I have been a Roon lifetime subscriber since July 2015. I also own licenses for Audirvana 3.5 since before then. I subscribe to both TIDAL and Qobuz. My DAC is a dCS Rossini + clock.
I am considering alternatives to Roon.
For me, the make-or-break feature is album version groupings: I have many local versions of the same albums (eg Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene” and “Equinoxe” - downloaded, MFSL CD rips, etc) as well as their streaming counterparts from TIDAL and Qobuz. As you might know, in Roon all these versions can be grouped together in a very clear fashion, and you can select which version is the primary which is then the version shown and played by default (but you can always play a different version of course).
Hi @miguelito In short, there is no way to select a primary Version in AS. All versions will show under My Music using the Artist sort and you can pick which one you want to play. See first Screenshot (Including any Local Versions if you have hearted them and added to My Music.) PS I also have a Local Copy of DSOTM at 192
I keep my Local files unhearted and in the Local Files Section and as per the shot I have a CD Quality and DSD Copy of Seal that show under the local section.
See second Screenshot
No problem sir, unfortunately not the answer you were hoping for. I believe that there have been plenty of requests, but like Roon that does not necessarily equate to a feature being implemented.
I guess we have to try and find what works best for us and I trust that you will find something that is your perfect fallback.
I started off with Roon about 3 years ago and loved a lot of the features provided. Unfortunately it gave me most things except it kept giving me (After the Version 2 update) 15-30 second gaps between albums and between songs in a playlist.
AS provides perfect playback (finger crossed) for me and that is keeping me happy. Enjoy the music.
Honestly thus far my choice is Audirvana 3.5.50. I can’t find a feature that interests me that would justify moving to Studio. Album groupings would have been such feature. Alas, Studio cannot do this.
I have added various indicators in the Album Artist that enables me to choose them in the filters section.
Quite handy and would be good to have a more accessable feature in left hand menu section.
Phil
***PS. *** YOU could use the Artists section and then that is already visible in left hand menu. I realise this NOW after years of putting my details in Album Artist. To be honest I rarely use it except to see the symbols in the Album view so I can identify quickly if its a piano or voice or orchestra etc.
I am not sure this is what I am asking… Imagine I have three local versions of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygene album as well as the versions on streaming service (TIDAL for example). I want to see Oxygene as ONE album under which all versions exist separately. I would choose which is the main so if I play this album that’s the version that plays by default.
My main problem is I have no way to group these versions in Audirvana.
Hi there. The Tracks view allows a very large number of filters to be used to group albums (in the Tracks view each album will be of course be shown split into its constituent tracks).
So for example you might make a Favorites or Preferred folder and use File Location as the first, or one of the first, filters in Tracks view. Or if you tend to prefer higher resolutions, you can use sample rate and bit depth among the primary filters.
However, this is more work than what you’ve asked for, so it’s understandable if it’s not something you want to do. I personally don’t use Favorites, so I don’t know if that’s available for entire albums or just individual tracks.
I have spent a large amount of time grouping albums in Roon. I am a lifetime subscriber to Roon since July 2015, so that’s almost 9 years!!! Roon does NOT do a great job grouping in the first place - sometimes it gets it right sometimes not - but at least the feature exists.
I just don’t see a good way to do this within Audirvana without bending over backwards in complicated ways. This is unfortunate as this is a very common problem: many (most?) people would have a local album and its streaming counterpart in favorites and cannot make it “one” album with versions. Seems to me this is a truly basic feature most people would want.
I don’t know if this is a ‘very common problem’ since Roon seems the only program where you can do this in a convenient way. All the other programs I know do not seem to have a way of album grouping as Roon does. I personally don’t mind seeing the same album multiple times (with a different icon), because it reminds me that I have the same album in different places. Other people may find this a breaking issue. It only shows: “different people, different minds”.
On the other hand I begged for a ‘folder view’ in Roon for ages, ages ago (in my opinion a ‘very common’ feature to have, because all players except Roon have that). Roon steadfastly (out of principle?) refuses to add that. For me a folder view is a must, so I decided to leave Roon and go with other players.
In short: You decide what is ‘common’ for you. If grouping is a feature you can’t live without: you can also put a feature request in the ‘User Voice’ category of this forum. There Audirvana users can vote if they want this feature or not.
From my point of view, the key feature I like about Audirvana Studio is that it brings together your local and streaming albums. However, once you’ve done this, I would argue album groupings are the next natural choice as most people would have a local album also favorited in a streaming service (eg for when you’re away from home and want to have those albums you like accessible).
Yes, I am the OG submitter of many feature requests in the Roon forums that got a large amount of votes and yet were never implemented. But that’s an entire different issue. The groupings issue seems to be a required feature once you’ve put local and streaming in one place.
Grouping is a required feature for me to pay for a Studio subscription, and the lack thereof means I will not and keep my lifetime Audirvana 3.5.50 app instead. I don’t see any meaningful advantage of Studio in this case.
My read here is Roon was extremely focused about getting bought, and all their efforts went into features that would entice a buyer. Period.
Interestingly, they made a (IMO) really dumb choice of forcing everything through a cloud-only API, resulting in Roon stopping to work entirely when your internet is down - including local file playback. My read of this was this choice was entirely to say “we are completely cloud based” and in my opinion it was a really stupid choice. Case in point: their first release under Harman reverted this asinine design.
The reason I am looking at Audirvana is as a plan B - I would not be surprised if one day in the near future Roon stopped existing in the form we have today.
I don’t know if this is exactly what you’re looking for (used Roon for about 3 weeks and dropped it, ages ago), but IIRC Roon’s UI is based essentially on a search model. If you do a search in Audirvana (desktop or using the remote), it does pull up both local and streaming versions of the album you’ve asked for, so yes, you’ve got them both “grouped” together in your search results. The one that’s local and the one that’s on the streaming service are denoted with icons.
Perhaps you know all this already and what I’ve mentioned isn’t at all what you’re trying to get to, in which case my apologies.
So:
1- I see only one album in the list
2- I have all these versions in the Versions tab, some local some streaming
You can also see here that “Les Chantes Magnetiques” has the local and Qobuz separated - Roon failed to understand they are the same. I can group them into one album:
The Tracks view allows a very large number of filters to be used to group albums (in the Tracks view each album will be of course be shown split into its constituent tracks).
