I have a sh*tload of albums in different formats (Wav / flac / hi-res).
Almost all albums are recognized in the flac and hi-res formats, while the same album as Wav is not recognized.
How do I teach Roon it’s the same album, only in another format?
Usually the ones not getting recognized are label samplers, best-of albums and the like (best of like Joe Walsh & the James Gang, samplers like Blue Note, North Sea Jazz, Putumayo)
Refer to this regarding album versions: https://kb.roonlabs.com/FAQ:_I_have_multiple_versions_of_the_same_album%2C_but_I_only_see_one_album_cover._Where_are_the_other_versions%3F
And this: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Editing_and_Grooming_Your_Collection
Perhaps one reason why the WAV versions aren’t being recognized is because WAV tagging is not very good.
Honestly, and I’ve thrown this idea around a lot, IMO there’s no reason to keep WAV and FLAC versions of the same album. Just standardise on FLAC, and fix the tagging.
@mikeb I would like to agree about not keeping Wav and flac of the same album.
I know some people who swear they hear the difference, if only you have the right equipment / ears.
As it happens, I have both and I don’t. I have for a long time maintained that the first big upgrade of my set will be the room where it sits.
Now I’ll be moving to a new place shortly, which will give the new room and, hopefully, the enhanced experience.
When I’m fully set up in my new place I’ll be conducting a thorough double blind A-B with these people claiming to hear the difference and that will decide whether I keep the Wav. If I do, I will convert everything to AIIF, which is sort of taggable Wav.
AIFF is the Apple version of WAV, apart from being taggable, nothing much changes. FLAC however… I have tried many A/B tests, and I can’t hear a difference - that’s not to say there isn’t one, just that I can’t hear it.
And, I understand the argument that disk storage is cheap, so why not just stick with WAV or AIFF, but the fact is it isn’t. I have a 2TB SSD, and using FLAC allows me to store twice as many albums on it, quasi a 4TB SSD.
In Roon you won’t hear any difference using wav or flac. They both contain the same data one uses lossless compression like a zip file the other doesn’t Roon decodes all formats to raw PCM before sending to any DAC or endpoint so they are all essentially getting wav. Some people believe and hear differences when the audio hardware playing the file has to do the decode from flac to PCM and believe this decode effects the sound as the audio hardware is limited in cpu capacity and this process creates extra cpu cycles and noise. Wav is essentially PCM already so no heavy decode is needed. As it’s not the audio device doing this.in Roon but the server its negated if it was there at all in the first place.
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