They may just bring me back to the fold with this announcement.
Roon acquired by Harman International
- Thread starter airdronian
- Start date
And part of this announcement might keep me from bailing out, as it is the one fatal flaw that nearly chased me away;
We’ve taken some steps in this direction. In 2022, we introduced an internet connectivity requirement to Roon. That decision was driven by strategic considerations, but we acknowledge that the change caused genuine dissatisfaction among our users, and we understand why. Today, we’re announcing a return to Roon’s pre-2.0 behavior. This means our users can once again enjoy their music collections without the need for continuous internet connectivity.
Thing is, given Roon's past, "announcing" it doesn't mean it'll ever be implemented, so I remain skeptical until I hear otherwise. They've "announced" so many things in the past that they can't be trusted.
I also hope they do a housecleaning of those developers who thought that the 24/7/365 Internet requirement was a solution to their own sloppy, half-assed coding. But that's wishful thinking.
At least they would hopefully get access to a genuine customer service and ticket support that they've sorely needed. Dumping customers into their hostile forums is not the solution. (Especially when the developers themselves, especially "Danny," are so openly hostile to their paying customers.)
JoeThePop
Known member
Yeah the proof is in the pudding*. My experience, be it in a different industry, is that the benefits of a smaller company being acquired by a larger company benefits the shareholders and the larger company. Not so sure about benefits to the customer.
* what the hell does that mean?
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I asked...I received. 😁
community.roonlabs.com
Roon 2.0.28 is live!
Hello Everyone, We’re excited to share the latest release of Roon - which now includes support for TIDAL Max and restores offline functionality in Roon! As many of you know, TIDAL introduced its new flagship Max quality tier in the summer of 2023. TIDAL rolled out support for up to 24bit/192...
community.roonlabs.com
In other welcome news, we’ve removed the internet requirement that was first introduced with Roon 2.0. Roon will now function without an active internet connection, consistent with Roon 1.8 and earlier build behavior. For more details on these changes and more, click this link 214.
Dump 80-proof booze into your tapioca...now there's "proof" in the pudding? 🤷♂️
I agree, there's a lot of puffery in that announcement. It's like I said earlier. I suspect things will be rosy for a while, but knowing how corporations take what they need and dump the rest, I'm not that confident in the long-term future of Roon. It's not like a major corporation is going to buy something for the good of the music community, just out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.
Reading between the lines, he doesn't apparently like reverting to what customers wanted...
I would say we’ve always considered the needs of the customer, but we have had a certain agenda of where to take the product.
Harman/Samsung has a different idea, and reverting this was important for their agenda.
Yeah....thanks, I guess. 😐 Sorry, but any company's #1 agenda should be to listen to customers. This is the type of attitude that turned me off to Roon, and also made me a little glad that the saner heads at Harman might help guide the software to a better place, not to where a butt-hurt developer gets to dictate what customers want.
It's a bastardization of the original proverb. That read:
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
And there were even early versions, but this is the closest to what it became.
(Just filling in for @mhardy6647 )
JoeThePop
Known member
Some big shoes to fill.
I would expect so. If you just have a basic network, the Roon server can still connect to its end points. Excepting ARC of course.
Mine are bigger. His might be deeper.
Yep. I am thinking some functions that were supposed to work via Roon's cloud servers might be disabled, but playing your own music files will be possible again. That was my biggest complaint--if I have files under my own roof, which I'm paying Roon to give me access to, I should never be denied the ability to play them whether or not the Internet is up.
I downloaded the upgrade, but kept a full backup of my 1.8 database just in case. Roon tried to enable that ARC feature when I clicked on the configuration tab but since I block outbound traffic on my router to unusual ports like the one ARC uses, that'll never happen on my network. Not about to expose it to the outside world.
It seems geared toward doing just that, more or less an admission they had lost focus on their core customers.
Definitely a problem they will have to solve, and a symptom of the overall issue of having semi-abandoned their core customers in an arrogant way.
It could be puffery, but just verbally addressing things won't cut it and they should know that. Clearly they know there are problems, and candidly admitting that is step 1, a step many companies never actually take.
JoeThePop
Known member
“very, very demanding listeners”.
That’s you all.
www.whathifi.com
That’s you all.
Roon’s CEO talks acquisitions, hi-fi enthusiasts and the “tyranny of choice” for music streamers
What does the future hold for Roon, now that it is part of the Harman International family?
www.whathifi.com
Went out of town for 3 weeks, and came back to see many Roon enhancements, especially in the playlists area.
Interesting that I can now create a playlist in Roon and push it to the streamers (Tidal, Qobuz and ?) That should help me as I frequently create playlists within the streamers but it can be clumsy at times.
EDIT: It also looks like they have fixed the 'My History' as mine now goes back over 6 years.
Interesting that I can now create a playlist in Roon and push it to the streamers (Tidal, Qobuz and ?) That should help me as I frequently create playlists within the streamers but it can be clumsy at times.
EDIT: It also looks like they have fixed the 'My History' as mine now goes back over 6 years.
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I don't pay attention to the changelogs on their updates, but this does sound veddy, veddy interesting.
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