ROON

[Scooter]

If you haven't got an interest in digital look away now, this will bore you.
Over the Christmas holidays I saw a lot of post's on other forums about roon. It's basically a control point for streaming. Not being a geek I don't look for things to play with but I've always found ways of getting things done where music and photography is concerned, so I thought I would give a go.
So basic requirement is 8gb of RAM which I have on my MacBook. So signed up for a two week trial and downloaded the software. The "engine" is referred to as the core, so once it was installed on the MacBook I had to point it towards my albums file. This took a little while as you needed // before the folder title, obvious really, not!!! Once it found it it then built up a library. I then added Qobuz, so off it went and added the favourite albums I have on there. These albums are albums that are waiting a "test drive". After an hour or so it was all set up to go.
So what is it I see? I get an interface like Apple music or the Linn app but on steroids. It's not cheap at $149 a year but I think it's worth it. One of the disadvantages of downloads is that you don't always get the CD booklet or album notes. In all the years of downloading I have about twenty, at the most, which come as PDF downloads. When I put an album on roon I get so much more. Lyrics, album cover with format, album description. artist bio and track credits (who plays on the track, producer, engineer, etc). Not with every album but you also get the dynamic range of the album.
On the home page you get options where you want to go, your own music library, radio or Qobuz. You also get a list of what you last played, what's been added. Playlist from roon and playlists suggestions based on my albums. Playlists from Qobuz, Qobus new releases etc.
One feature that I won't be using is Tidal. Tidal's high res is MQA which Linn doesn't support. Roon will convert it to FLAC high res. What concerns me there is the file would go into the core to be converted and sent back to the DS. I should also add that I have found BBC6 at 320 kbps instead of 128kbps on Linn's radio.
The thing I'm enjoying is it's interactive with you. It looks at what you are playing and gives you suggestions of other artist/bands that you may like. It tells you where members of the band you are playing have appeared on other albums. It also created playlists of artists and who are similar. As I play a lot of Wilco it has come up with "Wilco flavoured" playlists.
It also looks for new releases of artists in my library. Since having it it has found and suggested the Molina, Talbot, Lofgren and Young albums, a new Ryan Adams and yesterday boygenius which features Phoebe Bridgers.
It also gives tour dates local to here. I admit not up to Dan Steels standard but close.
Another feature is you can stream music from your collection to anywhere you can get wifi as long as you leave your system on line at home. This is something I will not be using as I use Qobuz for this and I am wary of leaving things on whilst away on holiday.
On the technical side, the core of roon on my MacBook was using a lot of memory and whilst running it would get hot. I found that roon do a machine that does the job called nucleus. Off to a local dealer I went but it cost £1,800. You can add a SSD hard drive to it but at another £300+. He advised a better way is to get a Apple mini mac and put the core on there freeing my MacBook. This I've done and I'm very impressed with the mini mac. So I've now started using it for the downloading as it's wired into the network. I've put it in the TV cabinet as I use the TV as a monitor. This has made a far better and easier work flow than using the MacBook.
My main love is music and roon has certainly made discovering new music better as well as informing about artists and songs. For myself it's a game changer and the Linn app's are now redundant.

[evil_C]

Thanks for that, Keith. I’ve never fully understood what Roon does, but that’s a great description.

I notice from the example that you can stream 24bit files at 192kHz. Lucky you! I’ve had to limit my stream to 96kHz owing to slow broadband (4.2Mbps). Sometimes even that fails!

[Scooter]

Glad it’s helped as I didn’t get what it was about. There is the old Chinese proverb one seeing is worth a thousand hearings. It was worth the trial.
When I first started downloading I was with Virgin and was lucky to get 3mbps. The first album I downloaded was a live Springsteen show. It took well over two hours, I went out whilst it downloaded. You couldn’t really use iPlayer on the TV without it buffering. For everything else, email, surfing then Virgin was OK. Then I was cutting my front lawn when an old mate pulled up in his BT van. Got talking to him and he told me he was installing the first BT fibre in our area next door and would be testing it. He gave me a knock when he had finished and showed me the results of up to 40 mbps. I switched soon after. My daughter at the time was shocked at my slow rates as she had Virgin in Leeds with speeds of 70mbps. Not all areas get speeds like that but hopefully it will come.
I should point that the 192/24 is being sourced from my library. Another advantage is it now takes minutes to download an album at 192/24 and less than a minute if it’s just MP3.

[Scooter]

Glad it’s helped as I didn’t get what it was about. There is the old Chinese proverb one seeing is worth a thousand hearings. It was worth the trial.
When I first started downloading I was with Virgin and was lucky to get 3mbps. The first album I downloaded was a live Springsteen show. It took well over two hours, I went out whilst it downloaded. You couldn’t really use iPlayer on the TV without it buffering. For everything else, email, surfing then Virgin was OK. Then I was cutting my front lawn when an old mate pulled up in his BT van. Got talking to him and he told me he was installing the first BT fibre in our area next door and would be testing it. He gave me a knock when he had finished and showed me the results of up to 40 mbps. I switched soon after. My daughter at the time was shocked at my slow rates as she had Virgin in Leeds with speeds of 70mbps. Not all areas get speeds like that but hopefully it will come.
I should point that the 192/24 is being sourced from my library. Another advantage is it now takes minutes to download an album at 192/24 and less than a minute if it’s just MP3.

[evil_C]

We certainly need fibre, but we’ve been shunted to the back of the queue. BT Openreach came down here and sent a long probe down the point where the cable enters the house. The probe reached the lane, but they were unable to locate the junction box! They then packed up, not to be seen again.

Fortunately, most music I stream is from ripped CDs, so I tend to use Qobuz purely to try out stuff before purchase on CD or vinyl.

[Scooter]

I have just added and I’m trying out ROON Arc. This is an add on to ROON and it’s like my very own Qobuz, Spotify, iTunes etc. This addition to ROON allows me to stream my own music from my library to my phone or iPad. At first I thought there was no point as I stream when I’m away from Qobuz and I’m also on an iTunes 4 month free trial Having said that I do have a fair few albums unavailable on any streaming services where I’ve bought the CD direct from the band, artist or giveaways with Mojo etc. So I now have access to them in my own library. That is the only advantage I can personally see. When we go away everything gets shutdown and I don’t like leaving the system powered up whilst away.
Once again you guys with slow broadband this would be of little use. It also means if I’m in a hotel with poor broadband it will also be useless. At least with Qobuz I can reduce the streaming rate to help.