Weighing in on the LMS vs Roon debate now that I have a Roon trial up and running.
FWIW I don't subscribe to any Roon compatible music services so my use is for local music streaming.
My endpoints are a Wiim Pro, a couple of Windows PCs and a laptop, my phone (mostly in the car via Android auto), and my home theatre system (comprised of a Marantz AVR/Vero4K/AppleTV4K/Chromecast-Google TV/Panasonic UHD/PS5).
My only music subscription is for YouTube music which I see as a bonus included with my YouTube premium family subscription.
While Roon was simpler to setup than my LMS environment, with my LMS already setup and doing everything I need with the required plugins configured I see no reason or advantage in switching to Roon and certainly not for the price it demands.
While certainly a consideration of individual finances and many with more money to burn than me will disagree, I think that US$15 per month is too much for what it provides, and certainly not US$830 for a "lifetime" license (4.6years ROI vs monthly).
I also found it interesting that the set-up process had a button to add HQPlayer which turns out to be a NZ$500+ playback application for my PC.
I am clearly not the target market for this ecosystem.
Who knows what Samsung/Harman's plans are and how any change in direction will impact existing lifetime subscribers?
With Roon claiming 100k active users this amounts to up to US$1.5m per month of income or $83m in lifetime license sales at current prices.
The features I like with Roon, other than the easy set-up, are the ability to easily direct playback info to separate display device, e.g. audio goes to my Wiim and the display to my Chromecast, and the simplicity of exposing your library for access remotely although for some reason this uses a different application.
Both of these are possible with LMS but a bit more of a fiddle.
I also don't have a native Roon (RAAT) or LMS (Squeezelite) client device in my AV setup and currently use my Vero4K (OSMC) as a DLNA endpoint which works flawlessly including media info and lyrics displayed on the TV.
With Roon I would have to use Airplay to the Marantz or Apple TV, or Cast to the Chromecast, which bugs me but is probably fine for audio quality, but I did have issues when trying this with the media playback display info not automatically coming to the foreground most times I started playback.
Am I missing something?
Does Roon only make sense when combining local and online services?
Other than the somewhat more complex configuration of plugins in LMS, what is the "magic" people talk about Roon having or whatever it adds to their experience over other solutions?
Both interfaces (LMS Material vs Roon remote) are clean and responsive with similar features.
I agree that it was easy or cheap to produce a product as polished as Roon there would be more competition but maybe it's not actually worth competing against LMS?
LMS
Roon remote
and obviously written with a certain knowledge of both systems. A fact I often miss.
