 From time to time I see comments on Rune that show that person has not understood or even used Rune. Furthermore, Rune has grown over the years, many features have been added, so allow me to give you nine reasons why I love Rune and two why some don't. Let me start by making excuses for my voice. I have a call so bear with me. Learn about this video. I didn't make it to convince you to buy into Rune. I have no financial or other interest in Rune Labs. To keep me independent, I even bought a lifetime subscription while I was granted a journalist account. But I see unfair negative comments on Rune passing through the web. I can only guess at the reason. Money might be one, or rather the commentators lack of it. There are also a few comments I do understand. If you have stored your music in a map structure on a hard disk that covers your way of thinking and have used that for dunky years, all other systems would fail. Or if you just want a background music from a playlist. But if you are interested in music and the background of it and want to learn new styles or artists, there is nothing better than Rune as far as I am concerned. It even improves year after year. For this video Rune 2.0 is used. Let me start with number 1. Rune indexes the music on your computer, NAS or BOLD and adds metadata to it for almost all albums. And if, in the unlikely event, no metadata is available from the sources Rune uses, the metadata in the music file is used. But you can set your preferences so that the metadata in the music files are always preferred. If the music file does not contain metadata, you can search for the right metadata, have added it automatically or added manually. And it's more versatile than most jukebox programs. For instance, you can have more than one primary artist. This is more appreciated by lovers of classical and jazz music than rock lovers. Illustrated. The Aida Opera by Ferdi, shown here, is played by the orchestra della Teatro alla Scala di Milano and conducted by Claudio Abado. Already two main artists. Unless you combine it to Claudio Abado and the orchestra del Teatro al Scala di Milano. This way it's more difficult to find all the work Abado did with other orchestras, another work the orchestra did with other directors. But as you can see, there's a long list of singers and a choir, including their director, mentioned too. The nice thing about Rune is that these can also be mentioned and automatically linked to their own page. The very famous name here is Placido Domingo. Just tap on the name and you're on his page. Which brings you to number two, backgrounds. Here you see a portrait of the man, an overview of his popular works, the albums in my library and so on. In between here is text describing the man. As you might see, this text is in Dutch, because that is what I have said. It comes from the Dutch Wikipedia page. If I tap on the text, it falls out and I can select the English Wikipedia. Remarkable here is that the links in the text differ from those in Wikipedia. Here only links that are relevant in Rune are shown. There is a mention of John Denver that is linked and brings you directly to Denver's page. And the link to the three tenors brings you there. Note here again the point I made in my first item. The three tenors as artists is also named next to their names of the three tenors individually and the director. And these again are linked to their own pages. The bios are not limited to English and Dutch, as you can see in the right column. French, German, Japanese, Russian I think, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Norwegian, one of the two Chinese languages and the Tivo artist biographies are switched on, but there are even more. The same goes for albums, like for instance with the Cirque du Soleil production Love. Let me switch to English. That is a compilation of Beatles tracks made by Giles Martin, which is the son of George Martin, often called the fifth Beatles. Again there is what to tell about this project. The same goes for composers. Here is Bela Bartok, again with all there is to know about him, his compositions and albums that contain his work. It is quite easy to find music by Miley Cyrus in any jukebox program. It's already more difficult if you don't remember the first name. Not all programs let you search on family name only. Typing Proby easily brings you to PJ Proby, who was popular in the 60s. What if the artist is also a composer? Do you need to search in composers or artists? You can do both or do a general search. Let's do a general search, to Fazal Say, a very fine Turkish pianist and composer, by entering Say. Say is easily found and both his compositions and discography are listed. But what if you want to know what albums Doug Sax has produced with Frank Zappa in the 60s? Easy. You go to albums, start focus, select 1960s on the release dates, select Doug Sax for production, and Frank Zappa for performer. There appears to be just one album in my collection, absolutely free. Want to see the album Zappa has produced by anyone but Sax? Just tap the Doug Sax label again and the label becomes red and now the plus becomes a minus. Browsing to the right, you can see that all seven albums are in flag of 44.1 kHz and stereo in my collection. Another example, searching choral works. In focus go to genres, tap few more, tap classical, and you'll see subcategories, amongst them choral, having 109 albums. Tap it and you immediately see what music is available. If you then want to see Handel's choir work, just tap Handel in Composers and you have the selection immediately. And if you want to keep this selection, tap the bookmark menu and save it under a name like Handel Choral Works. Most streamers and due book programs nowadays let you play music from streaming services. In most cases it's the app of the streaming service that is started from within the app or due books program you are using. With Rune, it is the Rune server that has access to Tidal and Cobus. Let me show you that with Tidal. All the promotional categories are available as in Tidal's own app. But if you want to see the playlist I made in Tidal, I go to playlist in the Rune menu. There, those with the Tidal logo behind them are the ones I made on Tidal. Using the focus function again, I can see what albums in my catalog are not on my hard disk but are played from Tidal when selected. I start focus again, scroll to the right to storage locations and select Tidal Library. As you can see I have 1291 albums from Tidal added to my catalog. Let's look for Hotel California by the Eagles and open it. The tab tracks is selected but I want to know what versions I have so I tap the version tab. As you now can see I have the 192 kHz MQA version, the 192 kHz 24 bit version from HD tracks, the Japan SHD remaster, the 44.1 kHz Japan remaster in my catalog. And there are many more versions on Tidal and Cobus that I can add to my catalog or play directly without adding. Now why would I want to do that? Let's go to Animals by Pink Floyd and again look at the versions. I already own the original CD and the 2007 remaster but the 2018 remix is very good so I added the 192 kHz Cobus and the 190 kHz MQA from Tidal to my catalog. I have not made a decision on what version sounds best on my set of 1A but the one that sounds best is going to be the primary version. That doesn't mean I have to remove the others from my system or always have to choose between them. They remain in versions and I can also choose another release if I like. There is no need to use the Tidal or Cobus app and search for animals again. It's all there in one user interface. This is made possible by Tidal and Cobus by opening their system to room with a so called application program interface, API for short. Other streaming services don't offer this and thus cannot be supported by room this way. Speed has always been a major design goal of room. Therefore it's strongly advised to have room installed on the system disk being a SSD. That can be a Windows computer, a Mac, a Linux x64 computer, a QNAPS x64 NAS or a Synology x64 NAS. Alternatively you can buy ready to play room nucleus or use a compatible Intel NUC computer and have it run room ROG on an SSD, which is almost equal to the Nucleus functionality. That way the database can be very fast. But it's not the SSD alone, it's the software architecture that is optimized. You must have noticed now how fast room was in the examples in this video. It was running on an Intel NUC i7 and had indexed 11,441 albums. Roon advises an i3 processor for up to 10,000 albums. I would rather advise an i5 from 5,000 albums and an i7 from 10,000 albums upwards. Perhaps I should have named this number one, for there are now so many manufacturers that include the Roon render function. Roon calls it Roon Ready. There's only a limited number of manufacturers that do not include Roon Readiness. A large advantage is that Roon doesn't claim all streaming functionality. Aurelic products have their own Lightning DS streaming system, but also are Roon Ready. Blue Sound is Roon Ready next to its own Blue OS. More and more manufacturers find it convenient not having to develop their own streaming software. And it's across all price categories, from raspberry pi running rupee to a 100,000 euros costing DCS Vivaldi 1 Apex stack and everything in between. Arkham, Blue Sound, 1000 Wilkins, Cambridge Audio, Diviolet, Dynordio, Grim Audio, Hegel, Kev, Lin, Marans, Marc-Elevenson, McIntosh, MolaMola, NAD, Name, New Prime, Primer, Project, Silent Angel and many more. Furthermore Roon can also play back over Airplay, Google Chromecast, Sonos and Squeezebox renderers. Chances you have recent hardware that can not be used by Roon is rather slim. There has been requests for a number of years for a portable version of Roon. Last year Roon introduced Ark that runs on iOS and Android. Just install the free Roon Ark app, log in which you use the name and password and after some syncing you can listen to all your music, including those from Tidal and Kobuse using this app. It works with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and thus is easy to integrate with many modern cars. The menu structure is largely the same as in the home version, as you can browse on albums, artists, tracks, composers, compositions and playlists. To see what is locally stored there is the downloads option. Each menu option you can be sorted on name, most played and album count. Like in Roon you can see the tracks, get info, credits and versions. As far as I can see all features that make Roon great can also be found in Roon Ark. After using it for a longer time, all kinds of personalizations make Roon your Roon. Settings, bookmarks, metadata corrections and of course all metadata that Roon collected for your music collection. Losing that brings a lot of work, tweaking and so on. Therefore Roon offers a scheduled backup of all this data to one or more locations on your computer or in your network. The music files are not backed up, you can do that with any backup program. And remember, one backup is no backup. I actually have four copies of my music files. One backup on my NAS, one on a hard disk and one off site. And then of course the copy I use to play music. Apart from that, there is the Roon database backup it makes automatically when set up. It is good practice to list not only the positives of a product but also the negatives. And probably some of you will mention the price as a negative, which I understand. Software is often considered as a product that should be almost free. But high quality software today requires either a subscription model or a significant buy in price. Think of Microsoft Office and Adobe programs that are available as subscription software. Roon costs $12.49 per month or $829.99 for a lifetime subscription. For some that will be a steep price, for others it's an afterthought on a 20k streamer. Do realize that you only need one subscription, even if you have ten stereos and three Roon Arc phones connected to the Roon server. And if you have a second house in the south of France, you can easily transfer the license from your first home when you're in France. Each piece of software has bugs, and that goes to Roon too. And if there are irritating bugs, they are usually fixed quickly. But since they serve a wide variety of hardware, used by a wide variety of people, that's obvious. Especially with network equipment, things can get rather complex nowadays, with all these Internet of Things devices. And even if the network is kept simple, domestic network equipment can be frustrating. I had a switch that, after getting a new modem, kept the old table of IP addresses, confusing equipment on the network. Powering that switch off and on again solved that, but localizing the problem took some effort. Trying to work with more albums than the hardware can handle is another factor. Or using computer hardware that is not supported. If you want a very stable system, buy the Roon Nucleus or Nucleus Plus, depending on the number of albums you have, or buy a supported version of the Intel Nuc computer and install Roon Rock. See the link in the description for more info. If you already have a computer you want to use, and if it complies to the Roon specifications, like an i3 processor and an SSD system drive, that will usually work fine. But if you build one yourself, be sure not to use generic drivers and so on. I have been using Roon for over 7 years now, with the server program running on several computers. Today I use a Headless i7 Intel Nuc with an external USB drive for the music files. Whenever possible Roon is used for equipment reviews, and I can't remember ever having problems with perhaps one or two exceptions that were fixed rapidly. Or were caused outside of Roon, like the switch problem. And if you have problems, there is an active community that can help you out. Which brings us to the end of this program. See you next week, Friday at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up, or link to this video on the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially, especially in these times. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you on the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.