When playing with the focus feature, I found out i still have 108 MP3 formatted albums in my library. I know there is an option to check per album if there is a better quality recording available - but is there a way to have Roon automatically choose the best quality available and overrule the worse version?
I want my MP3’s on my harddisk collection automatically replaced where available for -Tidal in my situation -Flac recordings; but I have also Flac recordings in my collection where Tidal has an MQA version, or even Tidal Flac albums where there is also an MQA version available?
One could even think if there are two flac versions, the remastered version, or the version with the highest dynamic range is to be preferred (but now I am asking a bit too much I am afraid)
Is this feature available, or is it possible to change my current collection in bulk to the best available version?
How to decide what the best version is? A loudness war damaged 96khz remaster, distorted and lossy mqa? Not easy to decide for a maschine.
For that Roon gives you the opportunity to set a version as primary. So you can decides what is the best version to you. For some people the new remaster version is better and for others it is nearly blasphemic to the original. So everybody should decide for themself.
I would hate it when Roon replaces my own rip of an album to a f.e. crappy mqa version. No serious music software should force me to a specific version of an album. That is my and only my decision.
And again. How should ‘better quality’ be defined? Replacing my well choosen local version with a loudness war damaged remastered hires version? Sorry, not for me!
For me, as @Judelow said, a good starting point is to have the option to replace MP3 for Flac, I would think this is undisputable always better than nothing.
The option with all belles and whistles would than be to be able to choose a better version, for example with some form of signing on the album page “there is a better version available, would you like to choose this one”; if yes - replace as standard in your library?
I agree if we are on flac level or better, you will end in a discussion you won’t be in, but I would like to be know my options.
Soundiiz doesn’t deliver a goed option for this; in my case it requires a ( overseeable) one of job to transfer my MP3’s to flac - probably on a rainy sunday or so.
And the third time! How can Roon detect if a version is ‘better’? There are many version with higher resolution but from a master that is the opposite of ‘better’ for many people even than others think it is ‘better’.
I already can see the posting war if Roon marked a mqa version ‘better’ than the pcm version or otherwise.
I did not say roon has to make the decision, roon should in my request give the option. Show an album is available ina better bitrate, or another configurable criterium. One can decide for themselves if for example the higher bitrate results in better soundquality. No, i do not want to state a higher bitrate is better, i know of some examples where that is not the case in my ears at least, so want to stay away from that discussion
+1 to the feature request for a global option so any mp3s are automatically replaced by any lossless format. If possible, I would want to be able to override which lossless (local or streaming) would be used on any particular song/album.
Eventually, it could logically evolve into some kind of hierarchy which is set globally, e.g.
When music is available in more than one format, play them in this order:
(default) Auto - Let Roon decide
(override) Manual:
FLAC Hires - Local
FLAC Hires - Qobuz
FLAC Hires - Tidal
MQA Hires - Tidal
FLAC CD-quality - Qobuz
MP3 - Local