[Yog Sothoth]

Apologies to folks who have that problem. I didn't know that even was a common problem for people, especially for folks who are technology oriented, would be interested in something like ROON and have whole house networks and switches and NASs, etc. that requires a pretty large stable internet connection to stream Qobuz/Tidal over. How many existing ROON customers around the world have unreliable internet connections? I'll assume if I didn't have a reliable connection I'd revert to Minimserver or something else, but if you have a good connection why stop using the best program for the purpose out there?

I'm not a ROON fanboy either. They annoy me because I'm not a technology person and I'm old. I'm still wishing I could vote somewhere to get hand crank car windows and actual ignition keys again.

Ha! Totally understand!  In my case I am a tech person (actually 100% Linux), and mildly old at just about 60.  I rarely stream, having a local collection of the music I like stored on a local server as well as a backup library server placed at a friend's (a little NUC), so I didn't go the Roon route.  But the unreliable Internet is a pain for other needs I have than music.  I can imagine for a Roon person with less than reliable Internet it would be a pain, especially if one bought a license.

[dpatters]

I spent over three decades in IT. Retired at 60 and set up the whole music server with Roon, Tidal. Ripped over 1000 CDs. Dumped the whole thing after a year. Total PITA. Every time the internet even blinked, I would have to reboot this or that. Felt like being back at work. I really didn’t like to control my music with my notebook computer. I’m very happy spinning silver discs and vinyl.

Don P

[newzooreview]

These are the internet outages in the US in the last 24 hours. This combines ISP outages (e.g., users have no internet) and server issues (e.g., a major service like gmail is down).

Roon has made their software critically vulnerable to both, since you also lose playback of your files if their servers can't talk to the box in your house (even if your internet is working).

Of course Roon's users are not simply living in developed countries, so US outages are nearly a best case scenario.



Data from https://www.thousandeyes.com/outages/

[Yog Sothoth]

These are the internet outages in the US in the last 24 hours. This combines ISP outages (e.g., users have no internet) and server issues (e.g., a major service like gmail is down).

Roon has made their software critically vulnerable to both, since you also lose playback of your files if their servers can't talk to the box in your house (even if your internet is working).

Of course Roon's users are not simply living in developed countries, so US outages are nearly a best case scenario.



I certainly strongly dislike the idea of something local being unusable if the Internet is unreachable, regardless what it might be!


Data from https://www.thousandeyes.com/outages/

[Rusty Jefferson]

...Of course Roon's users are not simply living in developed countries, so US outages are nearly a best case scenario...

I would suggest that ROON's customers were/will be in developed countries. Their model depends on it. How long were these outages? 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days, 5 months? And were any accompanied by a loss of power (say from a storm) where users wouldn't be able to play music anyway? Again, my experience is that power in my neighborhood goes out pretty regularly. Sometimes for 5 minutes and occasionally for 5 hours. I've not experienced a 5 minute or a 5 hour loss of internet service in 20 years of having it. There's no guarantees in this life (besides death and taxes) and ISPs and power companies won't be the first to add their names to the list.

Most home entertainment today requires a reliable internet connection. Streaming music, movies, television, or even work and school. We may all rue the day we got on that bandwagon, but in the meantime enjoy ROON if you can because it's still the best program going for finding and enjoying music. Folks who have unreliable internet can't watch Netflix either. It's just part of the agreement we make if we want to use it. If 10,000 customers drop their subscriptions in the first month because of spotty internet, I would imagine they'll change their thinking on this because we all know the answer to all your questions is....

[newzooreview]

It's just part of the agreement we make if we want to use it.

The entire user base agreed to use a product that was resilient in the face of network outages. Until a few days ago, all of Roon's several hundred thousand users had been paying for software that worked for a guaranteed 30 days streaming files locally if the internet was down.

So, no, nobody made an agreement to pay for a product that artificially cutoff local file streaming. That service degradation was introduced without user consent or forewarning just a few days ago. It was done in secrecy, only appearing an ambiguous bullet in the Roon 2.0 release notes. The first posts on the topic were just seeking clarification since nobody actually believed that Roon would so drastically change the terms of service behind people's backs.

There was no poll of users indicating people would like the change, and Roon was aggressive in constraining discussion on their site about it.

[Rusty Jefferson]

I'm sorry, but the entire userbase agreed to use whatever software Roon wants to build. Like all corporations I'm certain the ROON user agreement states the terms of service can change at any time and at their discretion.

As my earlier analogy about crank down car windows and ignition keys shows, what individuals want isn't the concern of these corporations. I image the developers have a plan for ROON that will make them rich beyond their wildest dreams someday and this change continues them on that path. By accepting the user agreement you (and all of us) gave them our blessing to do it.

As you've seen there really hasn't been any great options offered to your initial request for different software. If you want to force a change to what they're doing it's going to take a lot of hard work, and time. They're counting on individuals not being interested in doing that, especially the ones like us who bought the software and they would like nothing better than to get us off the platform as we have long since stopped being of value to them.

[newzooreview]

By accepting the user agreement you (and all of us) gave them our blessing to do it.

Of course not. That's completely tendentious double speak.

The user agreement just says that they can do things and the users can't sue them for it. That not a blessing for anything they should decide to do. Blessing implies a conscious and active endorsement of an act. Nobody can consciously or actively endorse something that's been kept secret from them. Blessing ≠ legal indemnification.

You know that, of course.

Word games aside, Roon has acted in bad faith and continues to do so. My goal in posting on the issue was to make people aware of the substantive degradation of Roon's functionality and to investigate whether good options exist.

On the first point, the post seems to have helped a couple of people who were about to invest in Roon. On the second point, I don't think any comparable option has been identified. The alternatives are missing the quality of Roon's metadata and native apps on multiple operating systems, to name a couple of the big ones.

[Carlman]

I know there is no streaming component, but I still use foobar to great effect with wonderful sound quality. 
It does what I need, no internet required.