There are very clearly two schools of thought here (this subject has been discussed before).
I’m with the OP. I’d prefer Roon to do it all.
I don’t think everyone’s into the idea of different packages for tagging and ripping and playing. I’m not very OCD on ripping & tagging. Would prefer to just let Roon do it and auto-import and then all I’d need running is Roon with a cd drive plugged into my Mac. As it is it’s a bit of a faff, and that’s just for me - others using the system wouldn’t bother and would get me to do it. IMO that’s a lost market…
@Markus_Wedel
Yes, I’m knowing and using them. But they are incommodious and I saw the functionality of the mentioned Burmester musiccenter. This device does it all: Only insert a CD and the device ask for playing or ripping. Ripping and tagging and data Management …
And - by the way - has a implemented direct link to the download Portal HiResaudio.
I’m torn between the two, but on balance I go with @Markus_Wedel - keep Roon focused. These days, it’s rare that I buy a CD, I’ll buy a download far more often, so my dbPoweramp is usually sitting in the corner twiddling its thumbs. Still, if I buy a Qobuz download, the first thing I do is to fire up dbPoweramp to correct the usually horrendous metadata that Qobuz stuffs in their downloads…
Yeah, it’s hard to argue against anything - both sides are equally valid.
That said I think Roons user base at the moment is quite technical. No issue with that, I fit the criteria too. But I’ve got friends that have high-end kit and are music professionals of some kind, and Roon in its current iteration is a step too far for them. Even if you’re into hifi, jobs and families eat time. So many of them go for Sonos or just abandon their CD collections and stream from iTunes. Why? Because it’s quick and easy.
Making Roon easy, and do everything*, would attract that crowd as well as the more technicaly minded ones with surplus time to spend on this stuff. As it is, when I explain how Roon works, what you need to setup, ripping, loading on music etc, cost - I sense some glazing over.
But Roon know their target audience so am sure they will make the product fit the market as best they see fit.
My last music server before I updated to a Roon-ready (Musica Pristina) server, DID have integrated ripping, so I have experienced both ways of ripping. I don’t find separate ripping much of a hassle, and in fact, it allows me to listen to Roon music while I concurrently am ripping to my local drive, after which I push the files to my music-specific USB HDD. I have better control of the ripping process that way.
One of the most frustrating experience is when Roon fails to identify an album. If Roon had a ripping function, the probability of this happening will decrease. And, Roon would know which albums lack metadata, so they can focus their efforts.
[quote=“steveoat87, post:28, topic:4487”]
Roon would know which albums lack metadata, so they can focus their efforts.
[/quote]Pretty sure they can easily ascertain this already across the entire user population.
I tend towards the keep them separate camp. I rip using db Poweramp on a Windows box that doesn’t have anything Roon related running on it. If Roon did decide to add CD ripping, then I’d say make it an optional module. Better yet, instead of reinventing the wheel, white label one of the existing rippers that runs on Windows and Mac and has AccurateRip support. All the ripper needs to do is map the output to a Roon Watched or Organized folder. If metadata is an issue, then add a feature to Roon that allows you to overwrite / update existing tags on import.
Its about modularity.
Everyone has access to fast multi-tasking computers with a wide choice of ripper and metadata tag programs. What advantage would ripping or tagging in Roon bring that we can’t have with external programs ? How much is that advantage worth in terms of lost development opportunity for other features in Roon ?
The answer to the first question always feels very slight. The metadata change for dbPoweramp doesn’t change anything for me. If dbPoweramp can’t recognise an album then I just give it the album name and artist. If Roon identifies the album, cool. If Roon doesn’t identify it (happens a lot with Australian bands) then I use mp3tag to insert track names and numbers. Now there might be more albums that dbPoweramp doesn’t recognise but Roon does. No problem.
As to the second question, just ask yourselves “How long would I want to wait for a good mobile Roon solution in order for ripping to be included in Roon ?”. The answer is no long. Never. I don’t want the devs to even think about ripping until a mobile solution is in hand.
And don’t start thinking that including ripping into Roon would be easy or quick. Sure, it’s been done before and it’s not impossible. But it would be a significant development effort taking many months of cross platform development and testing.
And when a mobile solution is in hand there will probably be something else I would want before ripping, its that far down the list for me.
A core function, I think, should be to get music INTO the system.
I still have my Sooloos and my family will use only that. Why? They don’t know how to rip their CD’s into Roon. I’ve shown them, yes, but to little avail. Acceptance beyond our audiophile community will be much more limited without this ability, certainly in my household.
Importing downloaded files is a bit trickier, but that too is desirable to me.
I think a music server should be able to import a CD. We rarely have a PC connected to the home network now (with the exception of the Roon box).
iPads now carry the day for 90%-95% of our needs at home, so having Roon import music would be a matter of: sticking a CD in the drive.
The current method involves (for us) getting a Mac laptop out, starting it up and connecting it to the home (rather than work) network, ripping the disk (after plugging in an external CD-ROM drive), then copying the music having logged into the Roon box
Use XLD to rip CDs (AIFF), Add album art, etc. I could use iTunes to rip with satisfactory results; XLD seems to be better at matching album art and track names to the CD. XLD gives both FreeDB and MusicBrainz results.
I rip to a separate folder hierarchy eg: Music/Artist/Album/Disc 1(if any)/
I use iTunes to manage my library (except for DSD, FLAC, HiRes files which are in another folder hierarchy). iTunes is set to move the album into the iTunes managed library.
I use iTunes’ Add To Library command to add the album to the iTunes library. Then I inspect the result. If there’s any issues with metadata or with multi-CD albums, etc., I will either edit in iTunes or use an app called TagEditor to straighten up.
Since I’m adding the rip directly to my iTunes library, it’s available in Roon just a few seconds later. Roon identifies the album correctly 98% of the time. If different album art appears or the tracks don’t match up, I first revisit the album using TagEditor and/or iTunes to look for glitches. If all is okay I will either use what Roon displays or edit how Roon displays the album art and tracks.
I have basically the same workflow except that I rip to Apple Lossless (ALAC). I still use iTunes because I need to copy music to my old iPod and my iPhone (using the Smart Playlists feature).
I ripped the artists alphabet A thru C in my collection using ALAC. Then I discovered that a lot of DACs/DAPs didn’t spec that they played the ALAC format. So I did a WTH and went with AIFF. I hear no difference between ALAC & AIFF (or for that matter FLAC) but I just wanted the maximum compatibility with the DACs/DAPs available on the market. At some point I will probably go back and re-rip the CDs A-C to AIFF.
I know AIFF uses up a lot more disk space than ALAC but I felt the tradeoff was okay at the time. ( I wonder how if the file size affects throughput when playing the file through ethernet or wifi.)
Since the only other player I have is iTunes (with BitPerfect) I want to maintain compatibility with iTunes both on OS and iOS.
I agree. I am very pleased with dbpa for ripping and mp3tag for additional tagging (yes it does FLAC too). All in one programs typically disappoint me. I want a high quality server with endpoints. I already have high quality ripping.
