Music ripped mostly from CDs to FLAC format onto a WD MyCloud EX4 NAS Drive. I used DB Poweramp for ripping my CDs and a Nimbie NB21 ripper
iMac connected by USB to Benchmark DAC / Krell KAV 400xi integrated amp / Sonus Faber Grand Piano Speakers
iMac has a pair of B&W MM1 speakers.
Roon has been set up to play through my DAC / Main music system and simultaneously through the B&W MM1 speakers connected to my computer. the Music system & computer are in different rooms.
My experience so far has been as follows;
Installation was straightforward and easy.
The user interface is excellent and provides a tremendous amount of information. My wife & I enjoy using it.
The quality of sound is good and I am happy with the results
large swings in volume levels from song to song. Can this be fixed?
I seem to have lost the album artwork on most of my CDs. At the time of ripping, less than 30 or 40 CDs from my collection of around 1900 CDs had defective or missing album artwork. But after installing Roon, it appears that a significantly larger number of CDs have lost the album artwork. Surprisingly, most of these CDs took on the artwork of a Rock collection CD that I have. Other than physically correcting the artwork on these CDs, is there anything else I can do to fix this problem?
Occasionally while playing music, the music stops mid-track and skips to the next song although the track length seems to show that more music exists. Is this a common problem?
I have also noticed on occasion that there is a time lag between the music played through the main system & computer.
I would appreciate your comments / feedback on these topics.
Hi @Vivek_Raman ------ Thank you for the report. Let me see if I can offer some help here.
large swings in volume levels from song to song. Can this be fixed?
Can you provide some more insight on this issue you are experiencing? I see you have multiple listening zones, can you verify if this behavior is present when playing to just a single end point or is it occurring when playing to multiple?
I seem to have lost the album artwork on most of my CDs. At the time of ripping, less than 30 or 40 CDs from my collection of around 1900 CDs had defective or missing album artwork. But after installing Roon, it appears that a significantly larger number of CDs have lost the album artwork. Surprisingly, most of these CDs took on the artwork of a Rock collection CD that I have. Other than physically correcting the artwork on these CDs, is there anything else I can do to fix this problem?
Can you please provide a screenshot of the issue you are seeing in Roon with the missing album artwork? Furthermore, can you confirm that Roon is identifying the content correctly and just the artwork is inconsistent or not present?
Occasionally while playing music, the music stops mid-track and skips to the next song although the track length seems to show that more music exists. Is this a common problem?
I have also noticed on occasion that there is a time lag between the music played through the main system & computer.
There are various reasons why dropouts/skips can occur while using Roon as seen in our knowledge base, here. This is usually the result of an issue with hardware or network configuration. I see you have already provided us the details of your setup May I kindly ask you to expand a bit further and provide insight on what your network configuration/topology is like as well as verifying any networking hardware that you may be implementing in your setup.
Thank you for your mail. I will try and answer your questions as best as possible.
Large swings in volume - The standard set up for my Roon system is playing to 2 zones - through my Apple iMac to the B&W MM1 speakers and through the iMac via to my benchmark DAC to my main music system. I notice this issue more through my main music system since i play that at louder volumes. One song is at a reasonable volume and the next song could be either much lower volume or much higher volume. I know this is a function of the original CD recording quality but was wondering if I could set the output volume to a constant level.
Album artwork - I have attached a few screenshots.
Network configuration. I am attaching a simple sketch of my configuration. If you require more details, please let me know.
Hi @Vivek_Raman ----- Thank you for the follow up and taking the time to answer my questions. Your feedback is appreciated! I am going to try and break everything down one bullet point at a time based on your feedback/questions.
Large swings in volume levels song to song.
Can you confirm for me if you are using the “volume leveling” feature found in your zone settings? If not I would suggest engaging that function and seeing if there is a change in behavior.
Surprisingly, most of these CDs took on the artwork of a Rock collection CD that I have. Other than physically correcting the artwork on these CDs, is there anything else I can do to fix this problem?
Can you confirm for me how the files in the albums with the incorrect artwork are being tagged? Are the albums and album artist using the same names?
Occasionally while playing music, the music stops mid-track and skips to the next song although the track length seems to show that more music exists. Is this a common problem?
Can you confirm for me if you play back content that is stored locally and not on the NAS if you notice the same skipping behavior?
Large swings in volume.
I am not quite sure which the volume levelling feature is. Is it the “fixed volume” setting? If so, I have switched to that setting.
Incorrect artwork - Pardon my ignorance but can you please confirm where I should check this?
I do not have any music stored locally, but will try and copy some music & check. the issue is that this doesn’t happen on a regular basis, so if I copy some music, I am not sure if I will detect this problem. Could it be an issue of the network speed or my iMac getting slowed down due to other processor tasks?
Hi @Vivek_Raman ------ Thank you for the follow up, let me see if I can help clarify some of this for you.
Large swings in volume.
I am not quite sure which the volume levelling feature is. Is it the “fixed volume” setting? If so, I have switched to that setting.
The “volume leveling” feature is found in your “Zone Settings”. You can access these settings by clicking the “zone icon” at the bottom right hand side of the screen (next to the volume).
Incorrect artwork - Pardon my ignorance but can you please confirm where I should check this?
You will want to select “tracks” in “overview”. Once all of your tracks have been displayed navigate to a set that you know is having this issue with the album artwork. Select a single track from the album and click the “3 dots” to the right hand side of that track. A pop window will appear and you will want to choose “Track info”. Once the track info pop-up appears, in the right hand corner of the window you will see a button called “File Tags” (example provided below). Please provide a screenshot of this window.
Can you also please provide a screen grab displaying how your music is being stored on your NAS drive? I would like to get a sense of what your folder structure looks like.
I do not have any music stored locally, but will try and copy some music & check. the issue is that this doesn’t happen on a regular basis, so if I copy some music, I am not sure if I will detect this problem. Could it be an issue of the network speed or my iMac getting slowed down due to other processor tasks?
Vivek, did you ever get around to performing this test? If so what were the results? I am curious how the system behaves when we remove the NAS from the equation. Furthermore, you mentioned that this issue is not happening on a regular basis. Are there any behaviors or patterns you notice that DO cause this to happen?
May I kindly ask you to expand a bit further and provide insight on what your network configuration/topology is like as well as verifying any networking hardware that you may be implementing in your setup.
