I want to add a cd to Roon Library. I would prefer not to go through iTunes. How do I do it?
HI,
You need a CD ripping program … I use dBPoweamp and rip to FLAC, but ALAC is also good … both are lossless formats that support imbedded metadata.
Have a look in the Roon Knowledge Base for suggestions on folder and file naming conventions.
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Rip the CD using a program like dBpoweramp. I use FLAC file format and direct the output to a folder on my desktop called Rips with Artist/Album folders. I do any file name or tag editing or store a cover pic (for rare albums) in the Rips folder. Then move the Artist/Album folders to my Roon music folder.
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An option to Audio CD Ripping in Windows: XRECODE ( https://xrecode.com/). Pretty indie but, at least in my personal experience, works ok and is fast (x64 and multithread). May be don´t have all all options of dBPoweamp, don´t know, but is much cheaper and , along the years -I bought it loooong time ago-, updated quite often.
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XRecode [https://xrecode.com] is also my favourite app to convert CDs and any music files to FLAC (or whatever format you prefer). I also use XRecode to convert ISOs to DSD and/or FLACs. It’s fast, reliable, and cheap.
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Thanks for tip. What lossless level do you encode at and is there a bit to bit setting?Do you have any other tips for getting the best file. I appreciate your help.
The “levels” in FLAC are not related to LOSSLESS. (They are not at all the same as, say, mp3 at 128kbs, 192kbs, 256kbs, etc.) All FLAC files are bit perfect lossless back to the CD (assuming no error in the actual ripping of course). The settings (0-8) are related to file size. 8 is smaller. It takes a bit more time to ENCODE to the smaller size, but this is a one-time thing. The DECODING (playback) of the FLAC file takes approximately the same processing power whether 0 or 8. I personally use “5” as the encoding level. It is a good tradeoff between speed of encoding and size of file.
dbpoweramp uses ACCURATERIP and does secure ripping. ACCURATERIP is nice, because if your CD is in the database, you get confirmation that your rip of your CD matches the rips of that CD by others. No better confirmation of a bitperfect rip than this match.
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On Windows you can run multiple instances of Exact Audio Copy based on how many drives you connect. I ripped about 1500 CDs last winter using the internal and an old external CD-ROM. It was rather efficient and quite fun too as a preface to having such easy access to things via Roon.
I use level 5 like garym. It’s the default and works fine for me.
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That works nicely. one can start multiple instances of dbpa on a computer as well.
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