Streaming Content Preferences

Streaming Content Preferences

Roon makes it easy to navigate across tens of millions of albums and tracks, even when multiple versions of the same album are available – the Versions tab lets you browse different formats and sources, across multiple streaming services and your library.


If you have multiple versions of an album inside your library, you can select a “primary version” for Roon to prefer. Outside your library, Valence uses its understanding of what you’ve listened to and what you’ve collected to help you find the highest quality releases.


But “highest quality” can be subjective, so we've made changes that provide more customization in this area. Streaming Content Preferences settings allow you to tell Roon what kind of content you favor. To adjust your preference settings go to Settings>General. 

What It Does

Streaming Content Preferences appear on the General tab of Settings influencing non-library content across:


  • Radio 

  • Search

  • Recommendation Features (New Releases For You, In Their Prime, Collaborators, Performing The Music Of, etc.)

  • Discography 

  • Daily Mixes 

  • Roon Playlists


These settings control…


  • …whether you prefer TIDAL or Qobuz content when you have multiple streaming services enabled.

  • …whether you prefer edited “clean” versions or “explicit” versions when both are available.

  • …how MQA content is ranked against CD-quality and “Hi-Res” content.


What It Doesn’t Do

Apply to library content 

Streaming Content Preferences don’t affect library content. For tracks and albums in your library, these streaming preferences will not be considered – you’ll simply get the Primary Version from your library.

Block or hide content 

These are preferences, meaning they tell Roon what you would prefer when multiple choices are available – they do not “block” content. If you choose “Prefer TIDAL” and search for an album that’s only available on Qobuz, you’ll still get a Qobuz result - because the content isn't available on TIDAL.


This applies across all functionality listed above. Roon may recommend and display content that doesn't match your preference settings if it's the only version available.


For example:
  1. Perhaps you've chosen Prefer anything else over MQA, if the content was only released in MQA format we'll display the available version, in MQA.
  2. Let's say you're toggled on Prefer edited versions ("Clean") because there's little ears in house. If Snoop Dogg 'don't play that, homie' you'll see, and hear, the explicit version.

Remember: Streaming Content Preferences are only applied when multiple versions of a given piece of content are available. If the only choice is vanilla, you get vanilla.

How It Works 

When you use Roon with a streaming service, you’ll often have access to many different versions of a given album or track. For content in your library, Roon will always default to the Primary Edition – this always defaults to highest quality, and users can select a different version based on their preferences. 


For content outside your library, we’ve now added three options:


Streaming Service preference

Choose whether Roon should prefer TIDAL or Qobuz when you’re logged into both and content is available from both services. If left unchanged, Roon will select the highest quality version across both services 


Explicit content preference 

Choose whether Roon should prioritize edited “clean” versions. By default Roon will prefer unedited or “explicit” versions.


Note that this does not block access to explicit content or function as “parental controls”. This option controls which content is preferred in cases when both edited and explicit content are available. 


MQA preference 

Some users would prefer to default to MQA whenever available, while others would prefer Roon only present MQA content if no other versions are available. This setting determines how Roon will classify MQA content when multiple versions of an album or track are available.