DSD ISO Support

Are there any news on SACD ISO support?

Is it being considered for the future?

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It is unacceptable that expensive software such as Roon does not recognize SACD ISO files and does not unzip the first part of the MQA files. I confess that Iā€™m very disappointed with Roon for not reproducing these types of files.

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ISO playback was never a feature as I understand and should not have a been an expected addition based on your purchase of a license regardless of how much it might have cost.

There are lots of things roon does do and some of these have been added after I made my lifetime purchase choice, but that was made based on what it did at the time, not what things it might or might not be able to do in the future.

If you are so disappointed that itā€™s not there then I guess you bought the wrong product and need to make a better choice for whatever your min needs are going forward.

Just because you find a product expensive doesnā€™t mean it must do everything you want it to doā€¦its very hard to find the perfect fit for every want and need in a single product.

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I canā€™t disagree that SACD ISO support would be nice. I convert to DSF files for both stereo and multichannel. This preserves the metadata and Roon thereafter handles the DSF files just like any other. So, the result is great but it does take the extra time to do the conversions. JCR

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In your opinion. :slight_smile:

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If they had said they would be doing either then maybe fair enough, but they havenā€™t.

Russ

Too few people ask for that feature.
I think it might not be a huge marketing tool, but might use a lot of resources to get it done in a Roon quality way.
Thatā€™s why we might not see it in the ā€œnearā€ future.

MQA is a work in progress. ISO support is a maybe one day. The reasons why ISO support is not a priority are set out earlier in this thread. A simple batch process can convert ISO to DSF or DFF.

Even Oppo removed the ISO support for DSD rips - so they had it and took it away in a firmware updateā€¦Basically I think Sony did not approve and if you want to be able to have the SACD logo on your kit then you have to play by the Sony rules. Some older Oppo firmwares can still rip an SACD I think tho - my 105 still can

Yes. this is my opinion.
Similar softwares like as Audirvana, Jriver, HQPlayer and others recognize SACD ISO Files for a long time. Since Roon already recognizes DSF files it should not be too difficult to make it recognize ISO of DSF files.
About MQA files, audirvana is already decoding these files via software very well.
Letā€™s wait for Roon to bring support to the MQA at least.

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I would not count on that.
SACD ISOs where a huge obstacle.
MQA might be more complex.

Iā€™m just pulling your chain :slight_smile:

I agree that MQA and ISO support would be very good to have and I am sure Roon developers are working on it. Converting to DSF is OK but it does eat a lot of extra disc space :slight_smile:

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Hope they are working on it, because I have more than 1000 SACD ISO files.
:joy:

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I can understand your frustration! :slight_smile:

Not sure how many I have, maybe a couple of hundred. An working through them all now converting to DSF.

Search the forum (for the info) and set a batch conversion. No need to work through anything. Just set it running; go do something else and comer back when it is done.

Even 1000 acquired isoā€™s wonā€™t take that long to do.

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Disk space is free.
See my math here: Cost of storage

Anders, disc space is NOT free.

Not only do hard discs cost money, they fail also, thus we need backups and backups of backups. All this takes time as well as money to manage; Iā€™m not whingeing about the ISO thing, I can live with DSF conversions, but to state that disk space is free is just not true. It may be more cost effective to store music and graphics virtually, but it certainly is not free.

:slight_smile:

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Of course itā€™s not free. Thatā€™s a phrase we use (ā€œweā€ in the tech industry) not just to indicate that something has become cheaper under Mooreā€™s law, but that it has become so cheap that other considerations predominate. Let me illustrate.

In the post I linked to, I showed that storing an album on hard disk costs a few cents, while storing the jewel case costs a few dollars (the book case, floor space). And then you have the cost of ripping it, plus converting ISO to DSF (as we are discussing here), plus editing the metadata. This may take ten minutes if youā€™re good, half an hour or more if things are not so efficient. How do you value your time? There is all this talk in the U.S. about how minimum wage should be $15/hour; at the other end the threshold for being in the top 1% in the U.S. is $400,000 per year, if you work 2,000 hours per year to earn that, itā€™s $200/hour. Ten minutes at minimum wage is $1, half an hour for a one-percenter is $100, $10 might be a reasonable estimate.

So if disk space costs cents, jewel case storage costs dollars, and labor costs tens of dollars ā€“ yeah, the disk space is ā€œfreeā€ within the boundaries of that process. It is roundoff.

Yes, disk space must be managed and protected against failure. Replicating to another disk is a good idea, maybe in a NAS ā€“ but you need to do that in any case since you do have some data, on the margin the extra cost is just the additional cents for that disk space. Replicating to the cloud is also a good idea, on the margin this will cost anywhere from zero to cents. There is some labor involved in managing these backups, but you have to do that anyway, on the margin the extra album doesnā€™t add anything. Minimal cost ā€œon the marginā€ is the essence of scalable technologies: there is a cost and effort to set things up and learn to manage it, but once that is done the cost is not proportional to the number of bytes.

So thatā€™s the reasoning: ā€œstorage is freeā€ means on the margin, the incremental cost of storing one album is insignificant, orders of magnitude smaller than other costs. The statement is not just hyperbole, it is a meaningful statement of a sound financial analysis.

aha ok. no worries. I did not know that free meant that:-)

In any case, Itā€™s all 1st world problem territory :slight_smile: - weā€™re all a bunch of proverbial pigs in poo with this, lol :slight_smile:

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+1 for ISO support. To me, the main advantage of ISOs is that they contain stereo and multichannel mixes. If Roon could display all mixes contained in an ISO album - in tabs above the disc tabs, for instance - ISO files would retain the complete functionality of the original SACDs.

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