Much of my music is corrupt

A significant percentage (20%) of my library is corrupt, according to Roon’s Inspector. I have a feeling that this percentage will go down as later versions of the software refine the Inspector’s criteria for what is and isn’t corrupt.

It is a little disconcerting, having one’s files called corrupt, after my efforts to create good files, keep them backed up, and well organized. And having had a only a handful of playback errors with them in all these years. There are all kinds of music files in there. Rips, iTunes, free downloads, stolen tracks, gifted tracks, irreplaceable tracks, and even some tracks that I rescued from CDs my daughter was tossing as she downsized to move. No pirate stuff though. Gotta be legit. My music library is a kind of zoo because there’s all kinds of critters in there.

It’s also a little awkward having my library exposed to a new and different entity, one that is much smaller than the Genius at Apple. Yes, it is doubtful any human eyes will ever actually scrutinize my zoo, but my relationship with my music is so personal and so emotional that there’s a self-consciousness and defensiveness at work here. (Those ABBA tracks? Yeah, I sometimes play them real loud. You got a problem with that?)

I fully expect that a small portion of my music files are indeed corrupt. I’ve given up researching Roon’s track Focus listing to see if there’s some kind of pattern or particular vintage of rips that were bad. It’s all over the place. This will work itself out in the way things do in the 21st century.

I need to accept that some of my music files are indeed corrupt. It would help if Roon had an Inspector that would declare certain of my other songs as bad-ass. So I could feel better about the whole thing.

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Hey @dbtom2 – thanks for your comments and understanding here!

Over the years, we’ve seen tracks that play fine but which, technically speaking, are actually corrupt. We’ve also seen some files flagged as corrupt that we later determined to be an error on our side. We’ve fixed a few of these recently, but our policy generally is that we want users to know when something appears amiss.

For now, one thing you might want to try is to go to the tracks browser, click Focus, then Inspector, and finally, check off Corrupt.

Now, you’ll be looking at all the tracks we’ve flagged. You can select all the corrupt tracks (CTRL/CMD + A), then choose Edit, then Re-Analyze. After a few minutes, you’ll see if the number of corrupt tracks looks better once they’re reanalyzed.

Also, if you’re interested, I’d be happy to take a few of these “corrupt” files and have our developers take a look. It’s possible something about your files is unexpected, but not actually corrupt. Let me know if you’re interested and maybe we can do better with your collection in the future.

Thanks again!

Hey Mike,

I have done what you suggest though what I havent done is export the coorupt file listing and compare it to the results of a select group I’ve had Roon reanalyze. I need to do that.

As my installation of Roon becomes more stable and runs longer between crashes, the corrupt file count reported by the inspector just keeps growing. This inspection has been running anytime i’ve had roon up.

I speculate that it is the inspection that may be causing some of the more recent crashes. I uploaded a file to your group that was troublesome two days ago. Yesterday Roon played all day while the inspection was running. At some point - see my crash report from yesterday - i got a os x prompt to let the developer tools run. Before i authorized it, i navigated around Roon without an issue. (This was not an exhaustive experiment. I picked and played various library and Tidal tracks.) The instant I returned to the prompt and authorized the developer tools, Roon crashed. (Quit Unexpectedly)

Hence my post about corrupt files. Which was partly tongue-in-cheek and partly true. Like a visit to a lawyer or accountant or doctor, the news isnt always good but never as bad as one thought beforehand because there’s a plan in place to deal with the bad stuff.

Let me know what you need to analyze the crash issue. I am away from my Roon Mac for the weekend and wont be able to upload anything til Monday evening.

Thank u for your reply. It was unexpected. If you’re in the USA, enjoy your weekend; I didnt expect an acknowledgement until Tuesday. If you’re outside the USA, any Yanks that have Roon issues can be reasonably expected to wait through the holiday. I can’t speak for other nationalities however. We’re talking music and it’s personal and emotional.

Tom

The file you sent was really helpful, but the sporadic issues you’re seeing now are probably caused by something else, and I suspect we’ve already fixed the cause.

Thanks @dbtom2! By the time you’re back we should be close to releasing our next update, which will have lots of bug fixes in addition to some new functionality.

Hopefully with the new release, your crashes become a distant memory, but definitely let us know if not.

And have a great weekend! Beautiful day here in NY, just back from a bike ride myself :bicyclist: :wink: