Limitations for Classical music - overcome?

Mark_Sealey · November 3, 2020, 3:28pm

I concur. You live and learn, don’t you. One plan I thought of is to turn Audirvana into a dedicated iTunes (and its successor) player.

I’m from the other side of the Pennines… Leeds .

Mark_Sealey · November 3, 2020, 3:28pm

@ged_hickman1 +1 for that. Thanks again to Tony!

Trickydickie · November 3, 2020, 3:31pm

Yes, agree and thanks too to @Mike_O_Neill too for answering my question

Mark_Sealey · November 3, 2020, 4:19pm

Could I - as a new user - be forgiven for being so presumptuous as to suggest that the wisdom of those who’ve provided such helpful answers be turned into an FAQ somewhere?

I think I could contribute a set-by-step guide to the Yate side of things: that - I can now see - has to be placed firmly in the context of letting Roon do the (initial) work. Then how to set up and configure a Yate preset for Roon, why and how to use it, and how to avoid unnecessary work using tags - which wouldn’t work against how Roon does things.

steveoat87 · November 3, 2020, 4:29pm

I still find it rather disappointing that Roon has heard complaints about how it handles box sets for years, but little has been done to address it. Frustrating!!

Geoff_Coupe · November 3, 2020, 4:31pm

It’s a Sisyphean task, but the combination of these two articles gives at least the basis:

Mark_Sealey · November 3, 2020, 4:31pm

What would the algorithm for handling - say - the example which Mike gives here look like?

Mark_Sealey · November 3, 2020, 4:33pm

Thanks, Geoff - and does that presume that the preferences to tags should (always?) be set to Prefer Roon - at least at first?

Geoff_Coupe · November 3, 2020, 4:35pm

You’ll probably get different answers from different folks here. Those who love curating will probably want to give File Tags the nod, whilst others (like me) are happy to let Roon take a crack at things first.

otinkyad · November 3, 2020, 7:48pm

@Mark_Sealey – I think you mentioned a figure of 250 GB for your music currently, so the capacity of SSD you’d need (even allowing room for expansion) might not be terribly expensive – so my thought would be go for SSD.

In my case I have a lot of multichannel music and so I have well over 3 TB of music files and plan to acquire more. So, as I didn’t want to pay $$ for that high a capacity SSD I just went for an external HDD and it’s been fine for me. But I don’t back it up live…

Oh one other thought on NUC/Nucleus – I don’t believe that these devices lead to any improvement in sound quality. Their appeal is that unlike most regular computers, they provide an always-on Roon appliance that doesn’t require much/any management.

otinkyad · November 3, 2020, 7:55pm

Hello @Mike_O_Neill – thanks for the information!

Thanks! Yes, tags and bookmarks I have been using. Probably very primitively – my bookmarks are much less fine-grained than what’s in your screenshot – but they have both been very valuable.

Thanks – good to know that it may not have been just me…!

Mark_Sealey · November 3, 2020, 9:44pm

@otinkyad - thanks so much for that guidance!

I know that 250GB will grow and grow …

Backup is crucial so I’m still evaluating.

I’ve been watching YT reviews of Nucleus - it may not be what I want with single room listening - at least not yet. Your input much appreciated.

Mike_O_Neill · November 4, 2020, 10:34am

It’s years old , I fixed it , I use JRiver where I define what happens and what it looks like , hardly the answer but with quite a few > 10 boxes what else can I do. My memory doesn’t run to remembering which disc is which in a 114 set

My suspicion is box sets are not high on the list , maybe not sexy enough so I wouldn’t hold your breath

It is sad that Roon never comments on threads like this , it’s almost as if they don’t care. I believe they review the forum but stay silent …

Mike_O_Neill · November 4, 2020, 10:41am

Don’t forget that the Nucleus is Roon only

If you are uncertain about your love of Roon don’t paint yourself into a corner the NUC route can be easily repurposed with a Win 10 install

grossmsj · November 4, 2020, 12:48pm

No reason you couldn’t repurpose a Nucleus to Win10 either. But yeah, it would seem like a needless waste of money.

Mark_Sealey · November 4, 2020, 2:42pm

Thanks! If I get a device like that, I’d almost certainly go for Nucleus - best compatibility.

I’m strictly Mac anyway

Atm, I’m setting myself up with more dedicated external backup for my FLAC files.

Jon_Saperia · November 4, 2020, 4:05pm

Hi, this is a very long thread so I will simply say that I mostly listen to classical as well and found the tag approach not helpful. I think it depends on what you want to do. I have found a solution that does involve some effort. No matter what you do, the meta data on the files as we receive them from the various sites, or as ripped, is generally poor. That is where the majority of the work is. Once done, Roon does not provide (and I have not found any other vendor that does much better) the tools for the compound types of searches one would want to do for classical music. I now am about 90% done with the meta data fix up and shortly will be able to search on multiple attributes at one time. Such as composer, period, genre, orchestra, conductor, soloist, type of music, such as concerto or symphony, Label, etc. Once I do this search which is not possible in Roon, then I can pull up the piece or section of a piece (such as a movement), and play that. Often I do these searches to see if I want to buy something on a web site and can not recall what I have and searches in Roon in the compositions and albums view seldom work to my satisfaction.

If you are interested let me know and I can provide you more details.

otinkyad · November 4, 2020, 5:46pm

Hello again @Mark_Sealey –

Just a thought on something that you mentioned:

I may be misunderstanding what you mean here – but I thought I should mention that a device like Nucleus/NUC doesn’t provide any better experience for multi-room listening than just Roon running on a computer (unless perhaps the computer is underpowered and you do a lot of different DSP for different concurrently playing zones). Roon running on a computer does everything that Roon OS/ROCK can do on a Nucleus/NUC.

So the benefits of a Nucleus/NUC really are only that (a) you have an appliance that, like a server or NAS, is just always on, and ready to play your music, with zero setup overhead each time you feel like listening, and with no ongoing administration overhead, and (b) you are freeing your main computer from running Roon. No SQ benefit, no multi-room benefit. (Others can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe I am…).

Apologies if this was all perfectly obvious to you – I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t in any way contributing to your seeing a NUC/Nucleus as providing benefits that it won’t.

All that having been said, advantages (a) and (b) can each be quite sizeable, IMO. I have been running Roon from a dedicated computer for over a year, including multi-room use at times, so (b) was not an issue for me. But (a) led me to recently set up a NUC, and I’m finding it quite liberating…

Hope that’s somewhat useful!

Mark_Sealey · November 4, 2020, 6:35pm

Thanks, @Jon_Saperia!

I would be interested in (details of) your method - maybe a PM, rather than post more in this - as you say - already long thread. Only at your convenience and when you have time for something not too onerous, though - !

I have learnt a lot, though, here; and it has convinced me to settle on Roon.

Thanks to those posters who have offered suggestions here, I am very quickly arriving at a satisfactory workflow - which largely leaves it up to Roon itself.

But extra tagging (e.g. of period, genre etc) I am more than happy to do… in Yate.

From what I’ve researched, seen, and used, Roon offers far and away the best!

Mark_Sealey · November 4, 2020, 6:52pm

Thanks, @otinkyad - in fact what you’ve written is very helpful.

More than perhaps you realize.

I may well have misunderstood the role of Nucleus (or a comparable Nuc)… still happily exploring this world which is as new to me as music is familiar.

May I ask for clarification on these, then, please:

(are you saying that) Nucleus (or similar) almost completely replaces the computer (in my case a five+ year old iMac - albeit top specs in terms of RAM, HD speed and processor (cores/power) - in such a way that I would only be using the iMac with the Roon ‘Core’ app as a kind of ‘slave’? Your point ‘b’?
re your point ‘a’ (always on etc), I really don’t have to set anything up with the Roon ‘Core’ app and all my FLAC files local on my iMac - at least, only one, initially.

So with a Nucleus/nuc, I’d be running a dedicated device - once I’d bought and installed the storage hardware (probably 2+ TB SSD). But just controlling it from my computer, thus rendering all Roon operations independent?

If so - and I have pored over multiple articles and sites explaining the Roon architecture in this respect, I promise - where would that leave my (Dragonfly Cobalt) DAC for headphones, and USB connection to my Parasound (P6 + A23) hi-fi/stereo system? Would those inputs now be connected to the Nucleus output?