Was Anyone Hoping that CD Ripping Would Be the Next Feature Enhancement?

It’s really down to personal preference as to whether you go for ripping with Nucleus/ROCK or using a third party product such as dBpoweramp - do you want a “hands-off” approach, or do you want to be able to have direct access to, and be able to fine-tune, the metadata?

There are pros and cons for both:

Ripping via Nucleus/ROCK:

  • pro: “hands-off” - just put the CD in the drive, and it will be imported into the Roon library.
  • con: if the CD cannot be identified by Roon, then adding information for the album using Roon can be laborious (Roon’s Album/Track editors can be inefficient for bulk editing; e.g. for adding track titles)

Ripping via dBpoweramp:

  • pro: full access to the metadata before ripping for fine-tuning
  • pro: linked to several online metadata sources
  • pro: uses Accuraterip as an additional check that the rips are bit-perfect.
  • pro: metadata editing is more efficient and comprehensive than using Roon
  • con: you need a computer for the ripping/editing.

In a way, the choice is rather like: do you prefer to drive a car/auto using a manual gearbox (dBpoweramp), or are you happy with a full automatic transmission (Roon)?

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