What streamer software do you use?

[struth]

At moment I just stream from my Hdd. was considering another service in future though. Not really sure I would get my money's worth out of it as I now use cd and vinyl mostly and have a biggish library. Going to keep it in mind though and maybe take the free trial along with a tidal one. Need to wait finances improving though as I spent a lot lately on the speakers and got the car to get through another mot. I should get it for nowt after all these years lol

[Gazjam]

Does Roon replace LMS or integrate with it?

It replaces it, like LMS on steroids. Not free though but (to me) very much worth it.
Early version didn't do internet radio latest one does.

The Discover feature in Roon is becoming a favourite feature for me, presents a selection of Artists, genres, particular musicians or even record labels from your collection and lets you browse.
Rediscovered a lot of stuff I forgot I had this way.
* They do a 14 day free trial, check it out.

Had a try playing directly from a usb stick into the Oppo to the Dac?
Quite impressed sound wise ctually, though the interface is a bit cack.

[Gazjam]

I never left the Squeezebox fold.
It just works.
When I get around to playing with a Pi player it will be so that it runs on LMS.

Roon looks interesting, but addressing LMS via a web browser has a much more acceptable price tag (ie nothing).
Roon does appear to give a similar visual experience to the system Meridian used to make such a big deal about. Are the same developers involved?

The same Team Chris aye.

[Stratmangler]

The discovery thing Meridian had left an impression on me - it was well thought out.
Ultimately it depends on how well the software collates information, and more to the point, how much information there is on t'interweb about a certain artist, and how good that information is.

Here's one that might be interesting ....
Who worked with Hiromi, and also Steely Dan, Madonna, and John Scofield?
Does that kind of association come up?

On a similar vein, Scorpions, Judie Tzuke, and Jeff Beck?

[Spectral Morn]

J River 17 on one laptop, J River 18 on another.

[Yomanze]

I used to use J River, but find myself using a lot of TIDAL for music, Netflx / Amazon / iPlayer for video. I use a Windows silent PC into my TV with a wireless keyboard & mouse.

[lovejoy]

Another Roon user here.
Before Roon I used MinimServer too and I really liked it. Very configurable and you could have it sort your music exactly as you wanted it presented. It was also very light and efficient. Used my phone as a remote for selecting tunes and it never crashed or got annoying.

Roon was a big jump though. Yes, there's a hefty price tag to it, but I'd seriously recommend just trying the 14-day trial. They did an offer on lifetime subscriptions last year and I went for it and haven't looked back. I can't imagine using anything else now. I have 3 Raspberry Pis in 3 rooms and Roon is my central point for playing all of the music on my NAS, my Tidal subscription (and the interface for Tidal via Roon is far better than Tidal's own) or internet radio. It's absolutely seamless, very reliable, looks fantastic, it's a joy to use and yes, it's just like the Meridian Sooloos interface (same developers - Roon is a spin off of Sooloos).

The development is coming on in leaps and bounds too and they're very open to feature requests and very responsive to bug reports.

[Stratmangler]

Just how good is the Roon database?
Does it give supporting musicians, and if you clicked on one of those musicians does it link to other projects participated in?

For example, if you have the album "Elegant Gypsy" by Al Di Meola in your collection, you'll find a phenomenal musician playing bass, namely one Anthony Jackson.
If he's listed, and you click on his name, do you get a comprehensive list of other artists and albums he's played with?

What I'm interested in is whether you get proper sleeve notes and other associated artists.

[lovejoy]

For the largest part of my collection, yes you do - All musicians involved with clickable links to take you to their own page, their own releases and credits in other albums and if you've got a Tidal account then you can just go straight ahead and listen to whatever they have on there. I also love the fact that I can search by recording engineers and producers and get full lists of their stuff.

Sleeve notes though, no. At least not as yet. It's on the development roadmap but the sticking point seems to be in finding a data provider and the licensing that goes with it. The next step is having the ability to display the PDF liner notes that come with a lot of downloads.

[Gazjam]

Sure does Chris.
When playing an album you get the usual Now Playing info, but additionally theres a "credits" Tab which lists all the guys playing on the album....
...as well as Mastering Engineers, Producers, all of those guys.

Each name a clickable link to information about them, who,what,when, who they collaborated with....you name it.
If the album or artist is in your collection...yup, hyperlink to that too.

Ive 5000ish albums and Id say theres metadata easily for 90odd percent of it and the Roon guys are constantly improving it.
Can only get better and its only on V1.2

Its very very cool Chris, check it out.