I’ve done the 14 day trial of MyVolumio Superstar and I really like it. I tried it because I was having problems with Roon. But after the last update to Roon AND optimizing my network further, the issues stopped. But I’m wary about Roon since it seems like problems always reappear.
Also, 1 year subscription of Roon is almost twice as much for a 1 year subscription of Superstar.
I was just wondering, those of you who made the complete switch from Roon to MyVolumio (i.e. not using the roonbridge plugin) as your streaming platform, what finally made you drop Roon?
euh…
Roon server needs a full blown PC for the Core.
I like to listen music, not looking at some nifty looking application. (then I still would choose Audirvana)
I refuse to pay 120 p/y to play content from Qobuz or local library
I don’t like the App
Volumio has it quirks, but I can install it on 6 different machines, is kind to the resource and a very active community where even Volumio is very active.
O almost forgot. Volumio understands that we are their customers and they act accordingly.
Same here. Also the sound with Volumio is beter for me. Volumio is tweakable as well (audio buffer size, processor Isolation et cetera). Roon is nice, but too focused on interface in my opinion.
I use Volumio as a holder for the Roon bridge as it is the best way to use the Raspi’s Hdmi out. Roon has its problems, and whenever it has those, I enjoy Volumio playing my Roon liked Qobuz songs.
I made the switch for a couple of reasons. First, part of the attraction of Roon for me was Roon radio, ie having Roon automatically pick tracks which would go well with what I’d played or chosen. For me it was terrible, with track after track of poor choices, because my music taste was outside what Roon could understand. If your taste in music overlaps more substantially with what’s mainstream-for-Roon (at a guess, ‘audiophile’ men over 50), I’m sure it’s great. But for me it was rubbish, and because of Roon’s obsession with a ‘big data’ approach rather than allowing users to actively shape how such features work, it was unlikely to improve - the equivalent functions of the streaming platforms themselves are far better IME.
It was similar with the written content - the artist bios and album reviews etc. For, I don’t know, David Bowie or Pink Floyd or whatever it’s all probably great. But for more ‘Roon-obscure’ music it was often poor.
And lastly, Roon actually got in the way of listening to Tidal’s own playlists, ie the curated genre-related playlists and the auto-generated ‘my mix’ style playlists. Paying that much money for a service that actually stops you being able to listen to music in certain ways just seemed silly.
I gather others have or had various technical issues with Roon. I never did, really. In technical terms it worked well. It’s just that in qualitative terms it didn’t work well for me. At least not well enough to pay that much money for it.
Thanks, @Dr_Endarken ! These are things to consider. I’ve stopped with Volumio after the trial. But I might subscribe later. I haven’t committed to Roon just yet.
Right now I’m evaluating Roon in combination with Volumio. Roon does one thing for me: Mitigating the short comings of the terrible Qobuz search and library. Qobuz has the best audio on the market but its apps and search are a disfunctional mess and it is not getting any better. As a service dedicated to classical music they should have a catalogue like Roon or Idagio. My issue is, that I never really know, what Roon is actually doing. When I select a Volumio device as a “zone” is it loading the stream there and sending a bit perfect signal to my DAC or is it just playing over Air Play? In the end Roon is just another paid service on top of the stack with questionable use case which a RasberryPi with Volumio and a HifiBerry board is the most affordable high end streamer you can buy.
The room ui is amazing. I really enjoyed so much of the application. Normally, I’d scoff at the idea of another app re-skinning tidal, but it really was useful. Then I noticed that it was bound for one tidal account. I’m a family of multiple tastes, so that made it a non useful solution for my situation. The cost makes it also a nonstarter. The singular tidal account made it not useful.
My core need is synchronous grouping for casting from Android and iOS. (YouTube music, tidal, Spotify) for 4 people.
Roon works for me, although I see room of improvement. The problem for me is the price. It’s getting higher step by step and it’s very expensive compared to what Qobuz offers, because you have to pay both if you want the full experience (or Tidal). Another requirement to bear in mind is the core. It needs more resources than Volumio.
I guess the problem here is that no one is offering what Roon is offering. No competition. This is why I wouldn’t pay 830€ for the software, because you don’t know if in the future there will be someone who will offer a cheaper and better alternative. That’s more than 5 years timeframe.