Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Hardware with Roon Application Roon drawbacks?

All I can say is wait for CES '16- you will see some innovative Roon implementations.

It will be a fun year for my wallet

Regards,
Kishore

Hi all,

My MC200 broke so currently testing Roon.

Problems so far:

Interface with albums not as good in my opinion for viewing. I like the album view on Meridian Sooloos more

Roon server works flawlessly with endpoints but additional computers (Mac/PC) often can't pick up the library and sits for ages. This is soooooo frustrating. Meridian much more robust. And is a deal breaker for me. Any ideas anyone?

Advantages:

More endpoints (Fire TV/Apple TV etc. and Meridian).

Metadata looks good and focus seems better but haven't used Meridian TouchPC program, nor updated Sooloos app. Is the new version better?

I suspect may get another MC200 to act as core.

Mike

Hi, that's not typical behaviour, you should post on this over on the Roon forum for advice. Include details of the computers and how they are connected to your network.
TouchPC is very similar to Control:PC there's no change to the Sooloos metadata handling.


Regards,
Carl

After 3 months of running Roon I only have one real drawback and that's the frequency that something misbehaves and the chosen music doesn't play. It's always (touch wood) been very short term and sorted with a bit of fiddling but it means that it's not family friendly, the wife and son stick to Sooloos and most often the Tidal app because they just want something that's click and play.

This week the issue was some (not all) Tidal tracks and playlists not playing. As usual they played fine in Tidal itself and re-syncing the library didn't immediately fix it. Eventually after disabling Tidal completely then enabling and doing another re-sync, that took much longer than usual, the problem went away but I can't confidently say what actually fixed it or even if anything I did cured it, it could just as easily have been an external issue that fixed itself.

The other frequent hiccups are; loosing track of the end points - requesting you to select an audio zone, because it's lost the one that was playing, the "waiting for remote library" message, both of which can take anything from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to sort themselves out and music to begin, and the most common - mid stream silences (while I assume the music is buffering?), that doesn't occur when I use exactly the same zone and path with Tidal via AirPlay.

For me, the additional information available and searchability of Roon make my purchase worthwhile but it's all enough to put off those who just expect to listen to their music, when they can listen hiccup free to Tidal via the same Meridian and AirPlay end points and most often on their iPads and iPhones themselves.

I couldn't agree more.....

Since Sooloos, I have even upgraded my internal network so it now runs at 1.2Gbps rather than 400Mbps. Even with that, Roon drops the connection to my ID41 about every 15-20 mins. It then "re finds" the ID41 after about 10 seconds and connects again automatically but has stopped playing any music; it's not only non family friendly but just really annoying for me!! And for those with another suggestion it also drops when I connect directly with a giant ethernet cable across the room.

Add to that the fact that, Roon just crashes sometimes, or hangs, or maybe the dedicated PC just decides something isn't right, and I find myself thinking of Sooloos....

While I've sold my C15, I am already wondering whether I go back to the new Sooloos / Touch PC / QNAP when it all comes together. Sometimes I have to admit I even think of a C15!!! Roon is awesome as a piece of software, but as a "plug n play and leave it" so that you get on with just listening to music, stability and consistency still isn't there yet.

Not only do I now have a PC in my house for the first time in 15 years (all Apple here) with all the fun and games of slow boot up times and endless microsoft updates that just take years off your life, but I'm finding the frustration of Roon crashing or losing endpoints for no apparent reason at all is now REDUCING my music discovery rather than INCREASING it.

When I switched to Roon, the initial emotion was one of excitement and interest in so many new ways of exploring and discovering my music. I found is fascinating and would spend hours just sitting and exploring. Now I find the emotion is more of frustration or just wondering when I walk over to the screen and touch it whether it will even be on, or just frozen at best as some update didn't go to plan.

I have become annoyed with both the PC (how many Windows updates do you need - please at least make it seamless behind the scenes) and the inexplicable way in which Roon drops connections to the ID41. I' m a bit of a techie and certainly can be a geek so I'm sure I can figure it out eventually but that's not the point.

The point is, this should be about the music and not about the technology.

Sooloos was cool because it was about the music. We can sit and debate endlessly about all the new things it should have done or track level metadata or even what we'd do differently if we were software programmers (I'm not BTW) but at the end of the day when my 71 year old mum came to visit, she intuitively walked over to the screen, and after a minute of trepidation about "ooh what's this, I'm not into computers" was tapping away exploring and playing music 'til her hearts content.

With Roon that is not the case..........yet.

I'm a true supporter of Roon, I really really want it to work, I think it's a staggering piece of software. But as someone who has spent the last 25 years building new companies in software and technology the basics are so, so important.

A product that works all the time, every single time without fail, with only 60% of the features that we want is more likely to succeed in the long term over a product with 95% of there features that has bugs and glitches. The whole KISS mantra is critical. Do a few things really well rather than a lot of things "so so"....

Sooloos and in my case the C15 did that. I wasn't thinking one bit about the technology (unless I came on here and we could all debate it). It was my hifi, my music system, the place I went to listen to something. It just worked. All the time. Every time.

......I genuinely hope I don't have to go find myself another C15 .... then again that rate at which they're falling in price means I could pick one up that's a steal!

I've never had Roon. I thought I would wait till the dust settles. I did however, have J river, and it worked 95% of the time.

After reading the above posts I for one will stick to Sooloos. I have used Sooloos for over a year with no music problems - it simply works and for me that's it.

Building a music PC (for me) is a bit like re-inventing the wheel.

There's obviously some hardware/software conflict here. It should be possible to track it down by looking at Windows logs but it may not be easy.

I've only been running Roon for as few months but I find it rock solid - not one drop out. I'm using RoonServer on a Core i3 PC (Win 10) with an ID41 card (with the latest firmware).

+1

Hi,

I do take your point re Roon not being as stable as Sooloos, these are the some of the factors:

- Sooloos for the best part ran in is own eco system which is highly controlled.

- Sooloos is an established mature application.

- Sooloos has significantly less functionality and is updated less infrequently.

Which of course is in a stark contrast to Roon, it's quite a different animal altogether.

However, I think it a little unfair to 'blame' Roon on Windows updating itself all the time ... you mention you only had Apple before ... Roon of course will also run on OSX so you could have run Roon on an Apple device if that was your preference.

As for the drops to the ID41 card my setup (and many others) is rock solid so this suggests something not quite right with your setup rather than Roon per se.

Some things to check:

- Firmware version on the ID41, is it the latest?
- Latest version of Roon running
- No IP address conflicts on your LAN
- Eliminate WiFi from the Roon, ID41, NAS connections.
- Switch power saving modes off (other than screen, on PC)

Regards,
Carl

PS Going forwards, I'll be moving to an "always on" RoonServer on a Intel NUC once the Unix port become available. Though what I'd really prefer is for RoonServer to run on my QNAP which has plenty of resources going spare.

I've kept quiet until now, but I think it's time to chime in.

I didn't go for Sooloos because I couldn't see the point in investing at least £900 for a used MC200 to play back the music I can already access with an SBT, or just play at better quality by disc. There were also grumbles aplenty here about lack of track level meta data (although I never understood what the practical consequence of that would be) and any time I saw the user interface at a dealer, whether iPad or C15, I thought it was plain ugly.

However, the big thing which everyone enthused about was the swim feature... rediscover hidden gems. So, when I put the 861 in for the LPS and health check, I bought an ex-demo ID40 from the dealer in anticipation of adding Sooloos at some point.

And then came Roon... with the major attraction of needing only an endpoint to work! Happy days! I bought a year's subscription to dip a toe, and five months from launch I've concluded that for simplicity and ease of use, Sooloos was probably the better option. And it hasn't really worked out cheaper either... my 2009 iMac struggles to run Roon. So a new Mac mini or Intel NUC? There's £600-£700 straight off. Oh, and the trusty iPad 2 isn't compatible. There's £300 for a new tablet.

But how about the fabled Swim feature? Well Roon Radio, in my opinion, is pants. It seems to get stuck on five or six albums, often which have pretty tenuous, or no links to the initial choice, and will flog them to death until you give up in exasperation. I get the impression that I'm probably in a minority having zero interest in building playlists, but my (lazy) rummagings so far on the Roon forum reveal no obvious user guides to get the best out of Focus.

And what of Roon's rich metadata? Well, if you are into reading smart arsed dismissive reviews of the music you have chosen to buy, and appreciate a largely USA centric view of music and disc releases, then Roon is for you. A surprising number of my discs have no info on them at all (no great loss, given the nature of the reviews) and this is all before we get to the endpoints dropping off the system, which in fairness is less of a problem now with recent firmware.

All in all, I am enjoying music less on my system with Roon than previously. And here's quite possibly the most damning indictment... I'm having more musical fun with my iPad and iPod library on shuffle on various (half decent) speaker docks around the house than with Roon.

So, Roon drawbacks? Yes, very much a work in progress. I've never lived with Sooloos and all it's idiosyncrasies as everyone else here has, so perhaps I'm being unduly harsh on young Roon. Right now though, I may well just go with a QNAP NAS and Sooloos Core, punt the as-yet unused Mac mini, and forgo the need to buy a new iPad.

Rant over.

Cheers

George

That's the point Cliff, I would have to "look at Windows logs"... it works fine with Sooloos and not fine with Roon... to solve I have to dig into the inner workings of stuff, not something I'm that bothered to do.

I want to listen to music, not dig into Windows logs...

Quite possibly something wrong, but my point again is that without Meridian and dealer offering a full end to end service on this (as M keep telling me Roon isn't something they support) I need either a computer science degree or lots of time to keep checking stuff. With Sooloos I pick up the phone to M or my dealer and they sort it. Now they don't...

To answer questions above...
- Yes, latest ID41 firmware
- Yes, latest version of Roon
- IP Conflicts on LAN - I have no idea - I'm not that kind of techie, hence my point, this isn't a regular consumer friendly offering...
- There is no Wifi - it's all hard wired
- Power saving modes - one more for the must be PC tech. I again have no idea.

I don't know how many non tech people have set up Roon and are rock solid. Certainly many of you chaps on here are seriously competent computer folks who find managing network configs quite simple. I'm no saying in any way that's a bad thing, in fact most of the time I'm jealous of you all

My point is that, with Sooloos in its closed system there were some advantages (support and consistency) even if not all the features were there that we fancied! A bit like the Android / Apple debate I guess. While Apple locking down everything doesn't necessarily answer everyone's prayers, Android as a system is becoming more and more unstable just from the sheer volume of uncontrolled stuff going on in there. Just ask any major mobile phone retailer which ones they prefer. The return rates for Android phones are now over 5% worldwide...

And yes like you Carl, I will move to Roon Server when on QNAP and run my screen as the controller - so most resources are in the strongest place for performance. In the meantime I'll try dig into some more things to see where other issues may be...