ROON

[Confused]

Hey Confused, great to hear your thoughts on Roon.

A couple of pointers which may (or may not) help you:

I was a little disappointed re metadata and album artwork etc. If I use iTunes or JRiver, I now have more or less 100% complete artwork (although this has taken some effort in the past).

If you want Roon to ignore it's metadata and/or artwork and use your own metadata, you can change this preference after import by selecting all relevant albums, clicking on the edit button, and bulk-setting the preferences accordingly.  There's no way (currently) to set things automatically on import, so you'd have to repeat after bringing in new material - but it should get you to a happier place pretty quickly. I barely touch my own metadata unless a rip really screws up, so the Roon data generally suits me, but I know there are others that have meticulous metadata/artwork that they use in preference.   I believe controls for this are getting an update in 1.2 also.  - A Confused response:  I tried this, but cannot see a way of getting Roon to use the track artist rather than album artist, which was my main bugbear.  In fact this is not a metadata issue as such, just how Roon uses the metadata.

The ‘album centric’ theme continues with track ratings, which Roon does not support. Roon offers album ratings, but that’s it. So if you wanted to listen a particular album but filter out a couple of dire (low rated) tracks, this is not possible in Roon.

It's not track ratings I know, but the scenario you describe can be achieved with the 'love' and 'ban' settings at the track level.  If you ban a track it will display in the listing but never play until you release it.  I have a few tracks on certain albums I can't stand and I never hear them now .  A Confused response.  Nice try!  But love and ban is no substitute for more granular track ratings.  For example, if I listen to an album, I might want to listen to all except a couple of annoying tracks (which might be rated 1).  However, I might want to listen to all T-Rex tracks rated 5.  You can't trick love and ban into doing this.

I'm biased but I'd say 'hang in there'…. quite a few of the features in Roon grew on me after a while, and further down the line I found I couldn't go back to anything else. There are a few things that still annoy me and I think could be improved, the good bits just keep me hooked.  v1.2 is set to bring lots of new features, and its constantly evolving.  That said, I'm an album based guy, and always wanted a way to control both my music and streamed services together in a pretty UI so I guess it was made for me. - A Confused response:  I agree!  I think it is all to easy to jump to the wrong conclusion, maybe just to lack of familiarity.  I currently plan to keep the subscription live for a while and see how it goes.

If you keep an eye out for RoonReady on any new streamer, you'll always have the option to use it later while still getting the benefit of the hardware. - A Confused response - I currently see very little on the market that is roughly equivalent to say a Melco or an Aurender and Roon ready.  Maybe some PC based items, The Computer Audio Designs CAD CAT for example.  Or there is the Elac Discovery, which I suspect would not match AIR for sound quality, let alone exceed it.  What else is there?  Or should I say what else is there that can be auditioned in Southern (ish) England?  (Having said that, I do find myself wondering what a linear PSU powered NUC or Mac Mini would sound like with a Mutec MC3+USB, I'd love to try this VS a Melco N1A or similar, not easy to do without buying a Mutec on spec though)