Roon is my choice of digital audio platform not only for its intuitive interface, but it gives me access to my NAS music library as well as Tidal and Quboz accounts all in one beautifully designed place.

Now Roon is even better thanks to this latest free update taking it to version 1.7. Vālence, according to the press release, is a system built on a massive new cloud database, which uses machine learning algorithms to model the many dimensions of relatedness more deeply than ever before. Basically, as we, the users, use Roon to explore, collect, and listen to the music we love, Vālence will get to know us even better.

The first thing I noticed is the inclusion of Live Radio in the sidebar menu.

Not to be confused with Roon Radio, which kicks in once your selected album finishes and pulls up tracks from your combined library, Live Radio gives you access to over 1000 radio station streams.

Better still, Roon recognises where you are. For instance, I was offered the London-based talkSPORT2 alongside Planet Rock due to my musical taste.

In my Overview, there is another new feature. The 'New Releases for You' has been added in Roon 1.7 and sits under the 'Recently Added' feature strip.

As you can imagine, the New Releases for You goes beyond merely listing the latest releases. According to Roon, Vālence lets it show you the new releases you care about, based on your library and listening history. Furthermore, the more you use Roon, the better the 'New Releases' will get. Well, seeing Celine Dion in my list does give me some cause for concern for starters.

Additionally, there is what Roon calls Artist Play and Composer Play.

These new play options use Vālence to pick a selection of an artist or composer's best music by determining their "heyday" periods. It appears that this is compiled by finding the artist's most popular albums based on Roon users' listening history, and digging deep to find lesser-known gems. That is another aspect of Roon that I really like - music discovery - and it looks like it might have got even better.

One sticking point for many digital players or platforms is organising classical and orchestral pieces. Roon now supports multi-level compositions, which are particularly useful for opera where many compositions include Acts in addition to parts. When this data is available from Roon's metadata providers, it will now be correctly displayed on the Album Details page.

Naturally, these are just the big-ticket items. There is also better metadata, streaming quality options for both Qobuz and Tidal, improved text design, new room icons, improved search performance, and so on. Head over to the Roon Community for full details.