So, i just want to share my experience with Roon. I gave it a try and these are my first impressions after 2 days of my free-trial.
First of all, Roon is running now for 2 days not on my arm-based NAS, but on my win PC, using fully its intel i5 CPU for scanning. It has recognized my albums ok, BUT it's still working in its scanning process, collecting all the infos it uses (bios, reviews, metadata etcetc). with my 100000 tracks library, 2 days and it's ony halfway!! so, as you can read on Roon specs.... for it to run you really need a dedicated powerful piece of hardware (they suggest as a minimum, a SD disk for the database and an intel i5/i7 CPU). BUT: Roon recognizes single track files (99.9 of my library) BUT DOES NOT recognize full album flac files with cuesheet. I have a few of them fortunately, but someone could prefer that format. METADATA -NO possibility to customize or map TAGS. Roon has its own logic (which is not fully explained), and you cannot do anything about it. And it's not even complete: for example no LYRICS tag. Roon gets lyrics over internet, BUT as you know on internet you can find only main stream lyrics.... - Please note: ROON George Frederick Handel CORRECT Georg Friedrich Händel (he is German, not English! For me, this is unbearable). ROON George Dalaras CORRECT Giorgos Dalaras (He is Greek, not English!) ROON Frédéric Chopin CORRECT Fryderyk Chopin (he is Polish!) This is just to note that everything in Roon speaks English, bios, infos, metadata are for an English speaking world. For example, Italian music section is very poor, as worldwide known Italian artists are a minority. BAD. -In Roon, you have the option to accept Roon metadata, or use your one tags, or mix them. But mixing is done brainless. For example, if I mix, I get both George Frederick Handel AND Georg Friedrich Händel. BAD. And if I use only my tags, the system simply doesn't work the proper way, because it cannot cross information between albums. (Considering for example I have another Händel album not properly tagged, Roon will add a proper tag, Handel, so ...) -OK, it seems metadata are very extended, with artists and personnel and production staff for every record. BUT NOT for single track. So, let's say, you can read that in a specific album by John Coltrane there is Cecil Taylor as a guest artist, playing piano. BUT you don't know where.... in which tracks. And so??? -Similarly, if you look for an artist, when you browse corresponding albums you expect to see only tracks with that artist. While in Roon you see every track of that album. You know that that artist is playing in some track, but you don't know which ones. So.... all the fantastic metadata recognition and crossing of Roon.... is USELESS. -If I select Genre - Classical, I get: whatever! For example: Amalia Rodrigues, Archie Shepp, Arto Lynday, Carla Bley, Carmen McRae!! And THIS IS NOT in my tags. So????? -Besides, if I look to my Archie Shepp albums in Roon, no one corresponds to a CLASSICAL genre. It seems that in Roon online database A. Shepp is tagged as classical, despite of my own albums. Clearly, if I then browse my A.S. albums I find.... whatever, id est all my NON CLASSICAL albums. BAD -Album art, you can choose if you prefer your own, or Roon's one, or the best. But it turns out that Roon's are different from yours. In my experience, allmusic database (used by Roon) is full of errors. And you cannot make a general choice and ad hoc corrections for specific albums. BAD. -Rating: for every album you have a rating. NOT your own rating, but Roon rating. BAD. You can add your rating, but the default, the one you see, is Roon's one. BAD. -I guess that you can edit (=correct) all this Roon metadata stuff. But do you want to do it?? NO! Especially because all this corrections would live in Roon database, and not in your own tags. If for any reason you leave Roon, you lose your work. BAD. At the end of the day, I have disabled almost all Roon metadata. I have left only additional data like production, mix and so on, that I usually don't write in tags. PLAYING -You can select an album and add it at current playlist, or play it after the current track. But you CANNOT do the same for a single track (you can just add it at the end of the playlist). It seems absurd to me. -In LMS, with don't stop the music you can choose if you want random tracks or random albums, within the playing genre or with all genres. In Roon, only random track in the playing genre. For me, this is disappointing. I hate playing single tracks of an album. -I confirm (no need to) that Roon works very well with my squeezbox touch. No problem at all, but you have to stop LMS. -If you search for a specific composer..... you get for that composer a list of... compositions. They are not collected for example by album, or by artist. Just a list. BAD Is there anything I like? -Roon DO recognize MULTICHANNEL / DSD albums. This is very GOOD, I think this is one of main missing things in LMS. I could not test the streaming because I have not a compatible player. Usually, for these albums I use foobar on my PC and stream to a HT receiver. I would really like to do this within LMS system, maybe with a custom player (raspberry or something). -The UI is very nice (LMS is old). It is also very fast, but also LMS becomes fast on a intel i7 PC. On my arm-based NAS, LMS interface is somehow slow... but Roon would be much slower. -In Roon UI, infos are at hand. You can easily access to credits, album infos, artist infos and so on. In LMS you have to move back / forward and it works in a very imperfect way. -In Roon, there is a DISCOVER page, very nice. It suggest artists, composers, compositions and so on. It's something like random album in LMS, but it's a RANDOM ANYTHING that really makes you discover your music. -In an album tracks list, some track have an additional link telling something like "25 performances". It's for those tracks that are played not only in that album, but in many others. So, if you are listening to Autumn Leaves, and want to listen to all the different interpretations of that standard.... I find this very useful, as it's something that I do very often by myself (with search on LMS). At the end: will I buy Roon? I don's know. After 2 days of test... its seems to me that the BADs are more then the GOODs. And I know that I should pay 500$ and then .... I should also buy 400$ hardware to run it the proper way. And that I would be disappointed every time metadata do not correspond to my expectations. Pinkdot LMS 7.9.0 repack on Nas Synology DS-213 Queezebox Duet Squeezebox Boom Squeezebox Touch ------------------------------------------------------------------------ nidzo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=29097 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=108632
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