PLEASE READ *before commenting*! 1) All comments here are moderated by a third party 2) Polite comments that advance the conversation are most welcome 3) No URLs, racist/sexist remarks or conspiracy theories, please

When ARC came out, I didn’t think I would care to use it. However, I am a convert! Some of the straightforward reasons: 1- Sound quality is fantastic - if you connect a DAC to an iPhone you will get full resolution 2- The full curation of my library is now available everywhere - I spend a lot of time tweaking my library, grouping albums, etc 3- All my albums, including many that do not exist on streaming services available to me anywhere And now the amazing unexpected benefits: 4- Have full information of what I own on the road - so if I find a CD version of a release that I want at a store and cannot remember if I have it, I can immediately check 5- I have been adding a “Vinyl” tag in Roon to albums I have on vinyl. So now I can not only see and search my vinyl collection at home, but I can also see what I have anywhere - invaluable when shopping for vinyl! PS: Even more ideas: 6- Add tags for location of the vinyl record at home 7- Add a tag “Vinyl I Must Have” for when I am shopping for records (I tend to blank out)

@legochicano

Жыл бұрын

Very smart adding the vinyl tag to songs. I'm going to start doing that to help with shopping for music.

@zekiy6597

Жыл бұрын

Are you joking? Arc is awful for curation - you cant even remove a track from your library on arc

@radicalgambino2959

Жыл бұрын

All those features you mention are available to you whether you have roon or not. Still don't understand why anybody would pay for a service you already have functionality to do for free

@dilbyjones

Жыл бұрын

yep its puuurrfect!

@miguelbarrio

Жыл бұрын

@@zekiy6597 I don’t use ARC to curate, I use it to see what I curated on the go. And you can remove albums using ARC.

This will change my use of vinyl ripping. I’ve got quite a few LPs (Japanese electronics and jazz etc) which I only tend to listen to on my record player so no point ripping them for home listening. Now, I’ll do high quality rips of them so I can listen to them out of the house. I can tag them to make them easy to find in Roon so I don’t need to remember the artist or album names. Powerful stuff.

Now I've figured out how to configure my router, I'm going to get 10 times the use out of my Roon subscription. Good stuff!

This channel has made me rediscover my love of music. Thank you.

But when you say Roon costs as much as Spotify, that’s kind of irrelevant because paying for Roon is 14.99/month plus you would need to pay for a streaming service anyway like Qoboz or Tidal, which would set you back another 10-15/month.

I'm so glad I opted for a Roon lifetime subscription before they raised the price on in.

I love Roon so much. Has been a great discovery. Utter game changer for finding music, organising music and enjoying high quality streaming music. Brilliant.

I should have done this sooner. This review triggered me to ditch Spotify and sign up to trial subscriptions of Qobuz & Roon. I cleaned up my old 2013 Mac (which holds over 2000 of my old albums) and installed Roon Core. Also installing Roon on my iPad Pro and Roon Arc on my Samsung S21 Ultra, after 20mins core had pulled in all my albums and linked my Qobuz account without any issues - so easy. This is where the magic started. The Roon interface just needs to be experienced, introducing me to loads of features and new album recommendations that i just don’t get from spotify. Consumed In Key by Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales & Days Gone By, Bob Moses to name just a couple which is currently streaming in HiRes on my Bluesound Powernode. I took Roon Arc for a spin this morning using Ibasso in ear headphones and Ibasso DC04 DAC and again the interface has got me hooked. Thanks Darko I’m a Roon convert.

Ill love ARC once I get it working! Glad to see you’re still enjoying chill out !

The elephant in the room is that Roon needs a relatively high performance computer running 24/7. Plex(Amp) runs great with a Raspberry Pi 4.

@Jimmah82

Жыл бұрын

Not necessarily, I'm running my Roon core on a QNAP NAS that isn't very powerful. Granted it slows to a crawl when upsampling to DSD but I never touch that anyway.

I cant leave Spotify. I like the ecosystem too much. But it really is getting annoying. Spotify promised hi-fi looooong ago and they need to deliver.

@jorgebravo7980

Жыл бұрын

Same here. I’m paying Apple Music (which I only use with my Hifi system) and Spotify (for everything else), which is extremely annoying. Love the Spotify ecosystem, but their lack of commitment with their HiFi promises makes me question if the hassle is worth it

@erwindewit4073

Жыл бұрын

@@G-rig6969 That's true, but much of the music I like IS on Spotify and not on Tidal. And that's really unfortunate!

@johnnyhickman6798

Жыл бұрын

I stream Spotify 320kbps to Chord Mojo 2/Poly and listen via Beyerdynamic Amorim Home headphones. Sounds amazing, also have tidal which sounds better but both still very good.

@adamswift1747

Жыл бұрын

Yeah I felt the same and then I got too angry about broken hifi promises and moved to Tidal. I missed Spotify for a good couple of months, but not anymore.

@wp7310

Жыл бұрын

Spotify is great because there are public playlists e.g. created by radio music journalists. Unfortunately I started using Roon and I I had to switch to Tidal. Ok I can pay for both but I really don't like paying to much for very similar services. For me Spotify is great! ❤️But Roon...

Great in depth video, this explains Roon very good, better than I could find on the net! This might pull the trigger for me, vielen dank!

Thanks so much for yet another delightful/informative video. Like you, I chose to go with a lifetime Roon subscription and that was before v 2.0. My personal collection is also one that has a lot of music not available on streaming services. I love that I can now share some of that content with friends when I am visiting their homes. My only comment is that you might have mentioned that Roon Support is doing a very good job of helping people get their home network configured to work with Roon Arc. I am tech comfortable, but still made use of the online help to get my mesh router configured.

Thanks John, another informative and interesting subject 👍🏻. Your channel is the only one I subscribe to where the ads kick in at the ad break. I'm so sick and tired of YT bombarding me with ads. Unlike Netflix and other subscription services, YT doesn't create the content but is nevertheless trying to monetize the platform. How much money do these buggers need??

Your brilliant mate. Long time subscriber keep up the AMAZING work.

Would you consider a follow up - film? A trouble shooting video about setting up ARC? Explaining the actions required on your router to allow the outside in ?

@mikemulcahy

Жыл бұрын

I'd like to see that too. I spent almost 2 days trying to get ARC to work without success.

Thanks for the great video, John. That explained it nicely. I was struggling to see the point of ARC before, but your examples got me thinking...(and wanting!)

Just downloaded it on my phone. I am going to say this is really cool. I only use ROON at home with my FLAC rips (I cancelled my Tidal and Qobuz services as I rarely used them), so now I have my music all the time. Thanks again!

Totally agree. This was the feature I was waiting for/dreaming of. So glad it is here.

Great video, Roon Arc sounds ideal for me given the amount of CD singles I have ripped. Really good review, thank you!

Bienvenido a España! I hope you have great holiday and thank you for your reviews.

Great video!! I am now more interested in exploring streaming. I can’t help notice those awesome looking Mission loudspeakers. 👍🏻

iTunes Match is a cheaper option with less (none) options, but it does allow one to stream CDs that aren’t available on Apple Music itself through the same app on the road.

Love your podcast man … love it from Australia…hope you get bigger .half the stuff i don’t understand but it’s great … reallly good listen

Great video, as always! I am so happy about Arc - it finally frees me up from having to use other interfaces for listening to music. This is the killer feature for me: only one interface no matter where I am, one favorites list, one single set of playlists. Love it! Personally I don’t have any music on hard drives at all, but this might change that…

@julianfp1952

Жыл бұрын

I have the same core requirement, my killer feature that I've been wanting for ages - one interface for all my music - but unfortunately for me where I differ from you is that when travelling I don't stream, I convert all of my lossless CD rips and downloads to AAC 320kbs and store the whole lot in Apple Music on my iPhone. If/when Roon adds the ability to compress file downloads (in the same way that it can already compress streaming content) then I will be able to reach the same audio nirvana as you, one interface everywhere (and me not having to compress and re-tag files myself to create my AAC shadow copies). Until then I'm sitting on the side lines watching intently for every new version of Roon ARC that is released.

ROON ARC has solved my issues with Qobuz and PLEXamp. I love the ROON ARC interface and that it offers such a better user interface on the go, not just high quality audio. There is definitely a little bit of setup that needs to occur to get it tweaked to your liking.

Great video - Thank you, John! I have been using Roon Arc since the first day it became available. I love the flexibility it brings along with all the features you mentioned. One feature that is not yet available is Integration with Apple Car Play. I understand that is being targeted for a future release. For those of us who like to have our music with us as we drive that will be a very welcome feature.

Hi John. Once again, a great video. One possible use for your audience. Some of us are “returning to office” and having to switch out Roon’s better interface, AI and discovery at home for Tidal in the office. And yes, I could load a Roon core on my work laptop, or carry my personal laptop but that’s not really ideal. Sounds like Roon ARC solves this problem.

I use roon and I didnt realize ARC was a thing until I watched this today. Thank you very much, this is absolutely amazing and my Roon software already has it setup which is great.

Roon Arc is fantastic, what an innovative and value packed new feature. All I had to do was to open a port on my provider router. Love that I can access my records and Roon playlists everywhere. Never regretted my lifetime subscription, even better now.

This sounds like a great route back owning our own music collections, which was always part of the pleasure of purchasing music back in the day 👍🏻

@raulhenriquez9412

Жыл бұрын

Try Plexamp thank me later does everything Roon does but better and cheaper.

Used it today for the first time. Plugged my iPhone into my car and listened without any problems. Love the App.

Great album rip choices. I think you are displaying your rave roots there..

Hi John great as usual, I use a synology nas disk station to store my ripped cd's, I also have loads of 7.5" reel to reel tapes that I have converted to flac files, you can access them on most devices via dsaudio app and also via streammagic app for my streamer!

Good video. I've been pretty blown away by ARC- I bit the bullet on Roon lifetime a few months ago and it's been so rewarding to get such an immense upgrade. It's not perfect, but, especially considering it's v1.0, it's very impressive.

I've been using Plex for several years and love the freedom it gives. Does Roon offer any real benefits over Plex? Is sound quality better, for instance? I would love to see a direct comparison of the two.

Thanks for sharing 🙏

Set all the great content aside , you’ve introduced me to some really great music most notably Brendon Moeller, you’re a great DJ

Well done John.

It's exciting without question!

I love Roon and ARC! Game changing stuff!

This is great. I've a ton of CD and vinyl rips and dark-corner-of-the-internet downloads that are definitely not on any streaming service. Thanks for sharing!

@legochicano

Жыл бұрын

Those dark-corner-of-the-internet downloads is a unique generational item many youngsters will never experience haha! I have a big library of music as well and this solution is ideal. I may have to bite the bullet and pay up now! :)

Roon ARC was the only reason I hadn’t ponied up for the software. Now that it’s here, I’m all in.

Nice, I've had Roon for awhile and sort of miss alot of stuff when I'm out and about like my playlists.

Once I got the port forwarding issue sorted out ( needed a fixed ip address from my provider), haven't looked back. Loving the car rides even more. I find the sound quality to be way better than qobuz or tidal. 256kbps on roon arc sounds cleaner and more musical than lossless qobuz/tidal. My hard drive at home is connected to a high end usb card and that might have something to do with the improved sound quality. Well, this has been a long time coming and it's a real blessing for music lovers. Thank you Roon. Ofcourse there's always room for improvement and android auto/carplay would just complete the package!

Mission!! Can't wait!

Love your take on Roon Arc. I love it also and am about to offload Plexamp.

Warning for Carrier Grade NAT. Roon ARC will not work if your internet provider uses CG NAT. You can download any albums you have stored locally to your phone, but, you cannot stream from the server unless connected to your home's WiFi. Roon is absolutely amazing and worth it for me. Cannot wait for the solution to this problem

Thanks again for another excellent video. It is sad to know that some of the great music I am listening to via Tidal may actually be inferior to the original master. I believe you have previously mentioned that a lot of remasters are more compressed which limits the dynamic range. Is that the problem as you see/hear it? Thanks.

I've always wanted access to my (ridiculously) large library outside of my house. This is amazing. I'm sure the app will improve over time.

I’m an Apple fan the Apple TV hdmi to my Yamaha Aventage reciever sounds great especially the spatial audio selections. I can turn on party mode and as I move around it sounds great everywhere

This sounds great. I'd be interested in learning more about the differences between this and Plex Amp.

Amazing new update and free new app feature. Awesome....

Looking forward to the Mission 770 review!

This is very intriguing to me

I use Roon but I cannot use ARC unfortunately. Our internet is provided by Starlink (we live in a very rural location where there is no fibre or copper internet) and Starlink uses CGNAT which prevents any port forwarding etc so you simply cannot access anything on your home network from outside it. So...no ARC unless you actually download the tracks to the phone before leaving home.

@berlinanthropologist

Жыл бұрын

Had the same issue ->Tailscale is your friend. ;)

Apple Music with iTunes can Upload your private catalog of music in Lossless or AAC in the Apple iCloud to be streamed and/or downloaded through Apple Music interface, without compromising the personal space of iCloud that the user has. I already have 80GB of music with this function. You can even mix playlist with your personal music and Apple Music catalog.

@martinkitchen6609

Жыл бұрын

iTunes Match!

I always love the way put things in common terms. I do have almost 2 TB of heavy metal and power metal mostly in flac format. I keep updating my phone and use a blutooth DAC Astell Kern XB10 to listen to them. Since I am from India, Roon is expensive at present unless they come out with special prices made for our region. Is there any other way to stream the music using my backup ? Data rates are cheap in India, so it is economical to listen to high bit rate songs online.

Hi John. Just wanted to drop a quick comment on the latest beta feature for Roon Arc that now includes a custom USB driver for bit perfect playback on android and IOS. Apologies if you've already covered elsewhere.

Roon ARC still needs some work, but its a great addition to the Roon platform. Access to my music, anywhere. Fantastic. Excellcent video by the way.

Thanks now I'm hooked!! How did you get Roon to display on your Frame TV? Likely kissing Sonos good bye :)

I never thought I would bother with ARC. I used Qobuz when on the move. This was OK but not always straight forward to find what I wanted. In Roon ARC, my Qobuz albums are there alongside my own rips and organised in a way that is intuitive to me. I can also, relatively easily, move from listening to something at home to listening on the move and then back again (it would be great if Roon made this even easier!). Where I live the mobile data plans are generous and the coverage is OK for my regular journeys. The download function will be of some use for the longer journeys and I out of range of the mobile phone networks.

Drop the bloopers. I’m already ready for my next video in the queue… 😉(If this was the movie Cannonball Run, it would be a different opinion.) Love the channel though. Keep ‘em coming.

Interesting video. I was considering getting Roon a while ago and checked their prices. I noticed that they advertised their annual price as 'save 30%', when it was actually only a saving of 23%. I thought this must have been an innocent mistake, so I pointed it out on their forum expecting them to apologise and correct the error. Instead they said they could claim the discount was whatever percentage they liked, regardless of reality. After that I decided I wouldn't give them any money. They still haven't changed their advertising.

Roon is worth the price for me as well as everything covered here with Roon I can play hi-res files my Sonos cannot play natively as it converts the file down to a sample rate Sonos can read. so now don’t need to replace my kitchen speaker and buy one that can play 24 bit 96kHz, yes that would sound better but this is for my kitchen.

Luckily, in the US, many have unlimites data. Just installed the arc. Excited.

Welcome, to the past? I thoroughly enjoy your videos and attitude towards music and audio gear. Very insightful and helpful. I would like to note though that in late 2012 I purchased a Synology DiskStation and the same unit has been running without issue to this day. I installed DS Audio and DS Video and have been able to stream music (supports FLAC, M4A (non-alac) M4B, MP3, WAV, and Ogg Vorbis) or videos to my cell phone ever since and download music or videos to take with me as I choose. I do not have Roon today but if this is easier to use/maintain (not that managing the DiskStation is difficult) I might look into it.

@luisluz5005

Жыл бұрын

+1. Do you really need room to download your files to your phone while on the move (to prevent data costs) ?!

John (and team!) great video, again. I’ve been interested in Roon for quite a while but have struggled to justify the cost (and additional technical challenges/cost for a Roon Core). I have a NAS drive (Synology) and can do all these things that Roon/Roon Arc does through the DS Audio (and others) app. I can download music to my iPhone (also via tidal and Apple Music I believe?) as well as listen in native ripped CD quality. Both Apple Music and Tidal also have some form of ‘radio’ functionality to enable music discovery. So I’m not sure what Roon adds here? Other than the excellent interface? Happy to be challenged! Thanks again. Enjoy your well earned break.

Oh man, I used to spin several tracks from FSOL - Accel. in the early 90s in San Francisco (vinyl)! So pleased to be reminded of it and found it on TIDAL. PNG is still a classic, and WOC is still hauntingly beautiful; haven't heard either in 10+ years; thanks, John! The The's Mind Bomb is on TIDAL (two versions to boot'; never heard of the album and so much of your music John; great stuff - thank you!)

Dear John, do you have a backup of your hard drive? If not I strongly suggest you do so. On the roon arc thing, I do have Plex lifetime pass because of your recommendation of Plex. Right now I don’t see what makes roon arc better then Plex. And Plex is much cheaper. Also if you use symbology nas, you do have both: data security, regarding drive failure and a Plex server

@geraldmcmullon2465

Жыл бұрын

Two back ups. Even with all the original CDs ripping again takes a lot of hands on time. Transferring vinyl is real time transfers.

I just went with an iPhone 14 w/1TB of storage. My library is in Apple Music (iTunes Match) and after downloading all 25,267 songs, I still have 349GB free space. Music was downloaded at lossless quality. I first tried downloading at Hi-Res Lossless but was left with a little over 110GB free space. Either way, that's a lot of music to have anywhere I go and not have to worry about streaming or data plans. So for me, despite the high cost of the phone, it's less expensive and less complex than setting up ROON.

@eleventhvolume9362

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I didn't understand why Roon Arc was so amazing from the video - as an Apple Music subscriber, anything I add to my library is streamable and downloadable almost instantly to any of my devices.

I like that Darko might take his phone to a friends house, and they might not let him onto their wifi.

Tried it Plexamp is way ahead especially with the DJ algorithm, it is far beyond ahead of Roon. Also Roon misses tons of stuff when indexing, on Plexamp I just make sure my albums are processed through Picard first and then upload, Roon still misses these How? In addition with the discount we get with Tidal there is no beating my 192K experience at home and anywhere I go.

@shawnorjiakor

Жыл бұрын

Thank you for telling your impressions.

@Turbojugend27

7 ай бұрын

Same, it blows my mind people are paying $15 a month for roon, plex with plexamp is amazing.

We’ll Arc was a good idea. I had to change my home network to get it to work, but the the Roon airplay became very unreliable, despite it working with Apple Music. So I ditched Arc, and swapped back my network to the original settings. The reliable AirPlay was more important than the remote listening using ARC. Never got a response from tech support. Also 2.0 has to have internet access all the time, unlike 1.8

I knew you’d be tackling this subject as soon as I read the Roon 2.0 email. I have enjoyed your increased video output, but am curious what spurred the change.

I've always found Roon products cool when people present them, but then I check the pricing and my enthusiasm dies down. And then there's this big kicker: "Roon does not support Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon HD Music, or KZread Music." So very limited support for streaming services, and if you can't/don't want to use those options it's only a music player with remote storage. I guess there is value if you have more than 1TB of music you want to access remotely, because SD cards get quite expensive at that point. I'd be interested if price wasn't an issue, but 13$ a month added on top of the actual streaming services...

and also: is there gapless playing in ARC? can I listen to Strauss's Zarathustra with ARC in the street without interruptions between parts? another important feature to consider especially for classical music lovers

Another nice video! :) John, I'll be in Berlin next week; mostly in MItte. Can you recommend a record store in that area?

Roon 2.0 made me buy the lifetime subscription

I hope all of that rare music is well backed up

Mind bomb The The. Is still available on Apple music. Both the original and the digitally remastered version.

I revelled in this freedom years ago with the rebirthed audiogalaxy (which Dropbox bought and decommissioned). Been looking for something like this ever since.

Hola I am using Roon application, mainly for quality purposes. I am finding Roon improves audio. For a low quality like internet radio, Roon achieves to make an acceptable sound. Roon Arc doesn't matter for me, each one could join community for different reasons.

Plexamp versus Roon please. Keep up the great work

Talking of Masters, I'm sure there was an early video of yours where you refer to a site that discusses the quality of a recording. Part of the conversation was the fact that many newer remasters were just shoddily done to up the volume somewhat, perhaps to enhance poorer listening habits like cheap IEMs and low quality streaming. Which video was this on? Am I correct in my recollection? Cheers

definitely interesting! but you need to stress a bit more the fact that the nucleus has to be always on, either it's a computer or a mini PC or whatever, including all the hard disks have to be always on and connected.. not really safe if you leave for several days... but overall an amazing feature!

I hope you have the contents of the HD backed up safely !!

🤗👍THANKS JOHN, FOR YOUR MUSIC 🎶 SUGGESTIONS AND….SHOWING WHY IT IS THE BEST TIME TO BE AN AUDIOPHILE 😎💚💚💚

@budgetaudiophilelife-long5461

Жыл бұрын

And the outtakes 😅

I run Roon Core on my NAS. Runs good.

A video on the do's and don'ts of ripping cds would be great! I seem to have variable levels of success : S

Which version of Mind Bomb is this Master version you refer to? Have it on vinyl(purchased when released) and cd bought I don't know when. Hate to be missing something as love this album. If only there was a new hi res version of soul mining!

So if i were to integrate say a Bluesound Vault would i be able to roughly duplicate what you have done here...Excellent videos by the way..super informative....FYI I am also an audiophile what likes electronica music

Now I'm going to book a vacation just to listen to my files somewhere else.

I’m a true believer in Roon and now Arc. I do have a question a bit off topic. I use my Nucelus as a streamer, wondering if you have tried your Nucelus as a streamer and what you thought of the SQ? Wondering if a separate streamer is worth the investment? I’ve been very happy with this set up but always chasing possible improvements. Thanks

A friend of mine left his hi-fi and CD collection. The hi-fi went to one of his sons. I took the CDs and transferred the 200 albums of classical music to the computer used by his wife. Although now 82 she took to using Windows Media Player and was able to stream the library from the study room computer to the small form factor PC in the lounge. She listens to many albums a day find music she never realised her husband had collected and loved. I had previous set up PLEX and a smaller selection of albums, but they didn't use it. Windows Media player also gives access to photographs and videos. I use Devialet Phantoms, B&O Level and B&O Emerge speakers to play back the tracks, selecting what to play on their apps. Over wi-fi there is no compression of the wave and flac files. Bluetooth is not needed. I have not tried streaming from my home computers whist on holiday. Wi-fi was not good enough to do that on my month trip around India. I was able to connect, set up off air recordings for the next week and download more audio tracks to my tablet. Videos were too big and dropped out before downloading. An automatic reboot of the PC meant that my daughter had to run the remote login program. I took a portable 3Tb hard drive with the Windows 8" tablet.

I was thinking of doing a video called Audirvana vs. Roon but honestly the video would just be "Never mind Audirvana, just get Roon"... I started out as an Audirvana user a few years ago and as soon as I tested Roon I switched. I then got Audirvana a few weeks ago just to compare the two and it's not even a contest.

I still dig your attitude towards Hi-Fi and the latest technologies associated with it! I've been toying with the idea about getting Roon for a while now, but it is a pricey thing; I'm not sure I have a real need for it, even though I own about 2700 CDs.............. BTW, those Mission 770 loudspeakers are looking real good!

Will look at running Roon on a virtual machine. I’m in the Sonos at home eco system along with Kef LSX. Apple airplay though?

Great video John, thank you! now I will try roon, that should be now the alternative of ITunes Match i‘m waiting for:-) by the way .. I’m still using T-com’s streaming option here in Germany for my mobile Data, which means no data volume will be used for music streaming services:-)