03-Feb-2017, 10:58
(22-Dec-2016, 12:25)Confused Wrote: For clarity, I need to start by saying that I am a Windows user. However, I do use iTunes, Roon and JRiver. My first observation is that as a Windows iTunes user, I have not noticed any issues with iTunes becoming more intrusive, so this must be a Mac only issue I think. (Although I have noticed both my iPhone and iPad becoming a little more intrusive of late, trying to force me into iCloud and similar) I did an iTunes update last weekend so I am on the latest version and everything seamed to work fine to me. I am sure that once the various settings for iCloud, or whatever else Apple is trying to lure you into, are sorted, then iTunes should work OK. It is worth noting that for me, Windows iTunes does not sound as good as either JRiver or Roon.
In my case I continue to use the iTunes library as a kind of 'master' copy. With both JRiver and Roon, you can point the software at the iTunes library '.itl' file, give it some time and you library should appear in JRiver or Roon, still in reasonable form. The behaviour of Roon and JRiver are different. Roon does an excellent job of picking up any playlists that you have made in iTunes. In fact, you can have both Roon and iTunes open on one machine, you can make changes in an iTunes playlist and Roon will pick up these changes, more or less in real time. Roon does ignore some iTunes metadata, such as individual track ratings. JRiver by contrast does pick up most of the track ratings, but does not pick up the playlists. I guess the key point is that I have had no problems at all with either JRiver or Roon changing anything in my iTunes library, zero problems.
I know some folk are madly in love with Roon, but I have to say that I am not! Don't get me wrong, I can see why some people love Roon, in many respects it is superb. For me though, I do find Roon annoying. Some of the functionality is a long way from being intuitive, and for my usage there is some very basic functionality that is missing. For example Roon cannot sort playlists alphabetically (it can't sort them at all), playlists do not show the track artist (only album artist is shown). The latter is actually quite comical, as I end up with playlists with a vast variety of musical styles, all performed by that most versatile of bands the 'various artists' combo. Although as Hifi_swlon has mentioned, it looks like a major Roon update will be with us very soon, so the advice here is that if you do want to go for another Roon trial period, why not wait a week or two for the V1.3 Roon update to be live?
As things stand, I am not planning to renew Roon when my 1 year subscription expires. Roon has been good fun, but for me in my little world with my ways of using a music library, I'd rather use JRiver. In fact, I'd rather use iTunes, but it does not sound quite as good as JRiver, so that eliminates iTunes for the 'serious' listening. I am pragmatic though, my Roon sub has a few months to go, and I could easily see myself changing my view on Roon, depending on what the V1.3 update has to offer. I did here that there is a Windows version of Amarra coming out, which might be interesting option for dragging decent sound quality out of Windows iTunes. (or maybe not) When will all this end!
Many thanks to Confused and all of you for your helpful answers. I took your advice and suggestions and tried quite a few of the music Player alternatives but none convinced me at the end. Either the handling was more complicated than I am used to or the GUI was an ugly replica of a Win version or there were problems with gapless play, etc etc. So, for the time being I will need to stay with iTunes for organizing my library and for adding metadata, particularly after having downgraded to an earlier version that's not so obtrusive.
As a music player, though, I am using Roon 2.3. Roon's providing metadata, reviews and stories beyond my own metadata is a pleasure most of the time and provides a lot of information. I haven't yet discovered their announced ability to show booklet-PDFs for albums and haven't tried any of the new DSP options. I am channelling my music from Roon into Dirac Audio Processor and from there into AIR 3.0.1 ethernet.
This brings me to a question: I notice that a lot of you are using Roon together with Audirvana, HQPlayer or other software. As a subscriber to a minimal-processing-ideology I try to avoid any additional software besides the unavoidable player and a room correction. I also avoid tinkering with the quality (sample rate and bit depth) of my files like upsampling or DSDing. In my opinion a general purpose PC or Mac is far less capable of doing clean and undisturbed processing (just think of those innumerable tasks and threads visible in the activity monitor) than a dedicated DSP module implemented in the D800 or in the other Devialets.
Are there any rational reasons for using HQPlayer, for example, together with Roon? Is there some aspects that my thinking in terms of simplicity misses? In dubio pro less complexity--does that not make sense?
