Roon

[bbrip]

I am testing roon at the moment, well I bought a year's subscription because their trial period is way to short to really test this complex software out if you have a big collection.

On your questions:
- TBH, browsing by folder ist something that sounds a bit "1990's", so I am not surprised they are not offering this. I've not needed this during my 8 years or so with MinimServer, and I wont need it in Roon.
- Not sure what you mean by "convert format". There is a pretty rich DSP functionality in Roon that does pretty much whatever you want, be it upsampling, conversion form DSD to PCM and vice versa, you name it.
- that update message might be a know bug. If you are sure both client and server are on the same software, try restarting your Roon server. The message should go away.

Community website down? Not for me. And it hasnt been down as long as I can remember.
https://community.roonlabs.com

My take on Roon:
It is expensive yes. I wouldnt mind that if everything works. But the software is surprisingly buggy. In the short period I've been playing with it I discovered (and reported) a number of bugs. More worrysome: If you dive deeper into some weird behaving functionalities, you will find there are other bugs that have been reported by others years ago and are still not fixed.

The interface is anything but consistent and intuitive. Some screens browse vertical, some horizontal. Some have 8 covers per page, some 12 or 15 or 18..... Its all over the place.

What I like is that if the composition matching works, then you get a nice listing of all recordings of a certain work in your collection. Plus, if you have Tidal or Qobuz, you get all the available recordings listed on those streaming services. That integration (in my case Qobuz) into the local library is really quite good. You also get similar listings by artist. If you have a streaming subscription, suggestions are being made fro more albums of the same artist.

Unfortunately after the initial import, a lot of manual fiddling is required to make everything work as they use public metadata from various providers which are often in pretty bad shape.

Roon needs a powerful processor, running this on most NAS's will not yield a good experience. I tried it on my Synology and it was pretty stuttery. You ned an Intel i3 or better i7 processor, particulry of you have more than just a few hundert albums.

Does it replace MinimServer for me? No. I still like the simplicity offered by MinimServer in many instances. And MinimServer is 200% reliable.

Will I buy another year of subscription once my current one runs out? Not sure yet. I have expected more for my money.

And important to remember: The guys at Roon have quite an attitude! They believe they are the greatest and smartest. To the point that I'd call Arrogant and ignorant. They dont even come anywhere close to the responsiveness to fixing bugs that you get here at Minimserver.

But if everything works, it can be a nice experience.