Hi Robert you cannot convert MP3 to FLAC as MP3 is lossy and you cannot add that information back in.
You can rip FLAC from CDs or buy them at various sites (Bandcamp is great if you like supporting band’s directly).
You can also go through your library adding the albums to Qobuz and it will prefer those over the low quality ones in your library (you might also be able to use something like Soundiz to add them in Qobuz automatically, but I have not done this myself)
I made the mistake in the early 2000s of buying loads of MP3 albums and have been slowly replacing them with CD quality versions for those I really like.
eBay and Amazon are a source of cheap CDs for the ones you really like.
Thanks for your suggestion. I did not care about sound quality until now. I will use quobuz to replace my mp3’s. I have still a couple hundred cd’s I can rip into FLAC, and be done with it. I enjoy the roon experience, thus I dont mind managing my music from here forward. Thanks again. Robert
You can link to Qobuz higher resolution files to stream in Roon or Adirvana, but if you want to download copies of the files to keep, you will need to buy them. Is that what you mean? You can also download files to play on your devices but you have to use the Qobuz app to play those. You are basically renting those files.
Here’s another consideration. Apple Music is now 100 percent lossless with many in high resolution and the rest in CD quality. I don’t know for sure, but you may be able to delete your lower quality files on Apple Music and replace them with the higher quality for free. You may want to look into that.
These, of course, would need to be files you purchased from Apple Music. I know for those of us who stream from Apple Music, we deleted any local Apple Music files to stream lossless files. These were files we were “renting” but had not purchased.
EDIT: Turns out, this is not possible. Purchased files cannot be upgraded to higher resolution for free.
Just because Roon says so, it doesn’t mean all MP3s are low quality. I don’t have many, but I’m not going to replace them. Besides, I’m only carrying MP3 on my phone, or I wouldn’t be able to fit all my collection.
Like @Marian says further down, not all mp3 files are bad. I have thousand which sound fine, but I also have bad one’s and they are the one’s I have been replacing.
Thanks to Marian and Michael: this is a good point! Will manage going forward, and not back track. Great inadvertent advice! Will save me a lot of time…
Had MP3 when i didnt care about the sound quality when i was young. Served the purpose well. 25 years later and a “audio” journey after, i use Qobuz. Used Tidal before but in my system i found the quality diference more obvious than i ever imagined.
Dont want to deal with HDDs/SSDs/NAS full of music anymore (and cds or lps) so streaming is the perfect option for me in home or on the go.
To be honest the only thing i cant go all digital is books. I tried but prefer hold the book and read in paper and see them in the stand.
Always good to mix it up some, but I have not bought an MP3 in about 10 years (at least I tell myself that), portable headphones were bad in those days so you could not really tell what you were doing
While I like holding a physical book, kindles are great if you want to carry a Library with you . One holiday we had 28 books between us, the next holiday we had Kindles
I still buy CDs, but mostly digital from Bandcamp to support the artists making music I like. I also like what Tidal is doing with premium subscribers payments to most streamed artists, I hope we see more of this.
So there are many ways to do it.
I was thinking about subscription to Qobuz sublime as well, as the discounts could be useful
This is true but I actually looked at 30 or so albums I wanted to buy (I’m also considering sublime) and with sublime, the high res was actually cheaper (vs CD) on average by £3 per album.
I don’t go for high res but if it’s cheaper than CD then why not.
Yes I put several back this morning to have a think about it
Didn’t stop me replacing some classic Gary Numan (have then at 180kb MP3) with 24/96 for cheaper than a CD. I listened to two albums last week and they sounded terrible so when I saw the sale this morning, who could blame me