Roon 1.8 brought a lot of innovations, especially a completely redesigned user interface. The fact that not everything went as smoothly as planned has been forgotten, at least for the most part, because Roon Labs LLC. continuously delivers update after update, now Roon 1.8 Build 778.
Roon 1.8 Build 778, another update is now available, which can be seen as a kind of supplement to the last major update of the software from Roon Labs LLC. Once again, bugs are to be eliminated and some inconsistencies are to be fixed, which occurred in the course of the completely redesigned user interface of the media management and multi-room audio streaming solution introduced with Roon 1.8.
The last few weeks have been extremely turbulent for the development team, according to the software company Roon Labs LLC, but this was of course to be expected. After all, with the complete redesign of the user interface, thousands of changes have been made, and even with the most intensive beta tests, it is not possible to foresee all the problems that arise when a solution is ultimately in daily use by thousands and thousands of users.
Not everything is actually a mistake…
The bottom line is that many things are not really a “bug”, but sometimes a new approach that is received positively by some users and negatively by others. All in all, the feedback on Roon 1.8 was very positive from the developers’ point of view, but there were also very good hints on how certain innovations or changes could disturb the way Roon is used by users.
So there was a lot of internal discussion, some things were found to be good, some things were revised, so that in the end a “round” result can be achieved for the users.
Roon 1.8 Build 778 focuses on the user interface
The new update available with Roon 1.8 Build 778 is thus one that once again eliminates one or the other error that was still found in the software, but for the most part makes corrections and optimisations to the user interface, and does so in the most diverse places.
The list of innovations is indeed immensely long, so that a closer look at the individual points would go far beyond the scope of this article. However, it clearly shows that Roon Labs LLC. is really thinking a lot about how to optimise the user experience. This also means that they are self-critically revising one or the other new approach and returning to the tried and tested.
New and restored functionality
- Focus supports toggling of “Match All” and “Match Any” (AND / OR) and excluding of criteria on Artist, Album and Composition pages
- Configurable text size on desktop platforms (Large and Very Large)
- “More Covers and Photos” option is now available
- Recording counts are now shown on the album page
(library counts can be enabled in Settings) - Two recommendation featuresnow support “In library” mode
- Artist screen: Top Tracks In Library
- Album screen: Albums In My Library
- Improved Artist page behavior for classical composers who are also performers (Leonard Bernstein, etc)
- Search history is maintained between runs of the app
- Easier access to Tags focus in browsers
Bug fixes and improvements
Album Page:
- Multipart compositions are indented
- Fixed layout of ‘This album’ overlay
- Fixed centering of images in Image viewer
- Updated treatment of Album type info
- Fixed missing release date information when available
- Disc dropdown and disc numbering persists when using focus
- Fixed cases where tags and playlists links split across rows
- Fixed crash when clicking track info text on Album page
Focus:
- Better layout when many items are focused on mobile
- Fixed visibility of discs selector for non-library albums
- Scroll position doesn’t persist between pages
- Fixed cases where “View More’ link was hidden
- Dialogs don’t dismiss when criteria is selected and have proper loading states
- Cleaned up Storage criteria
- Release date fixes for missing decades
- Fixed incorrect focus counts
- Pinning takes effect immediately
- Layout fixes in import date heatmap
- Fixed cases where header of multipart composition would count as a track
Mobile:
- Updated design of Search input box
- Updated layout on Collaborators recommendation, Zone Settings dialog, Live Radio header, Qobuz and TIDAL browsers, and Compositions browser
- Fixed missing navigation controls on Now Playing in some languages
- Restored info tab to Composition page
- Radio Feedback popup restored
- Fixed cropped ‘Delete’ button on Selection bar
- Playing indicator restored on playlist page
- Fixed missing iconography in search history on dark theme
Live Radio:
- Graphical cleanup on the Live Radio page
- Fixed treatment of Ad-Free and Explicit on Live radio
Artist Page:
- Better behavior for composers when navigating via “View tracks in library” / “View albums in library” links
- Improved loading performance on Artist page
- Fixed issues hiding albums on Overview tab of Artist page
- “In Their Prime” – Fixed incorrect date and empty recommendations in certain cases
New Releases For You:
- Fixed issue dismissing albums
- Removed superfluous “More” link on Genre and Composer screens
- Fixed issues using Selection on tabbed View All screens (also fixed in Recent Activity)
Settings:
- Updated options on the General tab
- Cleaned up language selector and “hover” states
- Fixed bad CC0.1 link on About page
Composition page:
- Fixed empty entries in list of recordings
- All parts are played when playing a multi-part recording from the selection bar
Chromecast:
- Fixed gapless playback for Chromecast
- Improved buffering on slow networks.
Further detail improvements
- Resolved issues loading content from drives running ZFS filesystem
- Consistent behavior when pressing “X” in Search / Filter input fields
- Increased minimum size of search and other input boxes
- Improved UI engine’s memory management across all platforms
- Denoted user’s stars rating vs editorial
- Fixed missing albums on Discography tab in certain cases
- Fixed layout issues when sharing some artists / albums
- Fixed crash after reconnecting to the Core
- Genres can be selected
- Updated iconography for iTunes playlists
- Fixed pixelated borders on artist photos
- Genres/Artists: more compositions shown when fewer forms are present
- Track credits pop-up has fixed size when switching sorts
- Fixed icon alignment for tracks on many screens
- Fixed overlapping “private zone” icon
- Removed unnecessary dropdown if Play button has only one option
- Selections are cleared after tagging
- Virtual keyboard doesnt open when navigating back to a page with active text filtering
- Fixed behavior of TAB button in Editors
- Onboarding: fixed Qobuz ‘Forgot Password’ link
- Fixed display of incorrect lossy bitrate for TIDAL ACC tracks
- Fixed crash in case of selecting a track on lyrics popup
- Track credits pop-up has fixed size when switching sorts
- Fixed bad layout on the track grouping screen at some screen sizes
- Fixed UI glitches on certain types of NVIDIA GPUs running latest drivers
- Context menu cleanup on Now Playing screen
Getting to the point
Roon Labs LLC. once again proves that it reacts to customer feedback and implements solutions as quickly as possible. The completely new user interface introduced with Roon 1.8 generated positive feedback throughout, but some inconsistencies had to be eliminated, even if one or the other step had to be reversed and the tried and tested had to be relied on, as the latest update Roon 1.8 Build 778 now shows.
| Manufacturer: | Roon Labs LLC. |
| Distribution: | Roon Labs LLC. |
