Hegel H190 is now Roon Ready

Dean Kurtz

Dean Kurtz

Audioholic
I have a Hegel H190 and a lot of WAV files of most of my cd's on my computer. My amp is now Roon ready. Is it worth it?
Does anyone use it? I mostly play cds and sacd, dvda"s.
 
adk highlander

adk highlander

Sith Lord
I have a Hegel H190 and a lot of WAV files of most of my cd's on my computer. My amp is now Roon ready. Is it worth it?
Does anyone use it? I mostly play cds and sacd, dvda"s.
I have been a Roon user for several years. I find it worth it. I have several zones set up either direct from the core or RaspPi endpoints. I have a decent library of 26k tracts and like the interface for interacting with my library. I do not use the streaming service integration so I cannot speak to Tidal and Valance search.
 
John Parks

John Parks

Audioholic Samurai
Roon is excellent, with a great interface and very easy to use. I really enjoy the info about the artists that it pulls and Roon Radio is a great source for musical suggestions. I really need to cough up the dough for the lifetime purchase…
 
Dean Kurtz

Dean Kurtz

Audioholic
But with all the changes in technology, who knows how long it will last. Looks pretty cool though.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Didn't care for the cost of Roon, altho it has some interesting features, particularly for use with streaming services. I don't really care about the artwork/history/organization, can do that without their assistance. If it were a lifetime deal for $50 it might have been interesting....
 
adk highlander

adk highlander

Sith Lord
I think better speakers would be a better investment for me.
I don't know any of us who would not agree with that statement.

That being said the convenience that Roon provides me is well worth the yearly costs for me. If I was not trying to run up to 7 zones with any combination of grouping then I would probably not have made the investment.
 
Dean Kurtz

Dean Kurtz

Audioholic
Good to hear all the answers. It does look like a great technology of organization of music files. The reason I have so many WAV cd files on my computer is my phone has a 512gb card that I downloaded. I just go a to z and that's my radio station.
 
Eppie

Eppie

Audioholic Ninja
Good to hear all the answers. It does look like a great technology of organization of music files. The reason I have so many WAV cd files on my computer is my phone has a 512gb card that I downloaded. I just go a to z and that's my radio station.
Roon does some things very well. If you are using WAV files then you likely do not have tag information (id3) for adding artist and genre info. Roon is quite good at grouping music into similar genres using its own database. It is also good at playing the same material simultaneously on different systems within the home or controlling different streams to different systems using the phone app or PC or tablet. You need to designate one device as your Roon core, so you can not use it on your phone when away from the house (although I suppose you could set up a VPN to get around that). I think it's expensive and a little overkill if you only have one system, but for multiple systems in a home it can be quite useful.
 
Dean Kurtz

Dean Kurtz

Audioholic
On the WAV files I have found apps to put the cover art on. Takes way too much time, but what's an album without the cover art. Either on the computer or phone. I like the WAV files because I have them set uncompressed.
 
Eppie

Eppie

Audioholic Ninja
On the WAV files I have found apps to put the cover art on. Takes way too much time, but what's an album without the cover art. Either on the computer or phone. I like the WAV files because I have them set uncompressed.
A WAV file is just a container, after all, like any other file, so as long as the player understands the tags they can be added. It is more common for WAV files to be raw while MP3s and FLACs have id tags. For my Japanese albums I even added English lyrics using a tag editor and Roon can display those.

I also take the time to add album art for every album. :) Exact Audio Copy is pretty good at connecting to public databases and displaying available album art to include with the rip, but if it is low resolution I will search for a better quality image. You only rip a CD once, usually, so while the CD is ripping I will grab the album art. I prefer FLAC as it is lossless but still considerably smaller than WAV so albums copy to devices more quickly and take less storage. When you get to have several gigabytes of music the space savings are significant and it speeds up backups as well.
 
Dean Kurtz

Dean Kurtz

Audioholic
I get it. I would probably really like Roon. I need to save for better speakers and a sub eventually. What I really notice lately is the mastering (or original source) is one of the most important ways to improve sound. Every step up makes that more noticeable.
 
Eppie

Eppie

Audioholic Ninja
I get it. I would probably really like Roon. I need to save for better speakers and a sub eventually. What I really notice lately is the mastering (or original source) is one of the most important ways to improve sound. Every step up makes that more noticeable.
I wish I would have purchase the lifetime membership at the start. It is now $200 more at $700. That is a lot for a software solution, even if you go with the yearly subscription price. Roon is one of those things that is nice to have but not a must have. If you are planning on speaker upgrades it makes more sense to save up first and think about little improvements like Roon later.
 
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