Ok… Starting to get pissed about the utter silence from Roon folk on this topic…
I would also like to request this.
Even if it is just being able to automate the crosstalk dsp on albums with hard panning such as jazz albums or the beatles.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I’d be happy for per album DSP to be honest, but anything like this would be superb.
So I know people will probably shoot me down for wanting to mess with what’s been recorded etc, but John Coltrane’s Blue Train has always for me at least lacked something in the bottom end. I have a Rega amp and Dac going through KEF LS50 passives and the bass is pretty substantial for how small these speakers are. Play Lorde’s debut album through these and they present the low end incredibly well, (obviously not as robust as a floor stander, but no slouch)
Back to Coltrane, maybe it’s the era of recording, or many other factors but I never got that low end, especially from the double bass and thought I needed a bit more bass extension to reveal it, but using DSP to add some gain around the 120 hz freq made it sound kind of how I wished it would sound. This was a total revelation which led me to this thread because per album DSP would be truly brilliant. To be honest I don’t think I’d use it all the time, but on certain albums it could help, especially older material.
In the end music should be how you want it to be, and although I am all for fidelity and truth to the recorded medium, a little DSP to help something sound better to you the listener as a personal preference can’t be all bad. Just so long as you do it in the privacy of your own home
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Consider the following cases:
1- Just about every 80’s album requires a bass boost
2- All Rihanna albums requires a spot of high frequency roll-off
The list goes on and on…
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Re 1 Agreed but that’s probably why there are so many remastered CD’s from that time. It was nascent tech and I know a few of my albums (Icicle Works Debut, Prefab Sprout Steve McQueen, Lloyd Cole) have been upgraded with remasters that sound amazing.
Also my KEF’s at low ish volume don’t push out a good enough bass response so need a little help.
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Bumping this since I care a lot about this.
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Please add this now! At least the ability to trigger a pre defined de emphasis dsp!
Bumping again cuz I really really care about this…
Realy like this sugestion…support it fully
Bumping this… I wish the Roon team would chip in…
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Bumping this again… I think this is one of those niches that would differentiate Roon tremendously from any other music playback/library management system out there.
Since Roon has track-associated additive data (ie the tags one can add), this is almost a no-brainer I think.
I understand the complexity that might arise from the fact that the current DSP system is probably endpoint-based and applied (ie I imagine there’s no overall DSP applicable to all endpoints currently implementable in the architecture).
But then again, having an overall DSP that is track associated and is applied “first” - rather than trying to convolute possibly two DSPs - would be a solution I would be supportive of.
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Maybe this and the request for multi-zone DSP are very similar architecturally?
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I would support such a feature if supported with genre tags. While Roon has a complex systems of genre tags which work for some, I use primarily my own genre and other tags whenever possible. The specific genre tag could be a good method to assign DSP settings on track/album import. Settings such as both pre-emphasis and HDCD settings could be detected on import as well as others. A Roon supplied addition menu to apply user and/or suggested Roon settings could be added. I’m not sure how the settings might conflict with any current user settings–so it would be a solution requiring some thought–but it could still be elegant.
Regarding genre tag specifically, sorting/filtering would be nice, so individuals with large collections could wade through their collections more easily (I have multiple duplicates of albums where only one sounds the best). Using the genre tag and being able to filter the following would be a powerful option:
- BM: Best Master
- Classical: Classical
- Soft Rock: Soft Rock
- Electronic: Electronic
- PRE: Pre-Emphasis
- HDCD: HDCD
The HDCD and pre-emphasis are problems requiring and elegant solution and IMO a software solution vs. having to purchase the every decreasingly available hardware. I suspect the solution would add quite a bit of value to the power (and value) to users with large music collections. I view the Roon software as an open collaboration between a commercial venture and my own music collection data system with the ability of both parties to grow and develop a better music system and listening experience.
So, my 2 cents and first post.
Best…
For me that would be a workaround. My corrections are less genre specific. Mostly my corrections depends on the sound of the album. More specific on the quality of the mastering that depends on the quality of the studio equipment and the abilities of the sound engineer. Best example: Alan Parson’s Mastering of Pink Floyd. Sorry for that.
Best
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Indeed. As I mentioned elsewhere, I actually find many 80’s pop albums need some bass boost. So I would use the feature to create a profile “80s Pop” and associate that with 80s albums that need a bass boost - not necessarily all of them.
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Note: in general the number of tags supports by flac is exceeded by user needs–especially for classical music. Long debates have ensued over time. One method of adding information to music files is by using the genre (and album name) tag. See above initial post. Advance users have historically used a wide variety of workarounds to gain additional information about their music files. Roon generally allows users to display and filter a lot of data. File name and genre tag examples for Steely Dan below.
1976 - The Royal Scam [CD][1986 MCA {Roger Nichols uncredited}][JVC Arial, MCAD-37044-U2E 11][JP for US]
BM; Classic Rock; Soft Rock; Pop; CD
1977 - Aja [CD][1985 MCA {Steve Hoffman clone}][JVC Arial, MCAD-37214-T5E 21][JP for US]
BM; Classic Rock; Soft Rock; Pop; CD
Note BM in genre tag is Best Master which I can already filter in Roon–which (I believe) covers your examples.
Understood. However, I am not suggesting any of this EQ info be saved with files at all. Roon does not touch your files, any additional tags you add exist only in the Roon db. So there’s no need to find a place for such EQ or conform to a datatype for such a place since it only exists in the Roon db, and there the Roon team can define whatever they please.
I would also add that this is one of those use cases that fits like a glove to the Roon concept of metadata and would be extremely hard for other software to replicate for many reasons, a few being:
1- They don’t have a parallel database with all of the info - Audirvana/JRiver/etc rely exclusively on file-based data (to my knowledge)
2- If AudioUnits are used to produce EQ (as is the case with Audirvana), then again, controlling the plugin settings dynamically is probably impossible.
The fact that Roon has both a database and a DSP engine built-in is a huge strategic advantage in this regard, and an important differentiator in my opinion.
I do understand that the architecture of DSP looks to be tied to the endpoint in some regard, and this is ok. But creating a higher DSP layer should be possible in my opinion, and would allow for this and some other applications such as DSP to a grouped set.
My suggestion is to use the genre tag set as file metadata by users see (Roon would not alter the user data): https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Tagging
Roon already has the ability to read and filter on the user genre tag. My suggestion is for Roon to use the user tag to apply additional settings for albums and or tracks. My best guess is that it would be possible.
Note my thoughts are ‘out of the box’ but are based on analyzing and developing back-end data and databases for software since PCs came out in the eighties. Just my to cents… I’m not sure of the flexible of the Roon back-end, but as I noted the above it could be an elegant solution for handling both pre-emphasis and HDCDs, since the user tags are read on album import. Once Roon and/or the user can isolate the specific file/album additional information it can define the link to however it wants to use and play the data.
Perhaps you are suggesting a different and valid approach, what I’m suggesting is a paradigm shift allowing users to provide Roon additional atypical data on file import. Pre-emphasis and HDCDs are a low percentage of all CDs made, but represent some of the best mastered albums of the artist pressings available. The Roon users relying mostly on streaming may be less concerned about sound quality. I’m not sure I have anything else to add… 
This is completely orthogonal to the topic of this thread, which is to allow by-track DSP settings.
You could achieve your goal by selecting with the appropriate tag and then applying what is discussed here, but please don’t sidetrack the topic of this thread.
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