Downgrading

Downgrading between Roon 2.0 and Roon 1.8 is temporarily supported as we transition to Roon 2.0.
Please see our 1.8 <-> 2.0 Migration Guide for more details!

As a general rule, we do not make older versions of Roon available for download. We also strongly suggest against downgrading your installation if you have an older installer or version around.

While we understand the desire to downgrade in certain cases, it’s worth remembering that Roon is a service, and our users don’t pay for any specific upgrade or version. More importantly, downgrading can cause significant compatibility or stability issues, including:

Database Incompatibility

As each version of Roon is released, the internal composition of the database changes, as new functionality is added, and old functionality is migrated into new formats, or deprecated. Our team does extensive testing to ensure these changes are safe and stable, so that each new version of Roon installs smoothly across our entire customer base, whether they started using Roon last week, or years ago.

This testing ensures older databases migrate successfully to the new format, and occasionally we do find issues during this testing that we make sure are resolved before the release goes live.

Not only is no comparable testing is done for the “downgrading” process, there is no migration procedure in place for moving back in time. Database changes can happen on both “minor” and “major” releases, and in general. If you load a current database with an older version of Roon, it can cause Roon to fail to load, or in some cases can actually corrupt the database.

If you corrupt your database by downgrading, we will not be able to help.

Remote Incompatibility

Roon uses custom-made communication protocols when Remotes talk to your server. These protocols are updated on a semi-regular basis as we improve Roon’s performance and fix connectivity bugs.

Because these communication protocols can change, it’s important that all devices update in sync -- this is one of the reasons that new Roon releases go live for all platforms at the same time. Downgrading Roon Server, Remote, or Zone runs the risk of connectivity issues, as nearly all internal testing is done with matched versions.

Additionally, if incompatibility issues arise, some platforms (such as iOS) will not be able to install old versions, heightening the risk of remote incompatibility issues.

Cloud Incompatibility

All Roon software is in regular communication with our cloud services, as metadata is updated, license status is confirmed, and diagnostic information is tracked. When changes are made to the cloud, this is done in close coordination with our server and Remote releases, to ensure all Roon software is running the same communication protocols.

By downgrading some or all of the software on your devices, you run the risk of communication issues with our cloud services, as we do not do any testing of mismatched software versions outside of the real-world scenarios that can occur when new cloud services are deployed, or when a software update is released.

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