My little rant about Audirvana and Roon

I avoid the Roon Forum completely. It allows me to be unaware of whatever it is that happens there. Problems? Not interested. Unhappy customers? Sucks to be them I suppose. I am happy to be sheltered from all that. (Hit the solution button)

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I would but donā€™t see the button.

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I agree with Al, no issues here. Simple NUC Rock install process that pre covid i7 was about 550 total cost. $700 for lifetime, done. Never had an issue. Roon has chosen to be wide open in what it supports, and with that comes all sorts of issues. Windows/QNAP/MAC/ROCK and all the sub variants in those. Not an easy task. My library is miniscule compared to others, but its been a rock solid platform. For what its worth the issues I read about are mostly windows based, no surprise there.

Then you are part of the lucky users. Others are that upset and heavily complaining on the forum as Roon for them is hardly usable at all for over 2 months now. There are many bugs there like Roon search extremely slow - how to fix it? BUILD 1353 - Support - Roon Labs Community
Search is Extremely Poor - #144 by Nidhogg_One - Roon Software Discussion - Roon Labs Community
And there are dozens of bug reports about the remote app problems (freezing, loosing connection so server etc on iOS and Android).

Event that severe as some users (even lifetime subscribers) say they will be cancelling it.

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The forum is very deceiving and makes you think EVERYONE has issues. Roon does not really have a support desk. as do many software companies now, especially the smaller ones. They had over 300k uses last I saw. if 0.5% have issues thats 1500 posts on the forum.

I think the biggest issue Roon has is size of libraries. not organized right or too small of a core and yeah it will be slow. Rest seem to be bugs which they do fix pretty fast. Are there too many bugs published? maybe. But again with the fragmentation of the user base, introducing new features is not as easy as it sounds. Testing omg that is nearly impossible.

Well even users with a Nucleus are reporting problems. So whatever it is like server software problems, cloud server problems etc. itā€™s not fun when you pay for a software and canā€™t use it properly. I am not a Roon user though some of my friends are and they are annoyed by it in the meantime. Though none of them is writing in the support forum. They were expecting Roon to fix these things after so many weeks. But obviously is having some more severe troubles, otherwise they would fix them or at least provide some details. And some bugs are there for many years. Itā€™s always funny when I have a listening demo at their place and they apologize that the iphone or ipad app scrolling doesnā€™t work correctly. Thatā€™s something that every other app does perfectly. But as itā€™s not a native app I was told they obviously cannot fix it easily, so users have to just deal with that.

That has not been mine any many others on this forum experience. We have had a few has some issues again mostly due to size of library which did fall in what room said it could do but did not. When online forums used for support itā€™s going to look way worst than it is. If it was as bad as you say it would. Or have sold to Samsung and would have gone out of business years ago.

I canā€™t imagine living without Roon.

No problems here, either. I run it on a 2012 Mac Mini. Probably has cobwebs in it. (Starting to think I should plan for the future and get a newer macā€¦)

Roon can run HQPlayer, too. All depends on the streamer.

Not sure what you mean by ā€œremote appsā€ā€¦ do you mean ARC, to play your library away from home? That works too. Roon app on phone and ipad work just fine.

Alā€™s right, the roon forum is pretty silly. I do check things out there, thoā€¦ tips, tricks, tactics. A few of the developers (the HQPlayer guy and the Raspberry Pi RoPieee guy) hang out and are good about addressing questions and problems.

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All forums do tend to magnify problems beyond reality. We see this happen here quite regularly. :slight_smile:

But this does not invalidate the existence of problems experienced by users. Their problems remain real.

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As mentioned lucky for those not having troubles. It hasnā€™t been that, seemingly the last 2-3 months. If this is related to the takeover by Harman Audio I donā€™t know.

@terzinator Funny thing is people with a MacMini have less troubles than those on Nucleus :smiley:
Sure HQPlayer in Roon is very nice to have.
Remote apps as being the apps on Apple and Android appstore.
And I agree the Roon forum is pretty silly :sweat_smile:

I had been curious about a Nucleus, but Iā€™ve had such good luck with the Mac, and Iā€™ve always been a Mac user, so my curiosity has remained just that. Not really interested in getting one.

From user experiences I also see that all MacMini especially since M1/M2 they are all extremely happy about it. Also some who switched from a Nucleus, as the MacMini provides more flexibility and better performance.

I use a Nucleus+. It has bricked twice after updates requiring repair from Roon. If it happens again, I am moving to the Mac where I have control over the BIOS and operating system. Iā€™ve had a lifetime sub for 8 years so I got it for a good price.

If I were starting over knowing what I know, I would go with the Mac Mini.

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I will say, the one thing i DO NOT LIKE about macs these days is that you canā€™t upgrade anything anymore. Used to be able to open the case and the machine could grow as you needed more storage/RAM, etcā€¦

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I agree but I donā€™t think that is as much of a problem for use as a dedicated Roon core.

It is the Apple way.

like Roon for all the info

but, network dropouts

not so with Audirvana, better SQ too

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Thanks for the details.

Interestingā€¦

does one use a streamer with Audirvana? or only the computer itā€™s installed on?

looked it up but not seeing anything about using a streamer to access itā€¦ maybe plex?

yes

my pathā€¦Audirvana ā€˜coreā€™, like Roon, on computer, which sends the music bits (from internet or local files on computer) to streamer over wired network (could use wifi but donā€™t). choose music with computer program (which must be running) or from iphone/ipad. streamer connected to dac via usb (havenā€™t had success yet with I2S, on back burner)

as for paid internet music delivery service, I use Qobuz

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