I have a library of my favorite music on my PC of high quality .flac files. I have converted these files to .mp3s in another directory that was loaded into iTunes. In iTunes I have created a few dozen playlists. Now I am trying to upgrade my music experience and have purchased a Nucleus One Roon server to listen to these higher quality .flac files. But I would also really like the ability to port over all my playlists....the files have the exact same names, except the root path is different and the file types are .flac instead of .mp3. Is there anyway to get my playlists into Roon (without having to pull in all the .mp3 files and have the playlists using the lower quality files?
Unfortunately, this isn’t as straightforward as we would like.
If the file paths for the FLAC tracks are different from the MP3 files (which is almost certainly the case), Roon cannot automatically substitute them. You would essentially need to generate a new playlist file that points specifically to the FLAC versions.
This is not something Roon can manage automatically.
However, a creative workaround is to use an AI tool to help with the migration. You could take the exported playlist file from iTunes and a text list of all your FLAC file paths, then ask an AI to “rebuild the playlist structure using the FLAC paths instead of the MP3 ones.”
Do you have a list of all your FLAC file paths available?
We want to reach out before this thread closes due to inactivity. Have you been able to import these FLAC files successfully using the workaround @alex_h provided? You’ll still need the .XML file to import the original playlists (mp3), which you could then duplicate within Roon using the FLAC version.
It’s arduous but it will knock this out in one shot. Please let us know if we clarify any details.
If you require any more assistance, you can reactivate this thread by submitting a new request here. This thread will soon be closing due to inactivity if it receives no further responses.