Thank you all so much for your explanations and patience, with special thanks to Karl for especially clear and helpful explanations!! I think my old brain finally understands. I must say, I have found this new world of streaming quite challenging. There are so many new concepts and new terms to learn and so many different paths and products to wade through to get to the music. Having multiple systems hasn’t made it any easier.
I still have a lot of “wading” to do. I want to get the right Roon endpoint for my primary living room audio system and I want to do that before installing Roon and using up my trial period. And I have to choose a DAC for my Core i7 PC; it is mute right now because it’s sound card is down. Maybe sell the Naim and use the money to buy a Sonic Transporter?? … Lots to think about!
I can’t see those music files which greatly frustrates me. I have a bad back which limits my sitting time to wade through obscure Windows technical dilemmas. I think something like the Sonic Transporter which reportedly is super easy to set up and has lifetime tech support sounds very appealing.
Several of you have mentioned dbpoweramp CD Ripper software. What about the hardware product you insert the CD into. I assume quality doesn’t matter there, so any CD capable reader at the PC is suitable?
Another thing is that, if you have outputs, i.e. RCA outputs, from the sound device on your PC (you probably do) then before you get into buying all that additional equipment, you can use those . The SQ won’t be the greatest, it’s just for proof of concept.
By using your PCs outputs fed directly into your amp, you don’t need an endpoint or a DAC. Later, when you see how everything goes together, you can buy the upgraded solutions.
One of the virtues of dbpoweramp is that it uses a database of prior rips by other users. It compares checksums (a number generated from the digital bits) to ensure your rip is good. That makes the hardware less important as you can’t get better than bit perfect.
One of the virtues of dbpoweramp is that it uses a database of prior rips by other users. It compares checksums (a number generated from the digital bits) to ensure your rip is good. That makes the hardware less important as you can’t get better than bit perfect.
When I ripped all my CDs on the Naim, it had access to four databases, AMG, FreeDB, Rovi and MusicBrainz. I thought that was an asset. The database of prior rips (I’m assuming that might be FreeDB) is said to have a lot of inconsistencies. For example, Mozart may sometimes be shown as W A Mozart or Wolfgang A Mozart or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
I’m a real obsessive about my metadata and will do any necessary editing to get it right and keep it consistent. But I would be quite disappointed if I had to add in a lot of individual track info. Most of my music is opera and classical and I expected the worst of the metadata but I actually found it quite good. There were only a small percentage of my CDs where I had no metadata to draw on. So that’s score one for keeping the Naim.
Janet - to quote someone, go to their post and highlight what you want to quote. A box will pop up asking you if you want to quote. If you click it, it will start a new post with what you highlighted in a box. If you want to put the quote in a post you have open, do the same procedure but put your cursor where you want the quote to be placed.
Like this -
That’s preferable to just copy/pasting because the original poster then knows you quoted him and everyone can follow the thread a little easier.
Apologies, if you already knew that and I’m mansplaining, but it seems like you’re new to posting.
Here’s some KB links about metadata. You might also want to look at setting import preferences to tell Roon when to prefer your file tags to Roon sourced metadata.
No worries . I managed to stumble into a proper quote several messages above, but when I tried to repeat it in the post you refer to, I must have missed the cue, and so I improvised. I think I’ve got it now, thanks.
I do wish to minimize costs! But I did miss the window when Microsoft offered to upgrade to Windows 10 for free and now I’d have to buy it. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that recommendation for Windows 10, so I assume there’s something desireable about it. What does Windows 10 offer that is such an asset?
Lots of good advice here. I’ll just add one observation:
Don’t even spend a minute on using the Naim, or the PC internal drive, or a NAS or an external server to store the music. Complicated and/or expensive, and no advantages.
A 2 TB USB drive costs $50 - $75 at Amazon. Plug it into the Roon Core machine, which can be your Windows box.
If you decide in the future to replace the Windows box with a dedicated Roon device, the USB drive will just move over.
W10 is the most current supported version is the main reason. W7 is in end of life support so not updated apart from security changes.
Software and hardware suppliers will now probably skip testing their products on W7 or do minimal checks.
By moving to W10 now you are in the mainstream and it takes one variable away.
Janet, the comment about dbPoweramp having access to a database of accurate rips is in a different context: that of getting a bit-perfect rip.
dbPoweramp also accesses several online metadata databases as well, and offers you the options of selecting which one(s) you want or mixing/fine-tuning of the individual tags. You can also use it to add new metadata to tracks.
. I managed to stumble into a proper quote several messages above, but when I tried to repeat it in the post you refer to, I must have missed the cue, and so I improvised. I think I’ve got it now, thanks.