I’m new to Roon - on my 14 days of trial. So far very impressed.
A large part of my music collection is “original” digital broadcast mp2 files. Roon unfortunately does not recognize these files. What is the best way to overcome this:
No. 1) seems to work okay, it’s relatively easy and it saves harddisk space. But I don’t know if this is the best solution?
Welcome to the community, @Hans_N!
Renaming won’t help since the files are using MPEG Audio Layer-2 compression. I wonder if Roon sees the files and the metadata envelope but won’t play them?
Since MP2 is a lossy format there is no benefit converting to FLAC. Use MP3 instead.
I have just converted then to MP3 with dbpoweramp I think. Only takes a few moments.
I label them DAB Radio Grabs in the versions tags
If changing the file extension (make sure you are working on a copy) makes them playable that’s probably the best option because you are not changing the data at all.
Converting to another format won’t make the files sound better - conversion to flac should sound the same; depends how the waveform gets reconstructed before getting saved as lossless - but conversion to mp3 could sound worse; again depending on process. Reconstructing a lossy format and then repacking it in another lossy format is a double bad idea!
Edit - might be worth using something like vlc to check what’s actually in the mp2 container.
I wold suggest if renaming them works that you leave the existing .mp2 and add rather replace with .mp3 ie your first option to name track1.mp2 to track1.mp2.mp3 so at least you can easily see what they were before in the file system view
Actually renaming them ought to work, MP3 decoders are backwards compatible with MP2. So its likely that its just the file extension that Roon is unhappy about.
I agree with @wizardofoz though, I’d keep the .mp2 and add .mp3 for my own clarity.
Cool. Didn’t know that…
Just for interest - do we know which decoder roon uses?
My MP3 Conversions sound fine, they are mostly Radio Drama or comedy and as long as it’s clear it’s fine
I’m not claiming they don’t - and it depends how smart dbp is being when asked to ‘convert’ lossy to lossy.
That was fast 
Thanks a lot - I will just add mp3 to the name (track1.mp2.mp3) as this seems the least intrusive.
Perhaps some day Roon will be able to identify the mp2 format.
Unlikely as its not a common audio format for music used mainly in broadcast and video applications.
If it’s a used format that has no issues being mp3 compatible I would hope that roon adds it @support
I have just setup ROCK on a NUC and found out that Roon no more will read my renamed mp2 files (track1.mp2.mp3). Perhaps the ROCK codecs are not the same as my MacBooks codecs.
I guess best thing to do is to convert to Flac keeping SQ and tags, but at the cost of space and convenience.
There’s little benefit converting MP2 to FLAC since these are lossy formats. Choose another supported lossy format such as MP3.
Rock uses ffmpeg, if you haven’t installed it that might be why.
Check ffmpeg; if no joy go flac. Don’t throw any more data away by re-encoding to another lossy format.
I have installed ffmpeg, so that’s not the reason. I will go flac.
You may want to put MP 2 in the version field
That’s a good idea! Thank you - I’ll definitely do that.
I’ve not used ROCK, but am intrigued… does mp3 play back ok?
Is this thread relevant? ROCK New Install - Won't Play MP3 Files