DSD ISO Support

I used to share this view, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with it, so long as you don’t change your software.

In my case, however, as the result of a major software update (Audirvana Plus on OS X), it became apparent to me that having a way to edit/embed metadata within track files would serve me well over the long term, and so I converted all my iso’s to DSFs. I had a fairly extensive collection of iso’s, so while the conversion part was pretty easy, the retagging was quite labor intensive. Still, a few months after the fact, I feel it was worthwhile.

(If you or anyone knows of a Mac-based way to edit/embed track metadata directly in iso files, I’d love to know about it.)

–David

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I am meta-data-poor out of choice. I have taken the easy way and, so far, it has been adequate. If I was using something like Roon, there might be motivation to convert to DSF but it would take a huge effort. So, .iso support would be appreciated.

@mitr Kal- I understand the need for RAW formats. I just don’t know how Roon would be able to index the .iso files.

Still the idea of DVD-A, SACD, and Blu-ray .iso files, from your home collection, loaded into Roon as raw .iso files could be an excellent addition.

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Understood. It isn’t that I refuse to convert to .DSF from .ISO; it is simply that the work involved in the conversion plus the work involved in useful tagging has not justified it. I am hoping that Roon will help motivate me.

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Isn’t the idea of Roon is that it provides the GUI front end and meta-data? No reason this can’t be driven by DSD ISO.

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@Mind_Meld – Roon provides more than just a gui front end and metadata, but yah… you are right, we could add support for DSD ISO. However, it is not a trivial amount of work. For example, what happens to the copy to folder action when you are selecting just 1 track to export? same goes for deleting… same goes for moving tracks… some of these operations no longer make any sense, and some just have to work differently. There are many situations like this in Roon, and we have to consider them all.

The main reason for even using ISOs in the first place is for true gapless playback in many players that can’t support it otherwise. Roon does support sample accurate gapless playback, across files, even across TIDAL streams.

The only reason for Roon to support ISOs + a sidecar file for metadata would be because some are unwilling or unable to convert to DSF, which we will consider once it is obvious how many are in the situation.

I’ll need to try out the 14 day demo of the product to better understand the track-based use cases you mention. I just wasn’t considering the Roon system at your price structure without the ability to play that significant part of my library. I pretty much just drag and drop ISO’s into Audirivana+ and just let her rip playing the whole album. I’ve never really adopted the iTunes store track based model and still primarily play entire albums at a time.

But…I would argue that by a large margin existing DSD content comes for SACD rips… which itself requires a very specific PS3 configuration or Sonoma. So if ISO compatibility is not easily able to dovetail with the Roon architecture then there really needs to be some method for queue exporting ISO to DSF. There is an unsupported freeware app (ISO2DSD) to do this that I haven’t used personally, and the author of DSD Master is supposed to be adding this feature (Richard mentioned this A LONG time ago…) There is just no easy, non-techie way to do this with the 1000 titles I have. This is something to think about… usually the thinking is that DSD is so much less important than PCM (obviously) that isn’t given the due attention it deserves. I think many of your core subs would like to be able to manage DSD ISOs in one way or another. I’d be willing to double my storage footprint to have both file based DSF and ISO’s archives. I’d have to pick-up another drobo to do it ($) but I’d consider it for sure if that’s what it took.

And I know that probably isn’t the best way to bring this up, but your pricing structure is squarely niche audiophile territory. I’d look to Netflix for a price-tier reference if you want to scale outside of the well-heeled audiophile market space… maybe a $5.99 - $9.99 monthly sub? Anyway, it looks very promising and I’m sure it will be an amazing music front-end, either as it currently stands or as an acquisition target.

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Mind_meld - merely an aside but I have used the ISO2DSD tool ( and there a bunch of other ones out there ). It is easy to use and works very well, you can even have it batch convert a folder of ISO files. I have had it process batches of 400+ at a time.

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Thanks Barr!

I’d love support for .ISO, even if it has to be somewhat limited in metadata handling, I definitely don’t want to convert everything.

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+1 for support of .iso files

I don’t have the time or space to convert all my ISOs. That’s why I like Roon in the first place, I want to listen to my music and stop worrying about converting, tagging and things like that.

You could distinguish those ISOs by file size, only rarely do two different releases have the same file size - in that case just let the user select the correct release.

I wouldn’t care too much about things like track export or anything. All I need is proper playback (including multichannel) with all the metadata experience Roon offers for other file formats.

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+1 for support ISO files

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+1 for ISO support, and also for 1-file FLAC + CUE albums.
Many of my albums are set up this way and I would hate having to go through the process of manually splitting up everything.
Foobar2000 handles this in a very easy to use manner. I understand this might be a dated method but the fact is a lot of people still use it and even people who have weaned themselves off it will probably still have old albums archived this way.

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+1 for DSD-ISO support…this is the only thing I’m missing.

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+1 for DSD ISO Support. I’d love that, since all my SACDs are in that format (over 1,000), so converting them is not a plan for the near future. Thanks!

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+1 for DSD ISO Support !

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[quote=“bplexico, post:9, topic:1259, full:true”]
Mind_meld - merely an aside but I have used the ISO2DSD tool ( and there a bunch of other ones out there ). It is easy to use and works very well, you can even have it batch convert a folder of ISO files. I have had it process batches of 400+ at a time.[/quote]
The other tool which is better IMO is ISO2DSF - and it is free. No issues with ticks/pops/clicks with this one. And it also does a MetaData Lookup during the conversion.

BTW, I vote -1 for ISO support. It is so easy to convert to DSF and the files also support full tagging.

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You cannot give a -1 vote just because your preferred format is already supported! That’s like me saying I don’t want them to support mp3’s because all I listen to is flac.

+1 again to .ISO support so that dshores vote doesn’t count :slight_smile:

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[quote=“robbbby, post:20, topic:1259”]
+1 again to .ISO support so that dshores vote doesn’t count[/quote]

-2…now I am up one again… LOL

And ISO is not already supported, and it does not support tagging.

@Physh360, this could help in the Playstation 3 SACD ripping project! Straight .ISO!

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