SSHD. I'm not hopeful but have to try.
Another work-around was importing the library to Apple Music, and it simply does not recognize the artist-album-song file organization in the near-terabyte size data set. Everything is 44.1 KHz, 16 bit (WAV extension), with a few higher resolution PCM items. Excepting only a few that were downloaded, Music categorizes as individual song listing only and I've yet to find a way around that.
Never had that problem with iTunes. The only reason I tried JR was to get higher PCM resolution for some stuff I got through an AgoN sampler, a Linn holiday collection and later on, some vinyl digitized through a TASCAM DA-3000. iTunes required a MIDI interface reset and computer reboot to change output resolution.
Now that I learn that this Harmon International / Samsung product does not offer factory support, I don't care how well it's reviewed. I will not plunk down that kind of coin for something without a factory warranty period, period. For the same reason, I have zero interest in their "free" trial (TANSTAAFL). My thanks to all of you for the warning/guarantee. Roon clearly appears incapable of providing me with the functional and happy digital listening I'm seeking.
Roon was wonderful and informative… until I had a fatal issue with my lifelong subscription account and could no longer access it. I found their version of customer service (open forum of users) less than welcoming and ultimately unhelpful with my problem. So after attempting to resolve the issue several times over several years, I moved on to greener pastures (Innuos) and look back with some regret at the time I wasted trying to fix my Roon account. What a brilliant design for customer service - make the customer do it for free. I will never again buy gear from a company that doesn’t stand behind their product with more integrity than that.
I've found good info on Roon forums, albeit about subjects that were not directly Roon-related (since I have no use for Roon). Folks there tend to be helpful and often quite competent.
you have no idea who’s responding if they are from roon or from who knows where
From what I was able to discern during my limited exposure, you are better off talking to folks who are not from Roon.
The ability to access a folder from a Microsoft desktop with roon and dealing with the folders within the nucleus that serves as the host for roon software is challenging and if you have problems god help you. You can launch a question into the forum and the answers are all over the place and extremely technical. My questions were fairly basic yet it was so convoluted and awful experience. The organizational aspects of roon when accessing folders leaves a lot to be desired.
Organization of albums is not very good as it just presents them all and you have to scroll through hundreds of albums to find what you’re looking for. Would be nice if they developed a system that could easily be used to organize things. Fortunately the underlying software for roon is old and I think it’s challenging to Bring it to the modern ages. If anyone needs to use this who is handicapped and uses voice control the app is not set up properly to accommodate Apple features for voice control. apps that are available on iPad generally conform to the standards of Apple but for some reason roon could care less.
And yes they do not offer customer service phone number and this further frustrates the experience if you have problems. The forum Interface they offer is archaic and challenging to deal with as well the people they have involved with it are responsive but you have no idea who’s responding if they are from roon or from who knows where.
Roon is not open source / free, therefore it is superior.
This is a false statement. Plenty of open source software that is just performant and reliable as any proprietary software.
sorry I have nothing to add about Roon as I don’t use it.
Sarcasm sometimes goes undetected but let the record show that I am a big fan of open source software, and that I use and support it whenever possible. I don’t use Roon either, and I won’t until the day I see an escadron of pigs perform daring aerial maneuvers outside my window.
I know this started as a very unserious thread but I will chime in nonetheless.
I love Roon and now have a lifetime license. Fabulous music discovery, seamless blending of on-site and streaming music, DSP adjustments, and a really great user interface. A bargain in my eyes.
Roon is not open source / free, therefore it is superior. In high-end audio, the more expensive products are the better they sound, which is comforting - you get what you pay for - and Roon was happy to oblige. It became such a cash cow in the process that Harman, shrewd enough itself to sell out to a multinational giant, acquired it.
@gdaddy a problem with that is Bond caught Goldfinger cheating at cards prior.
It’s a common problem these days that people use the sins of others to justify their own sins. Not a happy path! But Bond has a license to kill in any case so he is clearly special. Cheers!
@mapman After years of admiration for James Bond I recently came to the realization that Bond was the one who cheated Goldfinger in their golf game.
First offense... Goldfinger would never find his ball because Bond was standing on it. This forced Oddjob to drop a ball down his pants. Then Bond, cheating again, switched balls in the cup and declared that Goldfinger must forfiet the game. A blatant cheat!
Golf is a game of integrity and I'm disappointed that Bond had to cheat to beat him. Goldfinger was, in fact, the better player and made a hell of a putt on the last hole and deserved the win.
Actually it helps lesser knowns get discovered by linking to them from better knowns so that is at least something positive for most musicians.
Also Roon provides no music itself. It just integrates external streaming sources into a richer experience for the consumer. Qobuz and Tidal pay teh artists is a different yet related story.
Also if you find something you like in Qobuz via discovery in Roon, you can buy teh files from Qobuz. Of course there is no pretty record or CD to look at when you buy it, you just own teh music now in case you fear losing access to something precious to you via streaming somewhere down the road.
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