A post was split to a new topic: Talking Schiit about DSD and MQA
Another reason why adding SACD ISO support could be a significant selling point for Roon:
Currently there is NO software that is able to add metadata to SACD ISOs. jRiver, foobar and others can play SACD ISOs, but the metadata contained in the ISOs themselves is so crappy that a major effort is required after every rip to bring the metadata to a minimum quality level manually.
Roon already has most of the metadata of SACD releases and would be able to vastly simplify the whole process of ripping / tagging.
I believe this would be a major selling point to the enthusiast community. I for one would probably subscribe to Roon, if SACD ISOs would be supported. Currently the lack of ISO support has kept me from subscribing. I donât want to use several software suites to manage my library (which contains around 1â000 SACD ISOs), so I am stuck with jRiver for the time being.
I am (was) voting for SACD ISO support.
I accepted the explanation concerning the difficulties for tagging support of ISOS in Roon.
So I got extra storage and started to convert Isos into .dsf.
Itâs work and takes time and needs extra storage. Thats what I wanted to avoid in the first place.
Beeing half way through I really enjoy the metadata now available to my SACD collection.
It is a worthwhile effort.
[quote=âmiklats, post:124, topic:1259â]
Beeing half way through I really enjoy the metadata now available to my SACD collection.It is a worthwhile effort.
[/quote]Great to hear.
For the record Iâve cancelled my annual renewal until ISO metadata compatibility and track/album DR metadata are implemented. Iâve been waiting for close to a year on these and they are hard requirements for me. I can play ISO on either A+ or JRMC and have done so for years. The metadata and eye candy are great but not enough to overcome the omission of both of these features.
Well, Iâm still hoping that the silence from the Roon team means that theyâre in the process of implementing it and want to introduce it with a bang!
Theyâre working on multichannel, would make sense to enable SACD ISO with this as well.
Why not simply convert your ISOâs into DSF Files and enjoy the benefits now
Itâs simple and quick to doâŚhas ZERO impact on Sound QualityâŚand allows you to use Roon NOW to play your SACDâsâŚand you can always add your ISOâs into Roon as and when they add support for them
Batch routines to convert multiple ISOâs to DSFâs are easy to set up and can be left to run unattended overnight
Any argument about DSF files being âbiggerâ is null and void given how inexpensive it is in 2016 for storageâŚand with 6Tb and 8Tb drives also being easily and cheaply available
Spend the time now to convert your ISOâs to DSFâŚand enjoy the benefits of being able to play these files NOWâŚadd ISOâs to Roon later, when supported
I have all my music on NAS devices, with not much space left. If I were to convert all my ISO files I would have to invest in another NAS and I would like to avoid that right now.
An audio playback system catering to people like us not supporting SACD ISO is a rather strange choice in my opinion.
I said earlier that I wouldnât mind SACD ISO implementation standing in line behind many other niche requests (Squeezebox support, talk about legacy technologyâŚ), but this complete silence from Roon makes me think they just want to wait it out until people went elsewhere.
@danny said they would consider it if demand is there, which there is plenty of.
I bought into Roon pretty much from day one with a lifetime subscription, it didnât even cross my mind that this software wouldnât support SACD ISO, while the competition can do it.
@danny If there is a definite âNoâ on SACD ISO support, I would like to request a refund. I can understand if thatâs not possible, just wonât be using my Roon license much if SACD ISO files arenât supported.
The comment above is representative of many Usersâ experiences when it comes to the use of ISOâsâŚand yet you continue to say that other programs "support ISOâsâ??
Foobar on Windows also allows for Bitperfect replay of Standard and High Res FLACâs [and other formats]âŚand yet very few would claim that the extremely basic UI within Foobar is some kind of an adequate replacement for Roon
Anybody who is in any way serious about their Music library in 2016 must recognize that their decision to Rip their SACDâs to ISOâs only was a flawed oneâŚand that there is little future for this format given the options that are available [DSF / DFF etc]
There was a time when some / many considered it a good idea to Rip their CDâs to WAV ISOâsâŚan idea that most people now consider to be not such a good one
Time and Technology marches onâŚand Music lovers who are Serious about their collections should move on with those times as wellâŚRoon represents the way forward for âPlayersâ that support ALL aspects of Music Library ManagementâŚand DSF / DFF represent the best way available currently to handle DSD / SACD albums
Obviously this last comment directly aboveâŚalong with similar comments from many here and elsewhereâŚputs a real question mark about the âsupportâ offered by JRiver and others for ISOâs
If all they do is allow them to be played, then is that real âsupportâ when it comes to ISOâs??
If Roon JUST added the functionality did was to present these albums in the very same limited way as JRiver, Foobar, Audirvana etc doâŚand then allow them to be playedâŚdo you think that would satisfy the people who are asking Roon to support ISOâs??
IMHO, it would notâŚas itâs clear to me that most here want âtheir cake and eat itââŚi.e. they want to Play their ISOâsâŚbut they ALSO want the Metadata capabilities that Roon offers and the other players sorely lackâŚi.e. they want EXACTLY the same functionality for their ISO Albums as their FLAC ones
If it were the ability to simply PLAY these ISOâs that most people wanted, then Roon may well be able to do that quicklyâŚbut Danny and Brian have explained here at great length about the issues involved in solving the Metadata and Track Handling issues involved for Roon to PROPERLY handle ISO albumsâŚproblems that JRiver et al are not even attempting to solve with their alleged solutions
Yes, allowing an ISO to be played back is support. The softwaresâ capabilities differ obviously.
Regarding metadata, this is probably easier than discerning usersâ FLAC rips of albums, as they have different sizes depending on the software and compression used.
Each ISO has a definite file size, there are only very few discs with the exact same file size.
So, all we would need is a database containing disc sizes and associated albums. If Roon stumbles upon an album that belongs to a group of albums with same file sizes, a file/folder name query should be able to pinpoint the release.
Yes, this would be a certain manual effort, but there are only so many discs available. I would happily contribute to this database by creating an excel with file sizes of the ISO files I have and links to the release info page of a metadata provider.
And so you think that these items below are âreasonableâ requests
a) that Roon diverts resources away from other more deserving features, which are being requested by Far more people
b) that using the âfile size deductionâ process outlined above will allow for Roon to identify the Album and its VERSION [Japan v Europe v US] to their satisfaction
c) that ALL Roon users will have to absorb this extra codeâŚwhich will only make Roonâs footprint bigger and may slow it downâŚeven though many / most will not make any use of it
And these requests you consider to be âreasonableâ, all so that you donât have to purchase another USB Drive or bigger NAS drives to accommodate the ISO converted to DSF files??..Seriously??
Your have an interesting way of looking at things.
Diverting developer time away from other features? Slowing Roon down by adding unneeded code?
This is no zero sum game, I am not taking anything away from you, you donât have defend âyourâ Roon. I am sure the developers are capable of making Roon better for all of us, but I will make sure that your requests will be a priority
Please stop hiding behind the real issue hereâŚyou donât want to spend the small money possibly required for the extra storage for DSF filesâŚand therefore wish for Roon and other users to carry the expense for you
Many SACD users [such as myself] saw that the SACD ISO format was a dead-endâŚand saw the advantages offered by the DSF / DFF format in terms of being able to handle Album and Track Level metadataâŚand decided to convert our ISOâs to DSFâs
Just as, a long time ago, many of us saw the dead-end that was WAV ISOâŚand the advantages offered by converting those ISOâs to FLAC / AIFF with embedded Metadata
Whether you choose to admit or notâŚthe SACD ISO format is a dead-end and users of the format need to seriously think about converting sooner rather than laterâŚwhether they choose to use Roon or not
JRiver, Audirvana et al have zero stated plans to support Metadata for SACD ISOâsâŚfor the same reasons as stated by RoonâŚso the sooner you convert, the sooner you will be able to use Files and Metadata that are representative of 2016 rather than 2006
@Ronnie:
Thank you for your very helpful comments. It is such a relief to finally know what I should have done ages ago.
+1 from me. I have quite a good collection of SACDâs, converted to ISO. They are all converted by me to DSF and tagged properly. I cannot understand people not wanting to do this. In the time that this thread has been in existence, any ISO collection of any size could have been converted to a Roon-compatible format.
I have also seen comments somewhere from Roon staff that it is not a trivial task to implement support for âcontainerâ formats like ISO. That concerns me. I would much prefer the developers to focus on the issues that detract from the Roon experience promised on their web page - basically the metadata inconsistencies that crop up and the difficulties in correcting them. There are so many things that are âalmost but not quiteâ there yet, that should take preference to playing ISOâs.
@Ronnie What makes you think to know, what others want to have or need to have?
There obviously are a lot of people having this feature request, incuding me.
If Roon Labs is a company listening to their customers wishes, then they will read this like any other feature request.
If there would be something like âUser Voiceâ for Roon, we could all find out, how strong this request (and others) really is.
For the time we donât have a voting system for feature requests for roon, I will continue to post them in this forum.
Very much AgreedâŚusing ISO2DSD in a batch conversion process converts about 25 SACDâs in an hourâŚmeaning
12 Hours = 300 SACDâs converted
24 Hours = 600 SACDâs converted
Meaning that even those who have âthousandsâ of SACDâs can convert their collections within a maximum of a few daysâŚby just leaving their computer run the process in a hands-off manner
The quick conversion per discâŚcombined with the âhands-offâ nature of the batch conversionsâŚcertainly eliminates âtimeâ as an excuse to not convert their SACD collections
A big theme in this forum seems to be the cry for full editing of tags, because people want to use a mix of their own metadata and roonâs.
My 1â000+ ISOs are tagged manually. The effort for this is >>24hours.
If I convert them to DSF using ISO2DSD or sacd_convert or any other tool available, I lose my metadata. The metadata sits in jRiver and jRiver does not offer a lossless ISO to DSF conversion.
As much as I respect the enthusiasm in this forum, I am amazed at how quickly this enthusiasm turns into âdo it our way or get outâ. I was actually trying to suggest a way for roon to get many existing jRiver and foobar users to subscribe. But that does not seem to be of interest. Really a pity.
JRiver stores your ISO tagging information in a database, which is probably unreadable to anything outside JRiver. It does not write to the ISOs. Sadly, I doubt if there is any way for you to export the tagging for the 1,000+ ISOs you have done in JRiver - unless JRiver provides some kind of export faculty for metadata and Roon is able to read that information.
Now if you had converted your ISOs to DSF before importing them to JRiver, you could have saved all of your tagging to the files themselves, in an âindustry standardâ format, able to be read by Roon and other applications. This is one of the reasons why it is not wise to use ISOâs. Convert them to a format that accepts metadata tags and archive the ISOs.