DSD ISO Support

Feedback Feature Suggestions
142

So, let me see if I have this straight

a) you decide to only Rip your SACD collection to an archive format that you know has zero Metadata handling capabilities

b) you then decide to painstakingly enter Metadata into a program that appears to offer no easy way to extract or export this same metadata??

and then expect Roon to ‘rescue’ this metadata and use it seamlessly along with the way they handle FLAC and DSF files etc??

So, in truth, not alone are you requesting that Roon add the ability to play ISO files [likely easily done]…but you [and from your post above] other JRiver, Foobar, A+ users will expect Roon to subvert their current Album ID process and ‘rescue’ manually entered metadata from a program that offers no easy way to export said data??

If and when Roon add ISO support, I’m not sure they will feel it’s within their remit to ‘rescue’ said data from Jriver et al…and will likely just offer the ability to Play the ISO…and their own method of ID’ing the ISO Album in question and applying their own metadata

I wonder how the others here will feel about such a solution…it seems to me that you are happy for JRiver to provide Replay functionality ONLY…but then expect Roon to provide Replay PLUS the full rich metadata environment…even though the Roon team have explained at length that this is difficult to do

1 Like
143

Ronnie, you do jump to conclusions rather quickly. As we both do not seem to be of the extremely patient kind, I will try once more.

Exactly for the reason you mentioned (ISOs cannot hold user metadata), I have avoided putting my own metadata into the jRiver library wherever possible. I put Artist and Album Information into the directory structure where the ISO files reside, so that I can recover it, when I switch to another program that plays ISOs. Only genre and year information sit in jRiver.

By converting the ISOs to DSF, I lose the directory structure, because the tools (at least the ones I know of) do not preserve the directory structure, but use the metadata contained in the ISO to build the target directory structure. Hence my metadata is lost in the conversion process. I am aware that a script could be built to transfer the directory structure, but that seems like a really major exercise to me.

I can live with the genre and year information being lost, but I am not looking forward to losing the artist / album information in the conversion process.

I assume that roon is able to extract metadata from directory structure and file names (hope I’m not starting another war here). So if roon were able to import and play ISOs and add it’s own metadata to it, recovering my own metadata from the directory structure should be easily doable with currently available roon metadatas handling capabilities.

I am not asking for roon to extract metadata from the proprietary metadata-bases of other programs. I know very well that this would be an insane thing to ask.

All I am asking is to include ISOs as a playable and taggable file format. Obviously that does pose some difficulties, as the metadata needs to be stored somewhere, but I think using a sidecar tagging approach would make this possible. Again, I am fully aware that this would be a non standardized approach, which you will may again view as an outrageous suggestion.

By the way, I am not demanding anything, I am merely suggesting this is a feature that is critical for me in order to subscribe to roon. Without that feature, the probability of me subscribing will simply be much lower. I would assume paying customers are allowed to voice their requests, or are they not?

144

SUMMARY

a) In less than 48 hours, all of your 1,000 ISO can be converted to Tagged DSF Files & Album Folders using a simple batch process…….and this can be achieved in a “hands-off” / non-supervised manner

b) Using ISO2DSF or similar also ensures that the relevant Metadata will be embedded / added at the Track and Album folder level into the resultant DSF files

c) Adding the Metadata to an industry standard DSF file format "future-proofs” you, in that you can use Roon or any other player in the future, secure in the knowledge that your Files are properly tagged…….saving you from having to repeat the process in the future

d) Many SACD / DSD owners have already taken the above steps to secure their investment in these Albums…….and also protect the time they have invested in Metadata collection and tagging

e) Not alone does converting to DSF offer you future-proofing, but it also offers you freedom of choice TODAY about what Player or Music Library Manager to use, as most of the popular players support both the Playing and proper Library Management of these DSF files…….the same which cannot be said of ISO files

145

Hi Rudolf

I am not familiar with building conversion scripts. Reading your latest post, it is clear that my own requirements were much simpler. I do not have the number of SACDs that you have and, unlike you, I was not concerned about maintaining exactly the same directory structure for the converted files. I can see why you don’t want to convert the files, given these requirements. If you want the multi-channel files as well, this would be an added complication.

The tools that I used for the conversion to DSF were OSX-based, and allowed a target directory structure to be designed based on the metadata in the ISO files. This generally worked OK. I was only interested in 2-channel playback. All my music in Roon is either in FLAC format or DSF. Each file has been tagged using a dedicated music file tagger prior to importing to Roon. With a few minor irritations, the import process went well.

These types of issues (conversion to DSF) are discussed regularly and extensively on independent forums like computeraudiophile.com. There are guys there that can probably help you if you decide to go down that road, rather than waiting for Roon to implement ISO support.

Having converted all my SACD ISOs to DSF, I am truly relieved that I don’t have to deal with ISOs any more. All my album and artist details, genres, etc are contained within my DSFs and are available to be read by any software I choose to use in the future.

I hope you find a way to use Roon. I think it’s great.
Cheers, Paul

1 Like
146

Thanks for the inputs guys. I will look at this. I will need a bit more information on how roon plans to implement multichannel. All conversion tools I know of are based on sacd_extract.exe and convert stereo and multi-channel in the ISO in separate Batches and they end up in two different directories per ISO. I have posted regarding this over in the multichannel feature request thread.

147

Okay let’s drop this feature request? Now who is going to pony up the $1000 to buy another Drobo and several drives for the redundant data that I’m going to now have. Oh, and how many hours is it going to take me to do this? Umm… no thanks not just to use Roon to access the 1000 SACD rips I have in my library.

Now if you have some holy war against DSD I don’t really care. It’s part of my library and either Roon plays ball or A+ will. I’ve seen a lot of development effort building out the endpoint ecosystem but still no DR analysis or update on SACD integration. My renewal later this year is dependent on both of these features. The eye candy is great but not enough to pay over $100 a year for a product that is priced to perfection. Fine for Sooloos, but extremely overpriced IMO…and I’m sure a price-sensitivity analysis would bear this out.

All these counter debates are interesting, but really quite academic unless you want to pony up the storage for me and contribute what 500 hours to the effort?

1 Like
148

Sorry, but where is this “holy war” you refer to??..Roon offers SACD / DSD compatibility thru the use of DSF / DFF files, as well as being capable of DOP and several other DSD friendly features …and as a result, many of us SACD users happily use the other advantageous features that Roon has for playability, metadata management and library features…so where is the “war”??

I’m sorry, but where does this figure come from??..1,000 2-ch SACD’s to DSF takes up about 2Tb…and even allowing 50% extra headroom and adding 3 to 4Tb of space is something that is easily and cheaply added to most NAS’s, including Drobo

As stated above, converting 1,000 SACD’s can easily be done in 48 to 72 hours, with little intervention being required…something many of us SACD users have already done in about that time or less

And the net result is that we have industry standard DSF files with embedded Metadata that is future proof and capable of being used by Roon or just about any other player, either now or in the future

If you don’t wish to invest the small amount required for Storage or Effort to convert, then that’s fine…just wait for Roon to build in FULL ISO functionality [something not offered by JRiver or Audirvana, as they offer no real “metadata management”…something many SACD / DSD users crave and take advantage of in Roon]…

But in the meantime understand that there are many SACD / DSD users who have already made the small time and storage investments required and are ALREADY enjoying the benefits of SACD Playability and Management in Roon

149

I have been in a very similar position as @Mind_Meld and @Rudolf_Fischer. The size of my SACD Collection is way over 2000. And I have set it up all in JRiver too. Huge work…
With the latest revision of Roon I decided that Roon shall be my Music Playback and Management system for the future. There are simply a lots of pros.
Moneywise I spent aprox 1k € for a new NAS plus Disks and extra Storage for some Multichannel Rips.
The conversion per se is an easy to set up task. I have done now just over 1000 SACDs and I go very slowly for the rest.
It became even pleasure to go through my SACD Collection. Now its fun to have my collection in part available at a fingertip in Roon with all the Info Roon provides.
The Basis for all that effort was the decision to stay with Roon. Simply put. Roon is the Best for Music. JRiver puts a lot of effort into Video and TV and others are simply not on the Horizon.
Now, I dont look back. I am happy to have done it. It needs serious comittement but its 100% worthwhile.

7 Likes
150

Did the same, using this inside Parallels / Windows 7 on a Mac. Works partly well - not all iSO’s were converted correctly. Unfortunately. Let’s see if XLD will be able to help, one day…

151

There is a native iso2dsd for OSX.

152

OK! Time to look that up then, and re-convert my (400 or something) SACD ISO’s!

153

@Evert_Smit http://dsd.sonore.us/iso2dsd_OSX_v6.zip

1 Like
154

The databased that Roon LICENSES does not contain metadata specific to SACDS which means that when having converted previously to 22/88.2 by first going through the Mac ported SACD2DSD I have to manually insert ( ) or [ ] data as a title suffix as to which version of the SACD (Year Country, Label Release #) I do this for all titles in my library using Discogs etc… for example seaparating 2 version of many Miles (2001, 2012 AP etc). Also, some titles contain mono and stereo mixes (Cream, Mayall, etc.)

And did I mention that my MacMini has an SSD so doing a batch conversion locally is not an option. And neither is doing it on a Drobo 5N filled with 5 drives @ 85+% capacity. So yes to do this drives are having to get pulled and replaced or put into a new Drobo.

All in all this is something I’m have absolutely no interest in doing to play ball with Roon. The ISOs currently total 3TB BTW and does not include the parity overhead so drive capacity alone (WD RED) is ~$300 non withstanding that I would need to be installing much bigger drives to make this work so the cash outlay is actually more than this.

And regardless this is totally kludgy… there is significant expense incurred, both monetarily, time, labor, and is, ultimately, is redundant. Before it comes to this major PITA I would just convert select titles to DSD then to 24/88.2 ALAC using XLD…but even this is tough because I iteratively set the 0-6dB gain compensation and manually analyze DR to check RMS and peak data to check there is no clipping and that there is sufficient headroom. This is typically a 2-3 pass process. Then I often have to correct the embedded cover art since its often not accurate, and put put in the specific identifier metadata in the title suffix.

So that brings me to the feature request that I started on another thread… DR metadata and database filtering and sorting… This is a major criteria in which versions I actually care to keep. Building out the endpoint ecosystem is great but this is something much more important to me than background text on titles and artists from Gracenote or whatever.

155

I’m sorry that you have to do this Evert… :cry:

156

A luxury problem, I know… :slight_smile:well, conversion will happen as we speak.

157

Do you have a DSD-compatible DAC? I assume by your comments that you don’t, so you need to convert to either FLAC or ALAC. Since you are using XLD, then I guess you are on a Mac. Although XLD is nice because it is free, there are far, far better options if you have a large number of files to convert. I would suggest you look at DSD Master. It’s only $30, and it will analyse DSD files, calculate the correct gain compensation and then convert to FLAC or ALAC at the sample rate of your choice. You can batch multiple files as well. TRAX is another one with similar features, except you can convert straight from the ISO to ALAC/FLAC inclusive of the gain calculation, without having to go through the intermediate step of creating DFF or DSF files. It’s only $35. Both of these applications are very much focussed on the highest possible conversion quality (probably better than the Roon conversion), and will also save so much of your own time.

Paul

2 Likes
158

Good info on the converters out there.

Yep I have a DSD compatible DAC.

DSD Master…sorry no offense to Richard - the creator of BitPerfect and DSD Master - but XLD does a great job, and I have no interest in creating hybrid files for BitPerfect. Also, before getting into the conversion you still need to extract DSD/DFF files and mess with metadata.

In cases where I like to convert DSD to PCM then I like being able to set RMS myself… I’d rather have -15dbFS even if the peaks are backed off a couple dB… works better with vintage 100dB Altec horns.

But I really have no interest in converting and tagging a large SACD ISO library to DSD, or PCM.

159

+1 for ISO support. I have less than 50 but would be nice to have them in Roon as that is all I use now :slight_smile:

3 Likes
160

Any news on sacd.iso support in Roon 1.3? Any hope?
Btw. If sacd is supported someday. Does this also mean that redbook iso will also be supported by default or am i asking for too much

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161

Hi, I’ve moved your post to this topic, it’s quite a long read.