[myview]

Dear all,

I have a fairly large collection of classical music (about 15,000 albums) stored on a few portable hard disks.
 I have planned to transfer all of them to a NAS soon.  Almost all of these are in FLAC (each album in its own folder) and have meticulously tagged metadata including album art (a mild case of OCD perhaps).  Although I do not currently subscribe to any streaming service (such as Qobuz which has a good classical collection), I may do so in the future.  I am also considering subscribing to Roon which many people have nothing but good things to say about.

Assuming I am able to get all the required/necessary hardware, is running Roon beneficial to a classical music lover?  My definition of "beneficial":
1) Helps me locate different recordings of a particular work (say Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major, op. 35) either in my collection or in my subscribed streaming service quickly by typing part of the name of the work;
2) Helps me to locate all recordings in my collection or in my subscribed streaming service played by a certain artiste (say Itzhak Perlman or Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra)
3) Tells me interesting facts about the piece of music being played, the artistes, the composers...
4) Does not suffer latency when selecting and playing music
5) Has an interface which is logically laid out and easy to read
6) Good sound quality
 
I have searched on internet forums and much of the information I get about Roon for classical music is from a few years to a few months ago; nothing is very current (or it's out there but I cannot find it).

I reckon Roon is being updated and improved constantly.  I would like to hear some views from fellow classical music lovers with very recent experiences with Roon.

Thank you in advance for your replies.

 

[Calypte]

This doesn't answer your question about Roon (which I don't use with my BDP-pi), but several months ago I subscribed to Idagio, which specializes in classical content.  If you want to know more about my Idagio experience, feel free to ask. 

[Norton]

My listening is pretty much 100% classical and I do use Roon with local library and Tidal, with a BDP1 as endpoint, although it’s not  my main listening source.

I’d say that it would meet your objectives, but I’m not you and I wouldn’t describe myself as “OCD” in such matters. You have choice of using File or Roon metadata , so if you chose the former, finding music will be down to the quality of your existing tags.

Best thing is, when ready, sign up for a free trial of Roon (and your choice of integrated streaming service) and decide for yourself.

[artur9]

When I tried Roon two years ago their classical metadata was pretty bad.  Basically, not much better than iTunes.

They acknowledged that but I do not know if they have gotten better data yet.

[jdoyle]

I love roon, and while I’m mostly a jazz fan, I do love classical too. Let’s try a “for instance” with roon, with which I subscribe to Tidal, maybe you’ll get a better feel for it.

A few Saturday’s ago I was listening to my favorite local Classical station; WNED FM 94.5 (highly recommended, you can listen online).

The NY Philharmonic was on and they featured; Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis. I loved it and “Shazam’d“ it.

The next day I tried to find it in roon, and to be honest, it wasn’t as easy as searching for any given Jazz track. I eventually used the Shazam copied link (under the “share” option) that I pasted here: I used Shazam to discover Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis by Dimitri Mitropoulos & New York Philharmonic Orchestra. https://www.shazam.com/track/98028398/fantasia-on-a-theme-by-thomas-tallis.  I truncated it a few ways and it eventually appeared in the batch of displayed album covers. Not a cinch, but it after a few tries with using the link info, I did finally find it. Took a few minutes, so the searching needs your patience.

Let’s try what you mentioned; Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major, op. 35.



48 Albums appeared (some were Beethoven).

Then you can upload an artist and read their profile (truncated in the pic here)


(
Any blue words are links that you can click on (over half of Julia’s link doesn’t appear in the pic).


Then there’s the new albums that appear under the Tidal page/classical, 11 pages like this:



I think you’ll absolutely love Roon, let alone the sound quality.
Roon will also catalog all of your albums too, so you’ll be able to search out info on them as well (you might learn something new about your music that you didn’t know).

If you try it and prefer Qobuz over Tidal, let me know your thoughts about Quobuz.

JD

[LesterSleepsIn]

This doesn't answer your question about Roon (which I don't use with my BDP-pi), but several months ago I subscribed to Idagio, which specializes in classical content.  If you want to know more about my Idagio experience, feel free to ask.

Yes, I’d like to know about Idagio. Can you compare to Roon or Tidal?
Best regards,
Lester

And thanks for starting the thread Myview and for the WNED shout-out JDoyle.

[Calypte]

I know nothing about Roon or Tidal, other than what I read here.  If I were primarily a rock or hip-hop enthusiast, I'd probably be more interested in them.  For classical music they appear to be irrelevant.  When I bought my BDP-pi, I knew nothing about streaming, and the choices of services offered by streamer manufacturers were unimportant to me.  Knowing what I now know, I probably would have chosen a streamer that is set up for Spotify -- i.e., not Bryston.

Idagio is new to the U.S., but it has been available for several years in Europe.  Idagio is based in Berlin.  Idagio has a huge classical library, and they're especially good with new releases.  There are surprising omissions of older items, such as Kubelik's Mahler cycle.  I stream the music from my Android phone to a Chromecast Audio dongle attached to my DAC.  The Android app (available from Google Play Store) is a bit clunky, IMHO.  You have to connect to the player after you've selected the music you want to play.  At that point the music has already started to play, and it can be difficult to back up to the beginning of a piece.  It depends upon your finger dexterity with the screen of your phone.  The app for Windows is smoother, but in my case the computer isn't near my favorite listening.  Idagio offers three bit rates.  One is equivalent to lo-res MP3, then there's a better one at 320 kbs, and there's one equivalent to CD.  The only one I've used is the 320.

[myview]

Thank you all for your replies.

It's the first time I have heard of Idagio but it certainly is worth exploring.

[Calypte]

I know a classical record producer who lives in the Netherlands (he's an American, but he lives in Europe), and he says he dumped his CD collection several years ago.  He doesn't even do downloads anymore.  He does streaming.  Idagio is his main venue for listening.  I think he said he uses Spotify sometimes.