Everyone seems to love Roon I can not seem to find much about what people don’t like about it. I just started a free trail for Roon and hate it so far and here’s why.
- I mostly use streaming and don’t have a lot of local files, it imported my playlist from Tidal but they are upside down and I cant just flip them.
- Removing playlist from Roon also seems to delete them altogether from Tidal as well.
- When I do play a playlist it adds the tracks to the Queue in a seemly random order and NOT the order I was viewing the playlist in. IF I select the tracks THEN hit the play that appears above that they will Queue in the selected order but this is nonsense.
- If I try to play a track from a playlist it adds a seemingly random number of tracks to the Queue in a random order, I clicked a track not 84.
- Date added seems to have nothing to do with the date the track was added to Roon or a playlist (what I would like) but rather when the file says it was added, this makes it USELESS for sorting lists from anything but local files and even then limited IMO.
- Home page seems to have no customization at all and is full of stuff I do not want to see.
- Only seems to work with Tidal, which I use grudgingly.
I haven’t had Roon for very long to be fair, but my understanding is it justifies its high price with convenience but in my experience so far its one of the worst user experiences I have ever had and I feel for the price it should be much more refined. Maybe I just don’t use it for what its intended for, I don’t know. What I do know is thus far is does not appeal to me. I will also admit that if you simply play your lists on shuffle most of what I don’t like about it won’t matter to you, but that’s not how I listen to music.
Feel free to inform me of possible fixes, or how I am not using Roon the correct way, I am open to being corrected or assisted because I would rather love something than hate it.
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I completely agree that Roon sucks, even with a lot of local files.
Many albums don’t get recognized properly and have wrong artist or other meta info so I have to manually select to use local tag information instead of roon tags.
I used Qobuz with roon but I couldn’t just import all my qobuz music to roon and had to look the albums up manually.
There are a bunch of other annoying problems which I don’t have with foobar2000.
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I want to offer an opposing opinion here please. Settings, lack of understanding between platforms and playlist location and General user error is unfortunately What i see here. Also, Roon programers listen to users and what they want and implement as possible, so that application glitches and features improve with each Update.
I too was frustrated for the first year but forced myself to be patient, ask seemingly educated and better Written and worded questions on the Roon forum when seeking advice and help. Many folks there along w/ the programers have been able to help me help myself maximize the value Roon provides to MY system.
More subscribers to the service helps keep the improvements coming, thus i am truly sorry your experience thus far has been negative, unfortunately the learning curve to use all the capabilities of Roon for me and others is well beyond a week or even a month of use. The platform is not quick and intuitive because It offers so much more integration and performance than either Tidal or Quboz are able to offer on their own but that is not immediately apparent to a casual user or someone who may not be trying to implement and incorporate Multiple diverse platforms and A more complex system.
I hope your negative experience does not sour you on giving the platform a second chance later on, i for one really appreciate all its capabilities and continue to learn how to use the features well into my second year of service and find it value and pleasure added to my own listening experience.
Happy listening always, i mean no disrespect in what i post, i just want to make sure possible new subscribers get to read about a positive experience too on the platform before forming an opinion solely based on negative remarks, i have vested interest in more folks signing up, i want the service to survive the upcoming streaming wars.
Nick
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I already gave roon a second change.
When I pay so much for software, I don’t want to put so much time into organizing and retagging music just because roon doesn’t have sufficient meta data.
With foobar, I just install some useful components and load my preferred UI design and I’m done.
A player should give me a good overview over my music which foobar does.
Since I’m mostly streaming music from Spotify of Apple Music, the tidal and qobuz integration is completely useless to me.
I just hope Spotify will release the Hi-Fi tier finally. It has the best interface and is the best service for exploring new music imo. I also find most of my local music there so I can just stream from Spotify and don’t really need a local player software.
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I agree. Your experience doesn’t seem to truly be that roon sucks but instead that you just aren’t use to how it works. Personaly, the queue feature you talk about (roon radio) is exactly why I use roon. If I just select a random track chances are very good that I would much rather have a radio experience than listening to the whole album. I’m not talking you to use roon at all. Its obviously cheaper not to if you dont like the ui. I just don’t feel calling your complaints roon being bad (for the most part) is fair.
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I don’t use playlists, so my experience is obviously different.
The real value of Roon to me is integrating streaming services with local content, and allowing you to pick and choose which particular recordings you want as default. I have local copies of original CD releases, and being able to easily prefer the streaming remastered version or not is a nice to have.
It’s also the best application I’ve used for organizing music, doesn’t always identify different versions of an album correctly, but you can manually fix that. Just the fact it collects all the SRV stuff under SRV in addition to the original band names is a win. It also breaks down classical pieces by movement, which is nice.
My use case is simple, I browse artists and albums and play the entire thing, I never worry if something is coming from Qobuz, or my local library, I occasionally use the radio feature and find it decent.
I find the UI a to be an odd mix of designed for touch/mouse, to the point I find it equally annoying with both devices. But that’s par for the course.
Value is very much subjective, and if it isn’t worth it for you it isn’t worth it.
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If foobar meets your needs but Roon does not, then Roon may not be the right software for you. That doesn’t mean either one of them sucks. They’re just very different tools.
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Roon feels like browsing through an endless music magazine while listening to my music or streaming. I’m the right demographic for it.
I will tell you that if you’re complaining about metadata, then it’s potentially your data that’s wrong or mislabeled etc. Roon will look to the local metadata but I find that it’s pretty damned good at identifying albums correctly with their database and metadata on full display. I also lets you scan through various flavors of an album, until it finds the fight match. Different albums may have different tracks depending on where in the world they’re sold. Where it hasn’t it’s been a case of either an obscure album or just tracks I had locally that weren’t correct or piecemeal-ed to make an album. I sometime prefer extended tracks and have them as part of an album.
Different strokes for different folks, but Roon sucks… that’s a blanket statement I’d be embarrassed to make as it comes off infantile or petty. The same way that I never claimed Foobar sucked when I realized that you needed a PHD to set it up, had the look and feel of software from the 90s, so I wound up using MusicBee as my player of choice and liked that. But a lot of people love Foobar, because it’s right for them.
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I disagree with your assessment but respect that we don’t see eye to eye on this matter, however there are an abundance of people online praising this software already, and second I feel it shouldn’t be so hard to learn to use at the price, which I consider high. Thank you for your input just the same, I am still trying it out just incase I change my mind for the record.
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I don’t believe I was addressing Roon radio in my post at all, but rather how it choses to play tracks in a playlist. I prefer to be able to order my lists how I want to listen to them and Roon is disagreeable at this IMO. I feel Roon is “bad” because this entry experience has been very negative for me and I don’t feel like I should have to spend a month learning how to do something it takes ten seconds to learn to do on every other player in the world. I am happy if you like it, please continue to use it, it seems unlikely i will however.
Roon works, I use it but like i said, the learning curve is steep for some of us. For example I still haven’t figured out how to use the back-up feature or import my own music files into the system minus the files I have on my music server. It works exceptionally well to integrate Quboz and Tidal in one place. On my laptop I prefer VLC to listen to my own music files.
If you are not paying for Quboz and Tidal what are you trying to get out of Roon? Also which other free or paid services is able to incorporate and give you the functions of paid streaming services combined. I am always happy to learn more, this is why we have the forums.
Have you asked for assistance on the Roon forum, the folks there are very technically knowledgeable and have patience with dinosaurs like myself.
Firstly thank you for acknowledging that I can dislike it for reason other than just being ignorant. Over all I have found your response to be more help than other objecting post and more likely to help me find something useful about Roon so thank you.
Is that why the title of the thread is roon sucks sorry?
There’s a whole Roon forum to ask questions and there’s a pretty active Roon thread here where if you had specific questions you could have asked for help on. Your original post was a rant on how it sucks and you’ve already got your mind made up… so what are you looking for? Someone to plead with you to keep it?
Come on man, the back pedal is not hiding anything.
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Firstly, I still think it sucks I was just thanking them for being civil while offering their point of view, second I don’t have to justify how I feel about a product to you just cause you disagree I am allowed to dislike whatever I wish, also the last sentence of my first post was how I accept I may be uneducated or misinformed on Roon, you have simply chosen to be “personally offended” and I admit this was a rant post which is why it is not in a different section, I am just trying to respond to people I happen to disagree with respectfully.
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Again, is that why you titled the thread Roon Sucks, Sorry
Anyway since I’m such a nice guy, I just did a little bit of leg work for you.
Roon allows you to either 1) import a playlist locally or in the case of Qobuz which is what I use to stream, 2) will show you the Qobuz playlist. Exactly in the order It was created in Qobuz.
A lot of the things you’re noting are just because you’re not familiar with the way Roon works, for example your item 4) if you right click a file you can add just that file to play. or you can queue it, but if you just click it, it will play everything after that file or playlist.
You’re welcome. 
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It does not do this for me in the playlist I imported from tidal, it starts with the song I clicked and adds a random selection of songs to be played from the playlist, or perhaps in the order they were saved in that may be the case, but not in the order in which I am viewing the list.
This may in fact be true but I want to play the most recently added songs first not the first ones added IE flip the list to the way I normally play it not the order the songs were added the list in and Roon doesnt seem to allow this (at least I could not find anything about it). In fact my understanding of how Roon decides the “age” of a track may be the core of my problem.
Yeah, because once again, its not a statement at a person but a piece of software you are seemly personally attached to, do you personally develop Roon? Is that why you are so offended? At any rate if you are offended you can chose to ignore me, it doesn’t stop you from enjoying what you like.
Also you told me I had made up my mind just based the title, if you believed that then you must have come in the thread simply to be confrontational with nothing constructive to add? Honestly you seem more invested in trying to shame me into silence than in convincing me I am wrong, so what is your motivation?
Anyway sorry you took this as a personal attack, I apologize for any stress this causes you and hope you can have a good rest of your day.
1.) It’s main case is for those who have local files.
2.) All you have to do is save a local copy. You can manipulate that in Roon independent from your Tidal playlists. You can also hide those playlists. You’re not taking the time to learn to manage it correctly.
3.) Not sure what you’re doing wrong here. I literally just clicked, “Play Now” in a given playlist and it queues up in the exact order of the playlist.
4.) This is been explained already. Again, you not managing correctly and taking the time to learn the function.
5.) Either I’m missing something or you’re 100% right on this one. My experience as well. However, sorting is drag and drop. It’s so easy I don’t understand any gripes here.
6.) I mean, It has the info I like, but whatever. I like chocolate ice cream?
7.) See answer to 6 doesn’t really deserve a response.
Personally, I wouldn’t wanna get by without Roon. I like being able to toggle between my speaker setup and my desktop a and desktop b setups with a few clickon my my pc. I can stream music to the living room or kitchen from a tablet. The integration with 3rd party services isn’t perfect, but I’m happy we get the functionality we get when there’s no motivation for Tidal, Qubuz or any of these services to cooperate.
Just because I find a lot of uses for it and find it invaluable in my setup doesn’t make it the best thing ever. Just because you struggle to use the software and aren’t able/willing to find real solution to your user “problems” doesn’t mean the software sucks.
This thread should just be locked/deleted due the immature/inflammatory title (especially based on such ignorance).
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I agree with this
No idea, still trying to figure it out. It does not work for me this way however.
This was with playlist imported from Tidal, I am making playlist with local files in Roon now to try out.
That’s cool that you’re giving it a try. Creating a playlist with local files is cool, but what I mean is creating a “Roon” copy of your “Tidal” playlist. It’s still your Tidal files though. For example:
Look at it like this. You may bounce between Tidal or Qubuz or another service Roon is compatible with, but you save a local copy to Roon as your home base for safe keeping.
Anyway, that’s the way I look at it. Then I hide the shared ones (from Tidal) so I just see my Roon playlists.
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It’s funny because sadly the more you’re using it the more you’re getting turned off. The more you’re making me research playlists, the more I’m liking Roon and wanting to get into using playlists more.
To each their own I guess but think of it as a Paradox game (complicated strategy game). You have to put in the time to learn but after that you get hours of enjoyment. Roon’s kinda like that.
Looks like you can toggle off some of the options you don’t like (that were confusing/irritating you).
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