Roon

Could you please add support for Roon from Roonlabs? Roon is quickly becoming one of the favourite Computer Audio players including hardware support from several audio brands. They already have their own iOS app for controlling Roon but it would be great to be able to control from one remote inside Simplecontrol.

2 Likes

+1

/Harry

Maybe time to answer this ? It is now technically possible.

From Roon release notes:
Roon API (BETA)
The Roon API will allow developers to enable:

Custom volume controls even if the device is not Roon Ready
Custom convenience switching/standby can be used even for devices is not Roon Ready
Display of now-playing data and transport controls
Lightweight hierarchical browsing
Plugin settings from Roon UI
Roon’s API is still in a pretty early state, but 1.3 contains support for these features and is suitable for experimentation.

We have several exciting integrations planned over the next few months using the API as a jumping off point, and look forward to expanding and improving the Roon API with your feedback. Please try it out and let us know!

+1 - has it ever happened?

After switching to Roon for my audio server/players, I sure do miss having audio integration with Roomie. I would love to see it after Roomie V6 gets out the door.

+1 big Roon user all over the house.

  • 1 also

total novice with Roomie but have been using Roon since its release…so another big +1. Please!
I know this thread is a year old…so unless I’ve missed its implimentation…

Has this ever happened??? I’m also on the ROON train…

Why is this relevant to Roomie? I went to their website and at least in 30 seconds still am not sure what their product is that would be relevant to the kinds of devices we support. I didn’t see any hardware at all offhand. What am I missing?

Roon is integrated with a multitude of products, like higher end Marantz and Denon, a number of media players like Zidoo and Dune.
It’s a very sophisticated media (music specifically) control and organization platform.
It consolidates a couple of high res streaming services, local media, etc., provides an intelligent view of all music holistically, creating playlists, and exposing intelligent browsing for music then presenting a local streaming “bit perfect” experience.

In other words, ROON is a high def, intelligent, bit perfect music organization and server tool.
It controls ROON enabled devices in a similar way to HEOS, but all information is housed on your Roon server and it then controls the endpoint…

Does that make sense???
It’s a very expensive, but highly sophisticated way of controlling, viewing (media information) and listening to your music.

Nope. Is it software, hardware, or a streaming service? Anyway, safe to say if their product is this incomprehensible, they have some work to do before we need to look at it. I would suggest treating this as a Custom Device and using our extensive APIs for that if you would like basic integration in the short term.

Appears to be software, with an optional customized piece of hardware that can run their software. But you can also just run it on Windows or Mac.

How Roon works - Roon Labs

Looks interesting, but streaming sources are very limited. No Apple or Amazon or Spotify.

Roon has a huge following, especially as it’s being embedded within major manufacturers products: Marantz, Denon, Zidoo, Dune, etc. It’s continuously being updated, adding features, services, etc. It can also run on MANY NAS devices…

Did I say something inaccurate?

I believe I correctly surmised the way it works. The “Core” product can run from Windows, Mac, or the custom Roon hardware. This is the software that then integrates with the various hardware devices in your system (e.g. HEOS) as well as any of your music sources (e.g. Tidal). There are then a couple different apps / clients they provide to allow you to interact with Core - these apps are the ones that allow you to control playback, browse your catalog, etc.

I have a largeish HEOS implementation, so its interesting to me from that perspective. The lack of support for mainstream music streaming platforms (e.g. Apple, Spotify, Amazon) is a shortcoming in my view as I have Amazon Music Unlimited family plan.

To Will’s point - and everyone knows how much Will and I see eye-to-eye (!!) - what are you envisioning using Roomie for with Roon? Do you envision that Roomie would be an additional means to control the “Core” software I described above?

It might be helpful to express your desires in the format “As a . . . I want . . . so that . . .”.

As a Roon and Roomie user
I want to have Roomie be a control point for the Roon core software
So that I can further consolidate on Roomie as my universal remote and eliminate the need to use the Roon apps

Roon is an entity unto itself. I am an avid Roon user, but Roon IS the software experience of using it to play music through any number of hundreds of products that support it. Unlike Sonos, Bluesound and others that have API’s which control their devices, and which Roomie could directly control like a zone controller, ROON is it’s own protocol and software.

What DOES make sense is for Roomie is to incorporate a window on the control interface so that a user can use ROON app embedded inside Roomie, so that User does not need to leave Roomie to control other home aspects (lights, climate,etc). The array of buttons, say of a set top box, are replaced by ROON GUI formatted onto the Roomie so that you have a more seamless user experience.

1 Like

Yep, it’s software. Just like PLEX…

Having the ability to use Roon inside Roomie similar to PLEX would as armenmeg states, provide a more seamless experience.

My Trinnov AVP, which is natively supported by Roomie, is one endpoint device that supports the Roon protocol. I use my theater for listening to Dolby ATMOS and other immersive formats that I can stream to my Trinnov using Roon. To do this, I simply have an activity called Listen To Roon. It turns on the Trinnov and my amps plus a few reading lights and it sets the Trinnov input to Roon. I then fire up the Roon control app on the same iPad. From Roon app I can choose what music on my NAS or from streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal that I want to listen to, and I can control the volume from the Roon app as well.

When I’m done listening, I stop the music stream from Roon and I hop back over to the Roomie app to power down everything or switch to one of the video based activities.

I’m not sure what is wrong with this scenario? Once my system is powered on, I don’t need Roomie again until I want to power the system off. I use the Roon native control app for everything else. I’ve never seen any APIs published for Roon, so for Roomie to do anything, they’d need to work directly with Roon. I’m not that familiar with Control4 or Crestron, so I don’t know if any other control systems have attempted or delivered tight integration with Roon, and, if so, how they did it.

It doesn’t make sense to me for Roomie to attempt to become a Roon control app, when Roon offers a very good app already. Plus their app is part of a 3-part system - control app, endpoint, and server. So when Roon releases new server code, there is often a new version of the control app. This would require Roomie to be constantly chasing the Roon release process, which is fairly frequent (at least monthly, it seems).

it would be nice to be able to set up some presets in Roomie to select e.g. radio stations or playlists of Roon. Basic commands such as „play“, „pause“ „skip“ etc.