Author: Enno Vandermeer

To everyone in the Roon community,

Last November, Roon Labs was acquired by Harman International. This marks a new beginning for Roon, our industry partners, and our team. Today, we want to discuss what this means for us, for you, and for the future of Roon.

These past few months have been incredibly busy as we merge our company into Harman, an organization many times our size. We’ve been deeply impressed by the resources, funding, and infrastructure available at our new home, and Harman’s leadership has more than delivered on their promise to support us as we chart our path forward. Many of our ambitions that were difficult or impossible as a small company are now within reach, and we can already see how this will benefit our users and accelerate our progress.

We’ve found many Roon enthusiasts at Harman and Samsung. Like everyone in our community, these people – including the most senior executives – share our passion for music and sound quality. Harman acquired Roon to serve a business strategy, but it’s important to understand that the decision-makers responsible have a deep appreciation for our product. They admire what we’ve done and are committed to preserving Roon and helping us improve it.

Before the acquisition, we dedicated several years to expanding Roon’s reach by targeting new audiences. We put real effort towards enhancing the product experience for people with smaller music libraries, as well as casual listeners in hobbyist communities like gaming and headphones. Although these enhancements did help us find new audiences, they sometimes had the unintended consequence of disappointing our most loyal, long-term user base of music collectors and audio enthusiasts.

At Harman, we’ve been given a mandate to reconnect with our core audience. These are the curators who are passionate about shaping their music collections, the audiophiles who appreciate the nuances of high-performance audio equipment, and the genre experts who depend on Roon to expand their knowledge of music. These are the people who have multiple streaming services or who have extensive libraries of music files – the people who simply want the best platform for experiencing their music library. Within this community, Roon is still the only product that comprehensively caters to their diverse needs, and now, at Harman, we’re excited to refocus our efforts on serving them.

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.

We’re also moving the product forward. Just a few weeks ago, we rolled out a significant update to ARC’s downloads functionality, and today, we’re excited to announce the release of support for TIDAL MAX, bringing a vast library of hi-res PCM content to every Roon user with a TIDAL HiFi Plus subscription.

Going forward, we aim to prioritize features that best serve our community. Roon occupies a vibrant niche, and our strategy at Harman no longer requires us to seek larger audiences. As a result, you can expect real changes in the types of features we focus on and deliver.

We’re paying attention to neglected aspects of the product – prioritizing performance and reliability – to ensure that Roon remains rock-solid. We’ll revisit long-requested features that we’ve avoided, like folder browsing and enhancing the way Roon handles box sets. Major improvements to our playlist functionality are in the pipeline (Hallelujah!). In the coming year, we’ll be focusing on features that center on your music library, rather than non-library streaming content.

Roon’s acquisition by Harman signifies a fresh start for our product. We’re committed to realigning with our core audience and focusing on the needs of music lovers and audio enthusiasts. We’ve already made strides in addressing user concerns, like reverting the internet connectivity requirement, introducing exciting new features like TIDAL MAX, and delivering an updated ARC downloads experience. With Harman’s support, we look forward to a future of improved performance, reliability, and features that cater to you, the Roon community. If you’re interested in hearing more, please check out the podcast we did with David Hyman, a long-time Roon user, audiophile, and music industry veteran who founded MOG (which later became Beats Music and eventually Apple Music).

We’re excited about what lies ahead, and we’re grateful for your continued support. Thank you for being a part of this journey. We can’t wait to bring you more exciting updates in the coming months.

The Roon founders

With our Fall 2021 release, you’ll see some great improvements to Roon, but the big news is that we’re rolling out the first of a series of fun web-based tools to our community of music fanatics. The goal of these tools is to let you contribute your expertise to Valence, our cloud-based data system, making the Roon experience richer for the whole community!

Art Director

Everyone benefits from better-looking artist photos and band logos, so we’ve created Art Director, the first in a series of fun web-based tools that puts Roon users in control of how artist images are shown in Roon. Using Art Director, you can adjust the positioning of artist photos, upload your own band logos and images, and vote for your favorites. By doing so, you’ll be helping the whole Roon community and making perfect artist images a reality.

How does Art Director work?

When you visit our new Valence page and select “Contribute”, you sign in with your Roon account and select Art Director. You’ll be presented with images from the Valence database that need your artistic eye. If you want to adjust images for a specific artist, just type their name into the search box. From there, you’ll see all of the adjustments contributed by other users, as well as any images that still need your direction.

Art Director allows us to be far more dynamic with the images used in Roon, giving us the ability to adjust photos to fit into specific shapes. For example, you can adjust the main image that is displayed at the top of an artist page, as well as their circular ‘avatar’ that is shown on the Artists page and within search lists. This means no matter where an artist image is displayed in Roon, it will always look fantastic. If you have a band logo or a photo of an artist that you love, you can also upload it to Art Director to be featured in Roon. 

You and the rest of the Roon community can also vote for your favorite image on an artist’s page. Just click on the heart next to any adjusted image; this is how Valence decides which images are shown in Roon. As the Roon community begins to vote and adjust artist photos, you’ll always see the best possible images in Roon, and they’ll constantly improve based on the efforts of our community.

Local image edits are still possible, but if you have previously spent time improving artist images in your own library, you can now make these changes in Art Director to update your library while improving the Roon experience for everyone.

To start contributing, just sign into Valence using your Roon account details at valence.roonlabs.com

Playlists by Roon

Our team lives for music, and it’s our goal to create the best experiences for other music lovers. In addition to Roon itself, we do this by collaborating with artists, our community, and with our own music team to bring you editorial content and playlists that we think you’ll enjoy. Over the past year we’ve worked with artists including Patricia Barber, Daymé Arocena, AHI, and Stephen Moccio to bring you exclusive interviews and editorial, as well as producing weekly playlists with a particular genre or theme. 

Up until now, the playlists we have created have only been available on TIDAL and Qobuz, and haven’t been accessible in Roon. In our latest release, you can now access everything our music team has curated, directly from your Home screen on both streaming platforms.

Smarter search

Back in the summer, we released the first of many updates to improve how you search for music in Roon. In this update we’ve taken the next step and completely overhauled the search function to make it easier than ever to find the music you’re looking for.

Now, when you search for music in Roon you’ll see more accurate and concise results (with fewer inaccuracies!), especially when it comes to your library content. Roon will be able to detect when you’re searching for classical music, presenting composers and compositions first. We’ve also overhauled text filtering across the app, for more consistent handling of special characters and punctuation.

The updates we’ve made to search this year are just the beginning. Search has been a top priority for us this year, and led by our data team, it will continue to be a focus into 2022 and beyond.

Rock-solid streaming

We’ve completely overhauled Roon’s buffering and caching infrastructure for playing streaming content. The new implementation is designed to be less demanding when interacting with your network and internet connection, making streaming music both more stable and less intensive on your Roon Core. This should minimize playback interruptions from TIDAL and Qobuz, as well as making it possible for people with slower internet connections and networks to have a better and more reliable experience while using Roon. It will also ensure your Roon Core is more resilient to latency issues caused by Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and the geographic distance from your source.

Easier volume limits

We’ve redesigned the Zone Settings screen so it’s even easier to set volume limits that prevent your music from getting too loud. The new design also makes it easier to configure auto-sleep functionality and other settings for your audio devices.

Other new improvements in this release include: improved iOS lockscreen control implementation, new cover art on playlist screens on mobile devices and added the album type to artist’s “Recommended albums” for easier browsing of main albums, singles, and EPs. You can see a complete list of improvements over on our Community post.

We want to thank our subscribers for everything you have done to help us improve Roon and grow our amazing community this year – we couldn’t have done it without you!

We hope you enjoy the new update and if you have any questions or need some support , you can reach out to our dedicated Customer Success & Support team via our Help Center or head over to our Community and join in the discussions with thousands of other Roon subscribers.

In our latest 1.8 release, we’re rolling out one of the Roon community’s most requested features: native control of Roon from your phone, even when the screen is locked. Alongside this, we’ve made it even easier to compare different versions of your favorite albums in Roon and expanded Roon’s exporting functionality.

Native control of Roon from your phone

You can now access essential controls natively from your Android or iOS* device without going into the Roon Remote app. Now playing information, volume, and pause and skip controls can all  be controlled from your phone.

Adjusting volume this way controls the level of your audio gear connected to Roon, and respects the volume limits you’ve already set in different zones. This latest update also includes support for your mobile devices physical volume controls, so you can change the volume of your music without even looking at the screen.

On iOS, we’ve also implemented the much-requested gesture support for navigation so you can now swipe from the left or right edge of your phone screen for easy back and forward navigation.

*iOS Beta only: to use this feature, go to your Settings in Roon Remote and enable ‘Lock Screen Controls’. Find out more

Compare versions of your favorite albums

Roon’s album page has always featured a “Versions” tab where you could find other editions of an album, including those from your own music library, TIDAL, and Qobuz. In our latest update, we’ve completely redesigned this view, making it even easier to compare versions in your library and beyond. Whether you’re looking for an expanded edition with bonus tracks or want to listen to an even higher-quality version, Roon lets you do this in a couple of clicks.

Take your Roon content to services around the world

We expanded and improved Roon’s exporting functionality, so it’s easier to copy media out of Roon, or to export detailed information about your music to Excel.

For those of you who enjoy listening to your playlists on multiple streaming platforms, we’ve also worked with our friends at Soundiiz to make it easier to export playlists and other content from Roon to various music services. Our new Soundiiz export mode generates a custom CSV file for any playlists, favorites, or library content you select, which can easily be uploaded to Soundiiz and synced to TIDAL, Qobuz, or nearly any other streaming service. 

Try Soundiiz Premium 

To get access to all of the Soundiiz features, including the ability to transfer all of your playlists to different streaming platforms at once and to keep all of your playlists synced between different platforms, use code “ROONVIP” at checkout to get 15% off the Soundiiz Premium subscription.

Since the success of Roon 1.8 release in February, we’ve received tons of great feedback from our community which we have been using every day to make improvements to how you use and experience Roon. In fact, since 1.8 we’ve made almost 150 bug fixes and improvements to Roon, and this release is no exception.  

New improvements include: a new “Date Modified” sort feature for your playlists, faster loading of your Daily Mixes, improvements to the search autocomplete user experience, high-resolution playback on supported Sonos devices and shuffling of tags that now includes playlist content from outside your library. You can see a complete list of improvements over on our Community post.

Without our community’s input, feedback and support, Roon wouldn’t be where it is today and for this we are truly grateful. If you have any suggestions, questions or you just want to come and say hi, you can contact our dedicated Customer Success & Support team via our Help Center or Community.

An experience tailor-made for you

Whether you’re just starting with Roon or you’ve been building a listening history for years, our new updated Home screen gives you an all-new visualization of your listening habits.

You’ll see a calendar view of the last few weeks of listening, along with charts of your top genres, artists, and albums. These charts can display the last week, month, year, or all time, and you can drill down for even more detail.

We’ve also added quick links to our Community, so you’re always just one click away from support from us and our music experts.