Suggested dBpoweramp Metadata settings optimised for Roon

Roon Software Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I’m beginning to rip my CD collection to import everything in Roon. I read a few recommendations here and there, and I bought dBpa.

I went through their setup guide, through some insightful Roon community threads, and through Roon’s file tags best practices.

And I’m still left with a few questions regarding file tagging.

I appreciate some of it is down to personnal preference. But I’d like to have your input on the basic do’s and don’ts of setting up dBpa file tags at the moment of ripping for the best results in Roon.

In particular, how do you setup the various options in Preferences > Metadata & ID Tags [Options]

Screens in attachment.

I’m a noob regarding all this. Hopefully you can help me get started with as few mistakes as possible :slight_smile:

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141308×1404 213 KB

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321262×1296 221 KB

56
561172×562 81.7 KB

05
051158×558 70.3 KB

21
211242×1308 148 KB

2

Looks good to me.

3

I suggest also using:

Album Artist Sort
Artist Sort (so, for example, Artist=The Beatles, Artist Sort=Beatles, The

I found this to be the best method for use with Roon (I’ve ripped >2000 albums this way)

Less critical, but I also try and populate ‘Style’ (sometimes referred to as ‘Grouping’), which is like sub-genre type information. dBpa often suggests values, but not always.

Beware that the label, UPC, and catalog# values can be hit and miss for accuracy (not really dBpa’s fault) - it’s just beause there are often so many versions/releases of an album that it doesn’t have enough info from the disc to always get it right.

I have also used SongKong Pro recently to scan my whole library to fill some gaps (especially Composer info).

This is very much belt and braces approach as I don’t only use roon and like to have metadata that is as correct as I can make it. Roon can certainly identify albums without all of this, but I try to make it as easy as possible.

I suggest selecting a handful of albums across the spectrum of your collection, and experimenting before settling on the final settings.

It’s worth also considering what folder and filename structure you want to use - dBpa is very flexible.

For example, I use the following string:

[IFVALUE][tag]album artist sort[],[tag]album artist sort[],[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][][] - [year] - [album]\0[disc] - [track] - [title] - [artist] - [album]

Which provides:
Beatles, The - 2006 - Love\01 - 01 - Because - Beatles, The - Love

Good luck

4

WORK, PART, and SECTION. LYRICS maybe?

5

Thanks a lot for the tips. I’m still working my way to finding the settings I like.

I have a handful more questions:

  • I could see a use for including the Accurate Rip results in a tag. Do you guys use that?
  • What’s the point in including the MBID tag? I’m leaning towards not using that
  • What’s the difference between Genre and Style (@Stampie touched on that but I’m still not sold ^^)?
  • Is the “Orchestra” tag in dBpoweramp the ENSEMBLE tag? Or are these two separate things? If so, should I manually include the ENSEMBLE tag?

I think that’s all :slight_smile:
With that info and a few more tests, I’ll be ready to go!

Thanks for your help.