Roon fans?

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Discussion

NDA

Original Poster:

21,490 posts

224 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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I subscribe to Spotify for ease of use (and Tesla) and Amazon HD for high res. My NAS has around 10,000 tracks, the vast majority of which can be found on Spotify or Amazon.

So... Roon?! I am two days into trialling it and it looks great - very tempted. But a monthly cost of (from memory) 12 just for library management seems a bit of a luxury... and yet....!

I am about to change my hifi from a NAD M10 into Ruark via MF amps, to the KEF LS60's. That doesn't make a huge difference I guess for a Roon discussion other than maybe I might switch from Amazon HD to Qobuz and a better Roon experience if I stick with it beyond the trial.

Will the new (ish) KEF Connect app offer a better Amazon HD experience than the NAD's clunky blue sound app? No idea until I have the new speakers.

What do others think of Roon? Waste of money?

theboss

6,879 posts

218 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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I like it a lot and bought a perpetual license for it which I use in conjunction with a load of ripped CDs and downloads, overlaid by Tidal and Qobuz. Devices are Linn streamers which are supported although not controlled using Roon's own native RAAT protocol.

Reality is though I still use Spotify Connect an awful amount of the time.

NDA

Original Poster:

21,490 posts

224 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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How are you ripping your CD's? The last rips I tried were a bit choppy in audio quality.


beanoir

1,327 posts

194 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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I have been using Roon for a good few years now and it's been fantastic. Pro's for me have been;

- it puts all your ripped music library and Tidal (which I use anyway in the car, on the train etc) into one place and arranges your playlists and albums seamlessly. I also have all of my radio stations saved in Roon. Basically, it plays anything I want to listen to.

- Roon has pretty impressive digital upscaling features which work very well for any lower quality files you might have.

- I ended up getting shot of an expensive Cyrus streamer because it didn't add anything to my system once I started using Roon, so I actually saved money.

- I can play DSD files, which on my main HIFI sounds brilliant.

- Its essentially created a whole home music streaming system for us, it streams to all of our devices in the house including things like my Sonos in the garage.

- it’s so convenient, we have the apps on our phones, iPads and on my laptop, so I can control it at any point as easy as any music streaming app. It become as normal as using my phone to check the weather.

Downsides...struggle to think of any, so scraping the barrel here.

- Cost, it's not cheap?

- I can't use it outside of the home network, which is a shame. Although, Tidal does the job fine so I'm not really losing out.

- If you're a critical listener and like the best quality then you'll need to hardwire (ethernet) from your Roon server


The biggest improvement and when Roon really became a game changer for me was installing Roon ROCK on a separate unit, isolating it from the endpoint on my main HIFI.



Edited by beanoir on Monday 30th May 10:29

SteveKTMer

722 posts

30 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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I use Roon, with Chord DACs using a core on Mac Mini M1 with external storage for the music files.

I use https://www.dbpoweramp.com/ to rip music on Windows 10 but I'm just about to swap that licence to the Mac as I scrap my last Windows PC. This is a great way of ripping as you can set things like the volume level, it also checks against an accurate rip database and the bundle comes with a nice batch converter tool for making copies in different formats for things like Sat Navs that can also play music. It also gets the correct artist and album names automatically. It's well worth paying for if you have 100's of CDs to convert.

I also use Apple Music and I wish there was a way for Roon to interface with that but it's not possible.

I use a couple of iPads to control Roon, the 12.9" iPads are great for this. I've got the permanent license and I've not found a streaming service which is as versatile or sounds anywhere near as good as Roon.

NDA

Original Poster:

21,490 posts

224 months

Monday 30th May 2022
quotequote all
Thanks - some really useful views.

I guess the game changer for me might be to abandon Amazon HD and sign up to TIDAL or Qobuz - integrating that with Roon...

I do like Roon, it presents my library in a very good way.

I'm not a techie and have Roon on my M1 MacBook Pro - my music is on a NAS drive. It would be good to have Roon on the NAS, but I don't think I'm up to the challenge of doing it.

beanoir

1,327 posts

194 months

Monday 30th May 2022
quotequote all
NDA said:
Thanks - some really useful views.

I guess the game changer for me might be to abandon Amazon HD and sign up to TIDAL or Qobuz - integrating that with Roon...

I do like Roon, it presents my library in a very good way.

I'm not a techie and have Roon on my M1 MacBook Pro - my music is on a NAS drive. It would be good to have Roon on the NAS, but I don't think I'm up to the challenge of doing it.
Personally I would install Roon on a separate stand alone computer, not running Windows, or OSX etc. But, some NAS servers can run Roon, some helpful info here https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/ro...

I'm not a computer techie by any stretch, but I managed to spec and build an Intel NUC (a small computer) which I then installed Roon ROCK (their own OS and server) and didn't find it too challenging.

That said, if the idea of all that scares the crap out of you, you don't have to do it to - you can run it on a PC/MAC, but it's nice to have it on all the time on a small low energy consuming dedicated unit IMO.


blindspot

315 posts

142 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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I've got Roon running on a mac mini, with my library and Tidal.

Just a couple of endpoints - a Devialet 220 pro CI with Monitor Audio PL200s and a Naim Muso. Both sound brilliant.

Roon makes it easy to control everything, and does quite clever multiroom stuff. The only real irritation for me is that your license is for the library - and so if you want to use Roon in multiple locations - eg. home and office, the only way to do that is to have the server on a portable machine. And if you're at the office, wife/kids/whoever's at home can't then use Roon. So you have to train them a. how to use Roon. b. how to use not-Roon c. how to tell which to do. And if your wife, like mine, actively resists being told how to use any of this sort of stuff, you'll need a second license.


SteveO...

465 posts

224 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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Another long time Roon user, previously with Devialet amps and now with a NAD M33. It does feel expensive but nothing else works quite as well for my needs; it seamlessly integrates my local collection with Qobuz and presents the combined library just how I like it.

I'll second the point made above - have a look at Roon ROCK. You can easily install it on a "cheap" headless Intel NUC (mine's 7 or 8 years old) and it just works.

Edited by SteveO... on Monday 30th May 15:59

NDA

Original Poster:

21,490 posts

224 months

Monday 30th May 2022
quotequote all
I've signed up for the Qobuz trial - it looks good. I will cancel my Amazon HD sub.

theboss

6,879 posts

218 months

Monday 30th May 2022
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NDA said:
How are you ripping your CD's? The last rips I tried were a bit choppy in audio quality.
I haven't done any for years but I used dbpoweramp which looked up the accuraterip hash and filled in all the track data and artwork very effectively.

The only rips I had issued with were with discs that were clearly shagged.

NDA

Original Poster:

21,490 posts

224 months

Friday 10th March 2023
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I thought I'd update this thread as I've discovered something quite cool....

I am now a dedicated Roon/Qobuz user and can't quite imagine life without it. I use the KEF LS60's and am very impressed with them. I have moved the Roon Core to a remote M1 Mac Mini. It's all hard wired to the library, core and speakers.

The DSP (Digital Signal Processing) is excellent on Roon but I always wanted some room correction - not that I specifically needed it, just the gadget magpie that lurks within.

I've just downloaded 'HouseCurve' - a mobile app - on my iPhone. HouseCurve is room correction and the corrected files can be imported into Roon within 'Convolution' as a filter. It works very well.

As usual with room correction, you need to play a (supplied) sine wave which HouseCurve records. You then correct the measured curve and export the file. If you take multiple measurements then you need to zip those and import the zip into Roon.

It's a tiny bit fiddly as you need a mobile phone and then you need to get the corrected file (s) from your phone onto your laptop to be able to import into Roon. You can email it, or AirDrop it etc. If I can do it, anyone can.

It has made a difference. Definitely.

There's a free trial which gives you one export. The app is £5.99 to buy - I've bought it... price of a pint.

Anyhoo, I thought I'd post this up for the small group of Roon users on here. smile

Edited by NDA on Friday 10th March 08:04

SteveKTMer

722 posts

30 months

Friday 10th March 2023
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thumbup

Nomme de Plum

4,199 posts

15 months

Friday 10th March 2023
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Ditto

I've run Roon for quite a few years now (Lifetime license) and the new Roon ARC allows Roon on the move.

The integration of Tidal is also seamless.

theboss

6,879 posts

218 months

Friday 10th March 2023
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Yep ARC has transformed things especially with the recent carplay integration, as I can now browse and listen to anything from my own FLAC library, tidal or qobuz at CD quality in the car without having to copy files anywhere

BertBert

18,955 posts

210 months

Thursday 16th March 2023
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Big fan here and loving Arc. Even works on in-flight WiFi at 35,000 ft!

Miserablegit

4,013 posts

108 months

Thursday 16th March 2023
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I’ve looked at Roon- £1000 for lifetime use seems to be expensive for “a pretty front end”

I can combine my NAS and tidal sources on the Naim app so I’m not sure what else Roon would give me?
Is there some fundamental benefit I’m overlooking?

BertBert

18,955 posts

210 months

Thursday 16th March 2023
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For me with Roon there are several super good things. The searching and curating is fabulous, really opened up music access for me. Second is that I get the same thing everywhere in the world that I go. Then it's the same in every room (as I have a Roon endpoint everywhere). I use Linn streamers. sonos. R-pi, soundbar all the same interface with the searchs and history all remembered. Expensive it is I agree, but fab.

Mahalo

556 posts

178 months

Thursday 16th March 2023
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I have been using Roon for 2 years now and am now a lifetime member - signed up just before the price went up. I use it with Qobuz Studio Sublime and my own library of music ripped to Qnap NAS via my Naim HDX. Used to subscribe to Tidal but dropped it and switched to Qobuz. Dropped Spotify too as their high res support is not good. Run my Roonserver on a AMD quad core QNAP NAS and it works very well. The ability of Roon to serve up the correct music format to the end points and transcode is very impressive and I can certainly notice the improvement in sound quality. Roon radio works very well too and has introduced me to new artists that I was not aware of.

Miserablegit

4,013 posts

108 months

Friday 17th March 2023
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Many thanks - multiroom isn’t a big thing for me. I’ve had a Sonos system to cover that for a number of years and I hardly ever use the multiroom feature.