To ROON or not to ROON ?

@jabbaman What do you find lacking with Tidal Connect?

Your question can be answered in better knowing your streaming requirements. I can share some of the reasons Roon became a part of my streaming diet.

I used Qobuz by itself for 2.5 years before tying it into Roon. Now, I run Roon with Qobuz and Tidal libraries tied in, and I have separate subs to Spotify and YouTube as well. All these services have different use cases for me. I use YouTube for video, Spotify for remote listening, for lo-fi listening while working, and for sharing music, and I use Roon for hi-res listening.

I came to Roon when I upgraded streamers to the iFi Zen Stream. The Zen Stream didn’t have Chromecast built-in (still doesn’t), and I wanted an elegant way to get the music from my Android to the Zen Stream. Roon was the only elegant solution. When I started using Roon, I also found that I could fix the lack of library coverage Qobuz suffered from by also tying in Tidal. No system is perfect. Every streaming service will change how you listen and what you listen to. I do miss the new release curation from Qobuz being front and center. It’s possible for me to find that in Roon, but it’s more buried. Spotify’s content curation and playlists are my favorite out of any service, but Spotify doesn’t support quality source files. My workaround to getting Spotify content curation in high res is via Soundiiz, which is a service that syncs playlists across services. I sync the Spotify playlists to Tidal (which has more music coverage for the playlists that I generally like to listen to), and those synced playlists show up in the Playlists area in Roon. It’s more clunky than I’d like, but it gets the job done.

I’m also looking for ways to consolidate. If Spotify had a CD quality tier, I wouldn’t be using Roon. I didn’t find Amazon Music to be adequate, and I don’t want to use Qobuz or Tidal by themselves at this point. Apple Music may be one service that could replace Spotify and Roon for me, but iFi needs to update their streamer with Chromecast built-in.

One more element to Roon that I’m beginning to experiment with is Roon ARC. It just launched. It gives Roon remote listing abilities. It’s limited to phone apps for now. I hear that it has AirPlay support, but Chromecast and Android Auto support are missing. If Roon ARC becomes more robust, it could replace some of Spotify’s uses for me. I have attempted to share Roon with friends and family via Roon ARC, but it hasn’t taken for anyone yet. I imagine that it’s both not convenient enough, and the Amazon Music and Apple Music users are likely already satisfied with their services.

I do see benefits to hosting my own server. As long as I continue to use Roon, I’ll be playing with things that I couldn’t otherwise play with using the big streaming services. One area is upsampling at the server level (either in Roon or via HQPlayer). I will also experiment more with MQA and DSD formats (and DACs that support those formats). If I get the itch, I might also begin to build my own library of owned music, but that’s a long shot. Also, rooDial looks pretty neeto. So, Roon opens up ways to experiment or customize your music and your listening experience. If any of these things become a feature I have to have, then I’ll be married to Roon for a while longer.

@toro3 I disagree. I believe Spotify’s music discovery is significantly better than Roon’s. (But I’d say Roon does have better metadata.) For that reason, if/when Spotify launches a HiFi tier, I’m planning to let go of my Roon, Qobuz, and Tidal subscriptions.

@toro3 Fingers crossed:

Hopes were high that it would launch several months ago when a Reddit user spotted a HiFi icon in their Spotify iOS app. Then there was a leaked video, posted online by another Reddit user, that seemed to offer a brief tour of the streaming giant’s much-anticipated lossless audio tier.

After months of dormancy in the Spotify camp, it has just been awoken by a Reddit user who, upon cancelling his Spotify Premium account to switch to Apple Music, claims to have been sent a survey by Spotify mentioning a hypothetical premium tier called... Spotify Platinum. Oh. The survey supposedly asked user u/nearlymind if they would consider switching to Spotify Platinum in the "next 30 days" for features that include ’HiFi’ and various others including ’Studio Sound’, ’Headphone Tuner’, ’Library Pro’ and ’Playlist Pro’, for a rather steep monthly fee of $19.99. So Spotify could be rerouting down this Platinum path now.

Like you, I also love Spotify’s playlists. Roon’s playlists don’t measure up, even when I populate Roon with both Qobuz and Tidal libraries. Other benefits to Spotify include the social elements like users being able to build a playlist together, and being able to share links to a playable song on the app. Roon ARC is a step in the right direction, but is just a baby step from a consumer’s perspective. I want to be able to share song or album links with people, but with Roon I’m limited to sharing a picture. With Spotify, a link is included that takes the recipient to that song or album in their own app.

When I allow Roon to play similar songs after the requested song, Roon Radio sometimes doesn’t even stay within the genre. Spotify, on the other hand, seems to have a much better handle on sub genres and sticks to them. Spotify’s understanding of sub genre’s is seen in the variety of playlists. And, being able to leverage user data is an importance piece in music discovery, and Spotify can rely on input from its giant user base to feed its discovery algorithm. This "network effect" allows big businesses to pull even further ahead vs smaller competitors. 

I admire what Roon continues to accomplish, but it’s hard for boutique software companies to compete with software giants. Still, I’ll continue to run Roon on my nicer listening systems until a Spotify HiFi tier comes out, or until I decide to dabble in Amazon or Apple Music again.