Doing a Roon trial after @rcrackley brought it to my attention, again.

Quick Day 1 notes:

  • I like that it shows listening charts based on time not tracks
  • Some parts of the system seem to favor albums, and others tracks, and I can’t figure out the design principle yet
  • Scrobbling seems to work ok, though there are some mismatches due to the “enhancement” they do to artist/title
  • Arc is supposed to work off-network, but looks like it doesn’t without some extra networking work (similar to Plex)
  • However, Roon may handle scrobbling better on Arc downloads than PlexAmp downloads (i.e. counting them when it reconnects). I haven’t 100% verified this, yet (For PlexAmp, you have to trick it by playing from a playlist that you happen to have downloaded, instead of playing the download, and then it will sync on reconnect)
  • Genre choices are little interesting at times, but it seems things may at least get multiple genres? Not sure on that, either.
  • It’s not clear how tagging works or what it adds aside from the other options
  • A little lack of clarity around how library is managed when you have some local files and some streaming tracks (e.g. Tidal) that are related, or when you have incomplete albums

So far, not at all worth the 3x (monthly) to 7x (lifetime) cost increase over Plex/PlexAmp (especially considering you get many other functions with Plex unrelated to music, as well as a discount on your Tidal monthly subscription).