To Roon or not to Roon, that is the question...

[spiritofmusic]

...of this thread. Just one to throw out to those deriving their new music discoveries and broadening musical appreciation via streaming.

So, I'm finally deciding to make the jump to getting a server/dac and doing the Tidal or Qobuz thing. I'm still to make a decision on gear, but this thread is more about the method of finding music, and how this will influence my decision on which boxes to buy, and critically how I find new music, deep genre searches, lateral searches leading to gems, and in depth investigation of classical and jazz.

Now, I just assumed this was Roon, nothing else to consider. I've yet to see any substantial opinion against it, to the point I've dismissed servers that dont use Roon Core like Melco and Fidata.

My good buddy here Audiophile Bill has tried to disabuse me of what he believes is a false premise. For him Roon is no panacea, esp in classical music. He's much more a fan of the Tidal and Qobuz search functions integral to those databases, and especially Last FM, which Bill confidently predicts would be much more relevant to me than Roon.

So, yet ANOTHER area in streaming that I am blissfully unaware of or maybe of the wrong opinion. I really did think musical searches online were by far best navigated by Roon.

Thoughts out there?

My uses of streaming will be predominantly to go deep and hardcore on obscure French, Canadian and Japanese prog beyond Magma and Voivod, get a much wider appreciation of prog electronica/trance beyond Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultze, get interesting new searches in minimalist/post rock beyond London Grammar and Niels Frahm, open up my appreciation of late 60s/70s gospel jazz beyond Alice Coltrane, and just open up my horizons on all things classical, from Plainchant to 20th century.

Is it necessary to go Roon for all this? What are the alternatives that are just as good or better?

 

[Golum]

I use Roon installed on my LDMS (core) and Tidal&Qubuz are anyhow integrated into Roon so no issue here. Love Roon for stabilty and user friendly GUI which for me personally is important part of equation. Some prefere JRiver or HQ player instaled on servers but i don't find them to user friendly so would stick to Roon.

 

[caesar]

The guys at Axpona were saying the Innous software sounds better than Roon.

 

[caesar]

I also don't like Roon because it doesn't really pick up my ripped vinyl, and I don't feel like messing around with the metadata

But guys who stream from Tidal seem to love it

 

[microstrip]

The guys at Axpona were saying the Innous software sounds better than Roon.

In what Innuous servers? Most of them have little computing power.

 

[caesar]

In what Innuous servers? Most of them have little computing power.

The app that works with all of their models. They seemed to suggest their software sounds better than Roon.

 

[microstrip]

The app that works with all of their models. They seemed to suggest their software sounds better than Roon.

So the guys were just the Innuous people? We need more details to consider such statement as there are several ways of using Roon with Innuos servers - what is true in some cases can be false in others.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

...of this thread. Just one to throw out to those deriving their new music discoveries and broadening musical appreciation via streaming.

So, I'm finally deciding to make the jump to getting a server/dac and doing the Tidal or Qobuz thing. I'm still to make a decision on gear, but this thread is more about the method of finding music, and how this will influence my decision on which boxes to buy, and critically how I find new music, deep genre searches, lateral searches leading to gems, and in depth investigation of classical and jazz.

Now, I just assumed this was Roon, nothing else to consider. I've yet to see any substantial opinion against it, to the point I've dismissed servers that dont use Roon Core like Melco and Fidata.

My good buddy here Audiophile Bill has tried to disabuse me of what he believes is a false premise. For him Roon is no panacea, esp in classical music. He's much more a fan of the Tidal and Qobuz search functions integral to those databases, and especially Last FM, which Bill confidently predicts would be much more relevant to me than Roon.

So, yet ANOTHER area in streaming that I am blissfully unaware of or maybe of the wrong opinion. I really did think musical searches online were by far best navigated by Roon.

Thoughts out there?

My uses of streaming will be predominantly to go deep and hardcore on obscure French, Canadian and Japanese prog beyond Magma and Voivod, get a much wider appreciation of prog electronica/trance beyond Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultze, get interesting new searches in minimalist/post rock beyond London Grammar and Niels Frahm, open up my appreciation of late 60s/70s gospel jazz beyond Alice Coltrane, and just open up my horizons on all things classical, from Plainchant to 20th century.

Is it necessary to go Roon for all this? What are the alternatives that are just as good or better?

Hi Marc,

Just some minor corrections.

>> I don’t believe Tidal and Qobuz own engines are superior to Roon for searching but I do prefer other software for searching my own music (not via Tidal) such as Jriver (shame sound isn’t as good as others).

>> I do believe that Roon isn’t very good at searching for classical because of how it is set up.

>> I do believe that you don’t just need Roon for music discovery since “scrobbling” is the domain of other software like Last.fm and both Tidal and Qobuz have their own discovery functionality.

>> I do believe for someone who is allergic to computers the simpler the solution the better

 

[asiufy]

The "Innuos software" is squeezebox lite. You can use iPeng on an iPad to control it, or use the web interface.
It does sound better than Roon, so Innuos did what they could, and integrated squeezebox lite into Roon. So you can have your cake and eat it too. That's the best sounding option if you're using Innuos through a USB DAC.
If you just want to pick an album and hit play, you don't need Roon. If you want to catalog a sizeable collection, and create all sorts of "views" into it, and find new things based on what you already have and like, then yeah, you need Roon.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

The "Innuos software" is squeezebox lite (and they don't "hide it"). You can use iPeng on an iPad to control it, or use the web interface.
It does sound better than Roon, so Innuos did what they could, and integrated squeezebox lite into Roon. So you can have your cake and eat it too. That's the best sounding option if you're using Innuos through a USB DAC.
If you just want to pick an album and hit play, you don't need Roon. If you want to catalog a sizeable collection, and create all sorts of "views" into it, and find new things based on what you already have and like, then yeah, you need Roon.

I found iPeng to be a good app on iPad.

Marc has no digital file collection at all and is not interested in ripping his CDs. His foray into streaming is solely via Tidal and/or Qobuz.

 

[asiufy]

Really? I thought Marc mentioned acquiring CD boxsets, and he has a CD player... So he might not have files today, but he might want to have. The Innuos will, of course, rip all the CDs for him without him having to touch a computer.
And having files + streaming services into one cohesive view is priceless, if only to determine which version sounds better.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

Really? I thought Marc mentioned acquiring CD boxsets, and he has a CD player... So he might not have files today, but he might want to have. The Innuos will, of course, rip all the CDs for him without him having to touch a computer.
And having files + streaming services into one cohesive view is priceless, if only to determine which version sounds better.

Well when I asked him that exact question today he said no. This is why imho, he doesn’t absolutely need Roon unless he can’t live without that interface.

 

[spiritofmusic]

I realise I am coming to streaming a little half-arsed. For me, I'm struggling w the nomenclature of things, if I can't get the defintions right, the concept won't flow. And I realise I'm hitching a ride rather than driving the car by not ripping my cds and thus having all my digital music in one place. But to begin with at least, I just want streaming to be a THIRD source of music. I remain v happy to keep buying lps, cds, blu rays.

And from my discussions w Bill, are there many others out there discovering and adding to their musical exposure other than via Roon?

 

[ngamountains]

Well when I asked him that exact question today he said no. This is why imho, he doesn’t absolutely need Roon unless he can’t live without that interface.

I think Alex is suggesting Marc’s view on this may evolve as he becomes more comfortable with the interface(s) and better understands the possibilities. I would tend to agree, not meaning to speak for Marc, but from my own experience wading into this space.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

I think Alex is suggesting Marc’s view on this may evolve as he becomes more comfortable with the interface(s) and better understands the possibilities. I would tend to agree, not meaning to speak for Marc, but from my own experience wading into this space.

Yes I also agree with this. I would be surprised if he wouldn’t prefer navigating his cd library so conveniently ripped and ordered.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Bill, you may well be right. On this occasion I just wanted to put yr ideas to me out there, because it's the first time ever anyone has been lukewarm about Roon. I truly believed Roon was the default choice for those wanting to broaden and deepen searches and exposure, classical excepted.

 

[the sound of Tao]

One of the issues of trying to understand something completely without ever having used it is that you don’t have the experiences to integrate the ideas.

Your experiences with streaming will shape the way you set yourself up.

Streaming acts like a great tide... you converge because what it offers is seemingly limitless. To survive this apparent limitlessness you need organisation. That is what Roon is. The best organisation of all your music in convergence.

No matter what anyone thinks they might choose to do it will all really start happening when it actually is all setup and you start experiencing it. Hopefully there is still some room in the journey for Marc for surprise. Like maybe he’ll enjoy his streaming setup even more than his current digital and it might all become integrated in one big happy music time where he is so enjoying the music choice as it opens up and less worried about the technology choices of how it is happening and more completely focussed on the music.

I will be surprised if Marc doesn’t ultimately rip his CDs to his Innuos as well but he may not. If he gets an mscaler his experience of streamed music will more likely be comfortably well beyond his current limits of audiophile acceptance and he won’t likely be feeling musically ripped off at all by choosing to hear a streamed bit of music over any of his other sources. The fact that he has SET and Zu will possibly make that distinction less of an issue because the focus is possibly more in the music and less in the sonics with his amp speaker combo at any rate.

Either way Marc don’t worry about it. Get a trial subscription to Roon. The rest will sort itself out seriously. Roon adds to the richness of the experience in so many ways and I’ll be surprised if it isn’t what you’ll end up using in the long term. It is a good navigation tool and surviving streaming is all about easy navigation. I’ve got my search pattern for classical well and truly sorted now and go in via the streaming sources or via Roon integration and either search via composer, or performer or title of work... if it’s available it will come up, having choice in classical is certainly not an issue.

Far, far, far greater choice than in my old fixed library, orders of magnitude more choice and that streaming choice is just growing constantly. Tbh I never think about it any more. It’s just my best ever musical reality and it’s even getting better each day. I find new bands, new music all the time and still am able to enjoy all I’ve loved in the past and enjoy them all in the light of a better appreciation of all that’s out there.

 

[asiufy]

I think Alex is suggesting Marc’s view on this may evolve as he becomes more comfortable with the interface(s) and better understands the possibilities. I would tend to agree, not meaning to speak for Marc, but from my own experience wading into this space.

Yep.
Almost immedately, he'll look at that CD player, and wonder how the new DAC/streamer combo sound playing the exact same CDs he has, specially since he won't have the faintest idea about the provenance of the stuff that's on Tidal...
Bill is not the first person that has no use for Roon. We've had folks in this very forum that said they're not curious about acquiring or hearing new music, they just want a convenient way to play their existing music. And Roon is, frankly, not the only game in town for this purpose, and might not even be the best even.
I've always used UPNP with Linn Kazoo. It's no frills, the search is fast (using the right UPNP server of course), and I could always get to an album or song quickly. But Roon adds so much to that, and does so much more than just "let me play this one album here", that it's silly even to put it in the same category as these other apps.
What I don't get is, from what Marc described, what he wants to do is EXACTLY what Roon was made for.

 

[Number9]

For me the interface that Qobuz and Tidal offer are very intuitive and either make finding titles very easy. Once you get comfortable with the process you learn the best ways to discover artists and sub-genres you never would have imagined. This pertains only to streaming. There are a few things that Roon does however that I haven’t found as easy to do without. With the Squeezebox/Innuos software via iPeng app close to 30% of the files I ripped from cd’s were not very easy to access due to inadequate artwork/labels or because they didn’t even show up in my (main) library all together. If I load the exact same drives/files onto the Roon software I would say 99% show up with all original clean artwork and all album tracks in order whether DSD downloads, cd rips, whatever. When I want to save a file that I am streaming to my library for easy access at another time it is much easier with Roon. Its much easier for me to establish what the sample rate is of the file I am listening to with Roon. The community forum that Roon has is very supportive and any issue/questions are answered very quickly in most cases. Regarding the sound, it can go either way imo. Some files sound better streamed over the Internet, some sound better that were ripped from CD, some sound better streamed from my NAS, some sound better from the hard drive on my Innuos some sound better through SotM 10g switch to SonicOrbiter to SOtM 200 neo. You get the idea. Bottom line is you can get a free Roon trial so you can ultimately experience different options before dropping any dough. I like Roon and I think there are enough variables that you can tweak to your liking.

 

[Blue58]

Marc has had ample experience using Roon and Tidal within my system over the last 2 years and he knows how to use the search function to find associated artists and how to add them to the library. He is aware how downloaded files and CD rips integrate into the library of Tidal streams and how the sound is very close between all formats due to the upsampling by HQPlayer.

I therefore don’t understand why he is asking for opinions on this subject.

Discovering new artists/music should not be defined by the abilities of Roon solely, but as it has always been, it requires detective work. Reading threads like ‘What’s spinning’ or ‘Album of the evening’ , reading Pitchfork reviews, SHF posts, talking with friends about MUSIC and not just talking about audio/WBF or simply letting Roon Radio make suggestions.

Marc will eventually have a streamer with or without Roon so expect many future posts, questions and epiphanies.