Trying to get a friend with 10K CDs into Roon

I have a buddy who has 10K CDs. Lining the walls stacked everywhere in his listening room. I am totally sold on Roon as an essential for any music lover (audiophile or not).

I want to recommend something to him that would be a core computer that could rip CDs. I don’t know much about the CD ripping into Roon since all mine were already on my drive. What would a good setup that won’t break the bank?

Not sure what setup they might look at BUT I had a CD collection of only 2500 and it took a good chunk of 2 years to complete the rip. Using laptop with 2 CD readers using Exact Audio Copy (EAC) ripping software. This was 4-5 years ago so hardware/software might be faster and more effecient (?)

A LOT of work but well worth the trip. Get him/her started

Good luck, Dave

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Ripping 10000 cd’s without a robot is an impossible task.
To be honest, it does not really make sense either.
My stron recommendation would be to take a subscription with either Tidal or Qobuz (or both) , and favour the albums you own.
One can still rip the small remaining part of albums that cannot be found, or that have a very specific mastering one prefers.
It will not only save a lot of ripping time, but also improves dramatically the quality if Roon’s identification process.
On the level of hardware, choose rather a more powerfull platform, but more important, choose an OS that you are familiar with. I.e. if you are a Mac user choose a Mac, if you are a Windows user, choose a PC with a Windows Pro license and e.g. an Intel i7 processor
Dirk

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@anon90297517’s advice is always good. That makes a lot of sense.

There are also ripping services that will do it, and they do have robots.

You would never want to rip that many CDs with Roon, even if you had the patience of Job and were under self-quarantine for months. While the music will be visible in Roon, the underlying ripped disks will have generic track names (Track1.flac, Track2.flac) and will be in folders with undecipherable names. It would be a nightmare for anyone even the tiniest bit OCD, and you’d have to be pretty OCD to collect that many CDs.

I’d bet 80% of those CDs haven’t been opened in years.

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Why would you want to rip and have all the initial storage cost and ongoing cost and back up cost when you can stream?

I think the days of having a music collection are dying.

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Because he already has the CD’s.

My preferred setup is to have the ripping computer separate from the Roon computer.
For the Roon machine I use a Nucleus for simplicity.
Could be a NUC with Windows if he prefers. Or a Mac.
But minimal complexity, no other software on it.
My ripping and downloading machine is Windows.
The Roon machine shares its music drive over the network.
I RIP with dBPoweramp, which can save to two locations, the Roon drive and a drive on the ripping machine, for backup.
And no NAS involved. (Ok, extra backup if you want, but not involved in playback.)

10,000 CDs is less than 10 TB, $200. You CAM sprinkle backups all over the place.

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Water under the bridge.
Streaming cost is the same for 10 CDs or 10,000.
The main reason to RIP is if the CDs are rare, exotic, or old and are not available to stream.
In that case, they may not be auto-recognized either, in which case it’s a horrible pain.
In my case, 98.7 % of what I have added in the last year was available streaming, and the remaining 12 CDs were auto-recognized.
But I don’t do classical, other people have much worse luck.
Do a test RIP, pick 10 or 100 CDs at random and RIP in dBPoweramp, and also check with Tidal and Qobuz.

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If I owned my own CD’s, which I don’t, I wouldn’t want to pay for Tidal and Qobuz. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to fool with the physical CD’s. I think ripping them to use with Roon would be a good idea. I would be tempted to hire someone to do it for me, depending on cost.

What will be done with ripped CDs; kept, sold, land fill?

If one isn’t going to keep the CDs, then the question is - how will the 10,000 (yikes!) CDs be backed up?

Personally, I would keep them for backup and copyright purposes.

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At least for Roon, you get so much more by having availability to Tidal/Qobuz. The discovery novelties get the most attention (NRFY, Recommended, most notably). But for every hyperlink under the Biographies or Credits there is the possibility you might discover something new. Without the services, the links don’t go outside your collection. When you hit “Play Now” for an artist you limit their repertoire to what you own, vs what is available across hundreds of thousands of other tracks.
There are a lot of upsides to having your own CDs. But you are sort of turning your back on other opportunities if you don’t want to avail yourself of the streaming services. I don’t see it as an either/or. I want both! :wink:

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If you own 10,000 CD’s, I doubt you need to listen to anything else. I don’t own any. That’s why I have Tidal and Qobuz.

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Except that Qobuz and Tidal often have less than the best masterings…in fact, they usually have the latest which are often the most loud and most compressed. For this reason, and a wonky Internet connection, I have my own CD and SCAD collection and use Qobuz to explore and find music new to me.

I think a wall of 10K CDs in a music room would look cool, and by proximity, make the owner look cool too.

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I think the masterings concern is about pop/rock.
I mostly listen to modern/current jazz, and I have never come across that problem.
Availability is a problem, having both Qobuz and Tidal mitigates that problem (as I said, in the past 12 months I added 1000 albums from Q/T, and bought 12 that were not available).
Auto-recognition and metadata is a big problem for classical music.
And of course both are a problem for old, offbeat, bootleg and similar material.
So it depends.

I can tell you now that ripping even a 1000 CD’s is a daunting task…for the time it takes you really are better off getting a tidal and/or qobuz subscription and work through the catalogue of what he can’t find on there and just rip those as noted before. He does have a catalogue of his collection…if not then I doubt he is going to be so anal about the ripping option.

Think of it based on his hourly income…at best you might get through 7-10 CD’s per hour. Even if he is retired use the same calculation - time is money even if it is your own time.

I would suggest he gets a roon trial and the same for tidal and qobuz and suck it and see.

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I think this is great advice. ‘Bite the bullet’ and just subscribe to Tidal/Qobuz, and just rip the CD’s you can’t stream/that are unavailable. There might be a few in a collection that large.

I went through a similar thing a few years ago, pre-Roon. I spent months ripping several thousand CD’s, and buying more storage to store the rips.
I wish I hadn’t bothered. So much time wasted, unless you see it purely as a ‘hobby project’. I think Qobuz/Tidal are the way forward, and also give you the chance to explore new music :grinning:

rough calc, 5 minutes a disc to actually rip ?

104 days @ 8 hrs a day !!

That’s without any copying , back up , tag grooming etc

I did around a 1000 , absolute labour of love

No Holidays …

Stream …

Play Frisbee

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Also, because of the way Roon works, it ‘sees’ your rips and your streaming favourites as one library.
Another reason not to rip!