I turned on volume leveling because it gave me a little more range on my amp volume knob, but I came to appreciate the fact that I could now set the volume on my amp and not have to adjust it again.
Speaking of shuffle, Roon is starting to change my listening habits. I’ve traditionally listened to whole albums at home, but I love the fact that when the album has finished, Roon starts shuffling through my library, and I’m rediscovering stuff that I’ve owned for years, but has been gathering “dust” on my digital shelf.
By default, what’s called “Roon Radio” will start playing once your play-queue finishes (e.g. if you hit “Play” on an album, it’ll start “Roon Radio” once the album finishes playing).
Roon Radio will play content both from your local library, as well as from the streaming services you have configured, using what was in the queue before hand as seed data to find similar tracks to play. It also uses what other’s with related content have chosen to play as part of that selection.
Of every piece of gear and software I have, “Roon Radio” is currently responsible for me finding and buying more new music than any other factor, at any time in my life.
+1 Roon Radio is awesome, and I like that they use an algorithm which tries to identify the energy and structure of a track, rather than being bound by the constraints of genre and style like pandora or whatever the heck spotify’s suggestions are.
Keep in mind, that many Roon Ready devices, if you use the volume slider in Roon, it actually changes the device’s own volume, rather than Roon doing the math. For example, turning the volume knob on my dCS Bartok is reflected in the volume slider in Roon and vice versa. So you get the best of both worlds – physical knob or if you’re lazy and in a chair across the room, you can open the Roon app and control it remotely.
Obviously, this doesn’t work if you have a separate preamp between your DAC and the amp. But for integrated systems, it’s very handy.
Daily mixes on Roon ??!! Did this just happen with the 1.8 update or did I overlook this all this time ? Whatever the case…this is fantastic.
This is one of the things for which I still subscribe to Spotify as I’m always finding new stuff from the mixes and “discover weekly” features.
Next step I’d love to see would be if Roon will add something like what Spotify recently added where you can create randomly generated mixes of different genres… I think it’s called “blend” ? …Something like that.
I guess it’s not all that different from just starting “radio” from a track or artist but from my first time listening to one of the mixes it seems more focused than Roon radio is.(haven’t skipped a track yet) I don’t know…I like it and think it’s a great addition.
I know this is not a question about Roon, but is Roon’s related in my case.
I have about 100 files that are in WavPack format ( have no idea why I have them like that).
Roon does not recognize that format, therefore my next step is to change that to FLAC.
Any suggestions of a trustworthy and easy converter that I can use for that?? I’ll be working on a Windows laptop.
Thanks in advance!!
I use Foobar for a lot of my conversion from one format to another. It’s a free tool that has a large following, so the software is kept up to date, and there are also a lot of plug ins. I use it as a player too, if I just want to play some flac files stored on my PC (as opposed to playing files on my NUC through Roon).
I also use dbpoweramp. I find it to be a little more powerful than Foobar, but it has many of the same functions. This is not free, but it’s still fairly cheap. It has a really good CD ripping tool, which tells you when there’s an error, and that’s worth the price alone for me.
Edit: I forgot to mention that when converting wav files to flac, I’ve found that the resulting metadata often looks “wonky”. I use some other free software called mp3tag to correct the metadata. I actually use mp3tag a lot, as I’m slowly cleaning up the metadata in all my flac files, and even though it’s free, I donate to the developer on a regular basis to show my appreciation for this wonderful tool.
Thanks!!
I’m familiar with Foobar as a player, is the one I used before Roon, but not as a converter.
Is my interest to fully change those files so they can integrate with Roon’s core and I can access them from any device.
I have lot of files that are not on any streaming service, not even Spotify which I think is one of the most complete.
I’ll check on those you mention. Thanks again.
Dumb question but I’m not sure what’s going on - I just started using Roon and noticed that the same song from Tidal vs. Roon (which is pulling from Tidal anyways) sounds different to me, and I can’t figure out why! All filters/EQ are off in Roon, but the difference persists.
Song is “Before You Knew Me” by Carmody, and I hear smooth bass on Tidal, but I hear what I can only describe as boombox, Beats by Dre thumping unrefined bass on Roon. What gives? Is there something I’m not thinking of?
So, I have held back a bit from asking this because I am guessing someone has asked. Alas, I haven’t found a compelling answer.
100% of the digital music I stream is via Quboz. The only other audio source I have is vinyl. As such, the notion of pulling my entire “catalog” into one grouping doesn’t seem relevant. That being said, there seem to be other reasons to consider? Educate me?
Discovery. Roon’s internal decision engine for recomendations is the best I have found. Also, having all the people that played on an album hyperlinked to their own catalogs is an game changer for Jazz fans.
Endpoints. Using multiple roon endpoints makes it very easy to move your music from one place in the house to another.
easy to use EQ. (I don’t use this, but I know lots of people here use it)
snob factor. Are you even an audiophile if you don’t pay for an audiophile music middleman management service?
That first point from @mfadio is SUPER compelling. Also… 100% of my streaming is off the same iPad, so I am preeetttyyyy darn vanilla when it comes to Digital music. All Quboz, all the same iPad.
No internal library (for now, I suppose) and no other online service used…
So, forgive what is more a simplistic and tactical… one can run Roon off the same iPad and no need for any changes other than signing up and using a new interface? Since my DAC is the Bifrost 2, my understanding is that it’s “room ready,” so again, unless I am missing something, I just open a Roon App instead of the Quboz app and life goes on. Too simplistic?
yeah, roon is more complicated than that. It runs as 2 pieces, front end, and back end (or endpoint and server).
So you install it on a computer, then use your ipad as a remote control. After the setup, it is like you said, simply open the app and use. They have a free trial, I’d recommend giving it a try if you are tech savvy in the slightest.
Ahhh, and that would be “Roon Core” I am reading about.
Yet another strange thing about me. . . no personal computer. I have a work laptop but that’s it. All my personal stuff is done off the iPad Pro. . .
Is this where the “Raspberry Pi” I have seen referenced becomes the solution?
We use Raspberry Pis as super cheap endpoints. They are tiny little computers that you can put almost anywhere to feed a dac (or they can have a tiny dac attached). Then you use your roon app to choose them as where you want the music to go.
The easy way to get a roon core without owning a personal computer is to buy one.
The slightly harder way is to buy a NUC and install the server os yourself.
What @mfadio said, and of course @ProfFalkin.
Plus, it’s much easier to select among different releases of the same content. ROON is very good at dates, showing resolution info, and anything pertinent to the release.
But Discovery is #1. The database is very good about knowing personnel in any band at any time. It will come up with suggestions that are astonishing. My life would have been incomplete not having heard “Rocksteady with Flo & Eddie” which apparently ROON figured out. It gets quite good at this if you allow it to catalog music you own (and have ripped) in addition to the Qobuz catalog.
I run ROON on a Mac Mini. Use all my iOS stuff and SONOS as endpoints.
