ROON: One man's view

[Symples]

I have been listening to streaming services for awhile now and have converted many of my CDs to FLAC.
My music was originally held on a Netgear NAS. Served Originally by it's own music server, then eventually PLEX.

With nothing better to do. I built my own NAS which was more powerful (PLEX kind of demanded it)
It also stores my movies and pictures.

So where does ROON come in to this?

Having read about ROON in the press. I decided to give it a go, as they were offering a two week trial.

ROON was first loaded up to my laptop.
It was quite easy to configure. I simply had to tell it where my music was stored and off it went cataloging.
First impression were simply that. Impressive.
Wait a minute.... that would mean that my laptop would have to be powered on all the time!

Welcome a Dell Inspiron Micro 3050
It's about the size of 5 stacked CD cases and runs windows 10.

I loaded the ROON core on to this PC.
It's a fairly low powered device (low as in power consumption) with an Intel Celeron processor "J" with some numbers after it.

Enough of that.
How did it perform?
Wonderfully.

The PC takes awhile to boot up, but once it was up and running. It performed faultlessly.
None of y equipment was specified as ROON compatible, but it able to find quite a few things.
My amp, my streamer. I even switched on an old (read discontinued) speak (Mission Aero) and it found that as well.
I believe that if a device has AirPlay, it will be found by ROON (Don't quote me)

So in use.
It was fun.
Downloading the ROON app to my tablet. I was able to control everything from it.
sending the music to different parts of the house.
It was more stable than BubbleUPNP that I use on my phone.

I liked it.
I liked it a lot.
Liked?
Yes liked. It did everything I wanted it to do, without complaining.
Easy to use once to get used to it
Informative and clean interface.

it's just too expensive for me to justify staying with it.

I'm back to PLEX.
I have it on my phone, tablet and it is built into my TV.
and... it doesn't cost me a penny.

If you can afford and justify the cost of ROON. I would say go for it.

Mike
I have it on my table t
It

 

[Jimboo]

I access my catalogue by reaching over to my dedicated shelves and don't look at pixel generated pictures while listening.
It's about time that the term computerphile was used to describe the listeners who insist on relying ever more time consuming, distracting formats to apparently save time and get pretty pictures.

 

[Symples]

I access my catalogue by reaching over to my dedicated shelves and don't look at pixel generated pictures while listening.
It's about time that the term computerphile was used to describe the listeners who insist on relying ever more time consuming, distracting formats to apparently save time and get pretty pictures.

I hear what you are saying, but some people like the convenience of being able to access all their music from one place and on multiple devices.

To be able to route their music to any room and to carry their music with them, wherever they go.

Just look at the growing popularity of services like Deezer, Tidal, Amazon HD etc.
The growing numbers of streamers on the market.

and..... of course some like their analogue route.

Personally, I like both.

I like to sit down, read an LP cover whilst listening to music. I also like to pickup my tablet and control my system and instantly play any tune.

Computer/digital is just another tool to play music.
Not better
Not worse.

Now let me sit back and listen to my Victrola

 

[djh1697]

I used to have multiple sources, Tuner, CD, MD, cassette, and of course a turntable.
My CDs have been ripped to an HD.

I now have two sources and have the past four years or so. My beautiful Pink Triangle turntable, and a Roon based NUC, running Windows 10. The NUC is connected to the excellent USB March DAC-1, which is based on the Khandas TB1. I listen to most music converted to DSD on the fly, although native DSD music does sound slightly better, it takes up over 1Gb for a CD, space I can ill afford.

My #cymbiosis serviced Pink Triangle still has the edge over the Roon based device, however, there is very little in it. I have a hot rodded Rega RB300, reworked by #audioorigami, in comparison to the LP12 Majik, my 35 year old turntable sounded rather magical, flooring the Linn product with a large soundstage and bass extension.

I tend not to listen to as much vinyl these days, for fear of damaging something. I have built my system up over almost 40 years, a valuable lesson I learned, don't listen to anything you cannot afford.

 

[manicm]

You cannot afford disk space for CDs that use 1gb apiece?

 

[michael hoy]

You cannot afford disk space for CDs that use 1gb apiece?

Why, disc space is cheap.
I have around 100TB of storage.

 

[manicm]

Why, disc space is cheap.
I have around 100TB of storage.

I was addressing djh who complained about storage cost.

 

[michael hoy]

I was addressing djh who complained about storage cost.

Apologies, I missed that part of the post.

 

[djh1697]

You cannot afford disk space for CDs that use 1gb apiece?

I have over 1000 albums ripped, so yes a 1Tb would work, however, I would need to re-rip my CD's again.

The Blue Nile's album High ripped to FLAC is 241Mb, in DSD 256 it is 6.45Gb. DSD does not work well using WiFi or lower speed networks very well. To be honest, it would be more cost effective to buy a high spec NUC, reinstall Roon, and have ROON convert FLAC to DSD256 on the fly. My i5 is not fast enough to be as effective as straight DSD files.

 

[Symples]

A NUC connected to a DAC would be a nice idea.

 

[djh1697]

A NUC connected to a DAC would be a nice idea.

Exactly what I have. I have an Intel i5 NUC, running Windows 10 AME, and a MARCH DAC-1 USB DAC. The Roon Core is difficult to work with a USB DAC, especially converting to DSD. my current solution works very well.

A Roon purchase is like buying a Linn product, the only difference being, that unless you upgrade your personal hardware, the Roon upgrades are FREE! Some do little to the sound quality, but the UI evolves, bringing up playlists based on what you have listened to previously. I did have Qobuz and Tidal subscriptions, times are hard at the moment, so I am just using Tidal.

I ripped my own CD collection to hard disk using dBpoweramp, however, most of the music I have is on streaming services.

 

[djh1697]

I also have Simpleaudio Roomplayers, with the reloaded upgrade. These are set as Sqeezeboxes, and work very well as Roon endpoints.

 

[Symples]

Roon trial available for 3 months.
Only $2

Current exchange = £1.71

Roon

roonlabs.com

 

[Symples]

I have been using Roon for the past month.

It's very slick. To be honest. I would say that it is probably the best music cataloguing program. But at a cost.

A feature I do like which I haven't seen elsewhere. Is the artist notes for the tracks and albums. It's has the feel of reading an album cover of vinyl records.

I also use BubbleUpnp which cost me around a fiver. Very similar in function, but more a much reduced cost and that for me is the bottom line.

 

[SteveR750]

I subscribe to Roon solely for the DSP feature. It works brilliantly with headphones and latterly as a room correction. It's networking capability is key for me, so that I can stream the same config to multiple endpoints in different rooms.