Other programs are not Roon. It gives a minimum spec of what is required for a reason. Roons database is always active and very large due to the amount of metadata it gathers, and thus the program has largerd demands on the hardware it runds on, this is why SSD is a requisite or performance is hindered as you have discovered.
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They arenât the reasons for his performance issues though. It was the Windows 64/32 and older Intel graphic chips that was the issue, and that would have been the case even if heâd had an SSD fitted. SSD is the gold standard for Roon, but the difference between HDD and SSD performance would not explain the catastrophic issues he described.
@grant_brown continue with your assessment of Roon. You are becoming aware of the fact Roon is fussier about what you put it on than other music playback apps so should you choose to stick with Roon some of that may need to be addressed. At a minimum Iâd ensure the core is connected via Ethernet and your WiFi is robust and not sharing bandwidth with too much else. As for your WMA files, you should be able to convert them to AAC or something else suitable with the right software.
Absolutely, which is why I was responding to âfairly quickâ, which does sound like the type of experience youâd get from Roonâs DB being held on a spinny drive.
@grant_brown, one of the big differences between Roon and other programs is how interconnected the database is. My understanding of what this means from the hard drivesâ perspective is a lot of random accessing, and itâs what makes all the names refer to a given individualâs page when you click on a review, for example. This is what allows you to play degrees of Kevin Bacon and go from New Kids on the Blockâs Merry, Merry Christmas to Afrikaa Bambaataa to Lovageâs Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By in 3 or 4 clicks. Having that on an SSD not only allows the jumping around to happen with no discernible delays, but also helps with making stuff like cover art load much faster.
Even if you donât decide to commit to Roon, an SSD is probably the best upgrade you can perform on any computer, because it can dramatically speed everything up.
Regarding your WMA files, Iâd rather suggest converting them to FLAC if possible. If the files are lossless WMA, then youâll keep them lossless. If theyâre lossy WMA, then you wonât be converting them into another lossy format, and further degrading the SQ.
They are wma 24/96 mostly but not all. yes I could go and convert them to flac, although its a lot of work just because roon decided not to support a format that their partner, qobuz outputs when you buy downloads⌠seems strange to me.
As for an ssd, well, im not going down that slippery slope, as its un-needed. Ive heard both used and although an ssd is faster, it sounds the same, but is much more expense.
But anyway, thanks all. I seem to only be allowed to post in several hrs now being a new member oddly. not something we do on our forum.
Again thanks for all the considerable help and time folks. I will play with it for a while and see if it grabs me⌠a number of our members use it and swear by it, so thought iâd try it.
(ps the core is actually on an ssd on my zbook)
cheers struth
You can do a batch conversion using free software: something like LameXP or Fre:ac would do the trick, and keep all the metadata. Not including downloading, weâre possibly talking less than 10 clics (and quite a bit of hard drive space 
)
Entirely and absolutely agreed. What puzzles me is why, in the name of all that is holy, Qobuz would sell WMA in the first place (as is, to me, why someone would voluntarily inflict a closed format like WMA on themselves when they have the choice of using open formats⌠but to each their own).
My recommendation had jack squat to do with SQ, and Iâm not quite sure what you misunderstood in what I said that gave you that impression.
Fast drive random reads are required by Roonâs database, itâs as simple as that. On dedicated builds, the part that RoonLabs recommends to perform that duty is $28.99.
well that puts me in my place eh?
thanks for the last bit mateâŚoh well⌠im off
Curious thing is, the downloads I have from Qobuz are FLAC, there is the option of WMA or FLAC
You can always download them again, in another format?
(Or convert them, but considering theyâre compressed the first option is better)
Just thought I would add that qobuz;s wma downloads are lossless. and the core pc has an ssd internal drive. The music is on hdd. The remote pc is hdd all the way tho.
Program is working fine now.
Just an update to this. Overall the main program seems fine although the android remote connect feature has a mind of its own. (in fact its only just started again)
Nicely made program tho. Might have been nice to be able to increase Gain when listening via bluetooth headphones as I like to in evening.
Still its impressive, especially with a streaming service added(currently Tidal, although I prefer using qobuz)
Ta again for all the assistance
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