I have a collection of variable bit rate mp3 that I ripped 15-20 years ago. I don’t want to re-rip them but want to replace them with Tidal or Qobuz versions?
What is the least effort way to do this? I am thinking some sort of focus bookmark for mp3 and then navigate to each album, add duplicate then delete original. That would be a lot for 500+ albums!
But I think delete original would actually delete the mp3 which I am not sure I want to do, but maybe I do.
I can’t see anyway that mp3 (local) versions in playlists get replaced by tidal versions.
Yes, you’d have to go into each one, go into Versions, as shown above, and then Add them to the Library. There is no Batch Add high res versions.
Maybe, if you preset it up as a bookmark, it might take a couple of hours. Which you could stretch out over serveral days, I’d do 20/25 a day to not make it too boring. And then listen to those 25 and enjoy the better sound!
A lot of work? That depends on your definition. For me, creating the meta-data of 4000 ripped to WAV CDs was a lot of work.
If there are duplicates in the library, and if the “hide duplicates” is set to Yes in settings,Roon will hide the lower resolution version.
I would never delete files. Remember, deleting them in Roon deletes them from your hard drive. Hide them instead. OR, remove the files from the watched location on the hard drive and copy them somewhere else.
Also, I would suggest making a tag to mark all the files you’ve added from Tidal so that you can bring them all up with a quick tag search. That way you can tell if Tidal deprecated any of the albums by looking at the total count.
The easy solution is to re-rip them from CD (to FLAC). I remember doing my first round of ripping CD to MP3 many years ago (took forever). Then I did the process once more to FLAC 5 years ago - this was done in a few weeks (1000+ CDs).
Now I’m done with this - never have to do it again
Edit:
When I buy a CD or SACD now; first thing I do is to rip it and put it in my archive.
Just test out a system working for you (you want meta-data in the FLAC files). When you find something working for you; it is just to repeat the process till you’re done.
That’s the solution!
But there are also companies that will do this for a fee. For people without kids (or neighbor’s kids), or for those with kids that refuse to be goaded into such things.
The upside is once you have it in FLAC, you can have it in any other format too, of course. Since storage is so cheap today, there is no reason to rip into low resolution formats.
I totally get it. I’ve gone down that path too, for just that reason. AND, anything from Amazon was bought low-rez and I had no choice. Another reason for your use case.
I’m just too lazy to organize it as nicely as you are!
