Is there a way to force Roon to apply my edits to my music files?

[ged_hickman1]

If you use an external tagger then the changes will be kept which is why we are recommending using one.

[AndyR (Andy)]

@Echolane

its worst feature, IMO is not being able to force it to change my files

Not changing your files is one of the principal tenets of Roon. Roon is fundamentally the wrong tool for this stage of escaping from the Naim ecosystem.

The brute force solution is to re-rip your CDs to (say) flac; if you use (say) dbpoweramp it can tag the resulting files for you with a pretty good success rate, leaving you to ‘fix’ relatively few things. Importing the set into Roon should then be relatively straightforward.

The ‘smarter’ - but slightly harder - solution is to transcode to (say) flac, maintaining the folder and file structure, then use (say) mp3tag to look at the folder structure and file names, and write what it finds into appropriate tags embedded in the files. Again, it should leave you with relatively few (gut feel says maybe a few more) things to ‘fix’, and again importing the set into Roon should be relatively straightforward.

Unfortunately, without your file set in front of me, I can’t guess how successful the ‘smart’ solution might be.

[ged_hickman1]

I thought I remembered something about your Naim issue the first time round. What happened between December 18 and now?

[Echolane (Echolane, Roon Lifer)]

@AndyR

Unfortunately, without your file set in front of me, I can’t guess how successful the ‘smart’ solution might be.

Unfortunately, I have to deal with three doctor/dentist appointments in the next few hours. When I return, I will take screen shots of the Naim file structure and do my best to profit from suggestions,

[AndyR (Andy)]

I hope all goes well. Take care.

(And apologies if my post sounded critical. It was not intended that way.)

[Echolane (Echolane, Roon Lifer)]

@ged_hickman1

I thought I remembered something about your Naim issue the first time round. What happened between December 18 and now?

I don’t remember the dates of my first attempt to move to Roon, but I do remember, and rather painfully, the mess I was in with the data that Roon presented of my music files. I had tried to use SongKong as a preliminary step because it advertised being able to read Naim’s metadata, but I gave up when it didn’t work and submitted my music files to Roon “as is”. I didn’t find out until last month that SongKong can interpret the metadata from the Naim UnitiServe but not from my Naim Uniti Core :(. Paul Taylor has indicated his willingness to extend SongKong’s capability to include the UnitiCore, but has made no promises as to when. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that Naim, in its infinite wisdom, chose a DIFFERENT format for the WAV metadata for its UnitiServe product, complicating the programming needed.

But that doesn’t help me now. And I didn’t know those things during my first intro to Roon, so I abandoned the move. I should confess that I blamed Roon for the problems at that earlier time. I thought that my almost 98% music collection of classical/opera music albums had flummoxed Roon, because it has a reputation of not handling Classical all that well. It is only during this current period with Roon that I’ve learned WHY things didn’t work before and why I am having the same problems this time.

[ged_hickman1]

So was a pain and remains so.

[Echolane (Echolane, Roon Lifer)]

Things have remained a pain. Indeed they have! And I have MANY more music albums now than before so MUCH more editing ahead of me.

But now I have another problem. I promised to return with screen shots of Naim’s file structure and I find I can not access the Naim Network device in Windows 10s Network display. I can not access the Nucleus either, but when I enter \Nucleus in the File Explorer window I can. I make the same attempt for the Naim Uniti Core and I just get a black screen.

Why can’t I use Roon’s version of my music files. They look quite similar.

[Mike_O_Neill]

Many of the “Converters” will add basic metadata , album, artist, track names etc . I can only speak for JRiver but there are many DbPoweramp users who could comment.

There lots of metadata tools around, SongKong for example does really good MusicBrainz lookups and populates metadata (composer , work , part all of which Roon likes) as long as the album is in Muscbrainz.

MP3Tag apparently does a good job and is free. I use JRiver mainly because I need it for my Video playback and DLNA for a soundbar but for $60 its good value simply as a librarian. There is a 30 day demo , you may just get the conversion done in that time (? for free)

[Mike_O_Neill]

Don’t forget that Roon doesn’t TOUCH YOUR FILES , the edits you make are into Roon’s Database ONLY

Not being pesimistic but should Roon fold or you chose not to follow it any edits (and effort) you have done are lost .

My advice is to edit externally , that way the edits are in the music files themselves no matter which player you use. That way any effort you may put into cleaning up will not be lost !!

[AndyR (Andy)]

@Echolane

Why can’t I use Roon’s version of my music files.

You can.

A screenshot of the folder and file naming from the Nucleus should tell us what we need to know.

[Geoff_Coupe]

@Mike_O_Neill

Not being pesimistic but should Roon fold or you chose not to follow it any edits (and effort) you have done are lost .

Mike, this is a total myth, and I’m getting somewhat tired of it being trotted out all the time. The Export to files function will put the basic metadata into the exported files.

[Echolane (Echolane, Roon Lifer)]

@Mike_O_Neill

My advice is to edit externally , that way the edits are in the music files themselves no matter which player you use. That way any effort you may put into cleaning up will not be lost !!

That’s what I want to do. I don’t expect to leave Roon, nor do I expect it to fold. And apparently Roon has an Export feature that will allow me to merge its edits with my files, so I’m covered. I just don’t want my files to be so worthless!

I own SongKong. Might as well try it. I’m hoping it will allow me to do one file at a time editing, rather than batch editing. It must, right? How else can it expect the user to refine a record that MusicBrainz misses? I think where I will run into trouble is the large file of “Unknowns”. These have no data at all, nothing. Fortunately, I can use File Manager to look inside the Naim file containing its version of the metadata and copy/paste album title and drag it into the appropriate “Artist” folder. Once I have a title and album cover I have thr means to fully identify the “unknown” album.

[AndyR (Andy)]

I’ve never tried export. It’s not appearing as an option on my iPad - perhaps that’s as expected.

Does it preserve folder structure and file names?
Does it embed all metadata or just some?

[ged_hickman1]

need a pc/mac i think.
https://kb.roonlabs.com/Export

[AndyR (Andy)]

I’m going to have to turn the laptop on and try it, aren’t I?

[Mike_O_Neill]

sorry - that was not the impression I had got !!

[Geoff_Coupe]

You can export all your local albums to a location where a copy of all your albums will be made. The tracks will have the basic metadata written into them from the Roon database as ID3 tags (if they did not already have them in place).

Basic metadata is defined (in the Roon Labs T&C) as:

• albumartist
• album
• discnumber
• track
• title
• artist
• composer

If you have ripped CDs using a CD drive attached to a ROCK NUC, then indeed in the Roon storage location you end up having folders with a date, and track names that are generic. However, the metadata is used in the export process to give the exported folders names following the Artist/Album naming convention, and track names are renamed from “track nn” to the title held in the track title metadata.

Here’s an example:

What do you use to rip?

Here’s an example… First, what I see in Roon’s InternalStorage folder: [Roon%201088] I chose 4 of these albums and exported them to a folder on my desktop PC: [Roon%201089] Now Artist folders have been created, and within them, folders for the albums (bearing the Album Title). And further down, in an album folder, the tracks have been given the track title names: [Roon%201090] I sometimes think that discussions around here are like listening to Greek Philosophers arguing about the number o…

So you end up with a file and folder structure that is the same as the default naming convention used by dBpoweramp.

[Mike_O_Neill]

Thanks Geoff clear as ever. I don’t have ROCK or a Nucleus so I have never experienced this

[AndyR (Andy)]

Export works on a W10 instal too and does essentially the same thing… ie does not explicitly preserve folder and file names. In the (limited) test I just ran Roon in effect prepended disk number to the file name, and made a pigs ear of one of the folder names. Essentially, I think Roon export regenerated my (rather conventional) structure. If you started with an unconventional structure, you might get a surprise. Oh, and the ‘root’ folder became ‘various artists’ where it is ‘various’ on the source file set. I’ve not tried a multi disk album.

Bottom line - I’d want to explore this a lot more before relying on it.

Edit…

So what I think you get on export is a folder/file that looks like:

albumartist/album/discnumber+track+title

If you have an extensively curated classical collection, this might not be what you are expecting, but I guess it should allow identification!

The bad foldername I saw earlier looks to be because I had corrected the title of an unidentified album that Roon later identified: the export didn’t pick up the edit correctly. Looks like a bug to me, but its an odd set of circumstances…