What's a good way to organize/export music for mobile devices

Roon Software Discussion
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Currently what are the best practices for taking a subset of the library in a mobile device (either an iPhone or a purpose built audio player like the Sony ZW-ZX2)? I looked at the export function, but it either exports as the original file or as some fairly compressed format (~192kbps?).

Given that this is Roon after all, I’m assuming there’s a more elegant and easy way to do this?

Anil

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The good news: I use dBPoweramp batch converter to convert original files to MP3, it is smart enough not to create duplicates so I don’t have to be very precise about pointing it to only the new files. And it is fast, it can use all the cores in your Intel chip, so on a modern machine it will do many tracks at once.

The bad news: I have not found a way to get iTunes to automatically watch a folder and only add the new stuff. It keeps creating duplicates. Not saying there isn’t a way, but I haven’t found it. JRiver is smart about this, it can watch and auto-import, but I don’t know how to set it up to manage the device.

And it’s especially bad when your devices need different formats. I have an Astell&Kern, awesome, handles every format – but it has internal storage and an add-on card and you have to pay attention, each can run out of space independently, and if you’re not careful you may create duplicates. My car can read an SD card, it supports lossless formats, but only WMA and only up to 48kHz/24 bit. So I have to convert to WMA, the CDs to 44/16, and 44/24 downloads to 44/24 WMA, and everything else to 48/24, and of course the directories are not arranged by resolution and bit depth, and the converters don’t have automatic selection by resolution. Gaah.

Sigh. So many gadgets, so much stuff to do.

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Not that I am away of- We all own an iPhone or and Android device, that would be an excellent starting point for the Roon App- Lucky for us it’s coming.

Now, saving files locally to the phone is process that seems to be underway, time will tell. I have a 160GB iPod that I would love to sync with Roon instead of iTunes.

@AndersVinberg, 24 bit files are less prolific than 16 bit files for the consumer. That is if you have the master version and not an upconverted (padded with zeros). That is super cool that you are able to achieve 24bit playback in your car. I wouldn’t sweat / be bothered by the 44/48 Khz sampling frequency- half of that is 22/24 Khz and I would buy you a couple of pints if you could hear that high.

Now, if you could record your playback statistics (skips, playcount, love, ban) from your car and sync the SD card with Roon, that would be a very valuable feature in curating your specific profile in your Roon library.

Right I want to simplfy this to a single gadget that contains my playback metadata/statistics. Hopefully, and hope is not an answer, we will get a Roon mobile sync feature that includes local and streaming files.

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@o0OBillO0o Wrt the 44/48 distinction, sure my old ears don’t go that high, but there are three reasons why I like to keep it straight:

  1. 44 kHz requires the brick wall filter with its artifacts, 48 kHz allows a slightly more relaxed filter, presumably the reason pro gear went with 48 early on. (I should say “potential artifacts” as there is debate about this.) With Meridian’s apodising filters, 44 sounds very good, but not all devices have that.
  2. I believe it is preferable to keep things in the same family: 44/88/176 vs. 48/96/192. So if I have 48k content I would rather not resample it to 44k. And if I have 96k material, I would rather sample it down to 48 than to 44.
  3. I am not convinced the 24 bit depth matters in a car, it is a noisy environment. But I believe (unproven) that if I’m going to downsample from 96 or 192, having the extra bit depth may be helpful. So I like the 24. And there is no 24 bit/44 kHz! If I want 24 for the downsampled stuff I have to go with 48. And I don’t want to redo all my CD content to 24 bit, that adds to the file size by 50%.

None of this garbage is interesting. I’m just illustrating my thought processes and why I dislike having to manage content on the devices. Hope for a better solution.

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I could not agree more with your above comments!

Well I am you new best friend, I am all ears!

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Have things evolved from here does anyone know?

I was just thinking, OK, now how would I get music onto my iPhone as I do via iTunes now? If I change over to Roon, am I still going to need to keep an iTunes setup running for all my ‘bought’ music so I (and others in my family) can put tunes on our iDevices/work laptops?

A very nice feature of iTunes is when you drag over to the idevice, it can compress to something more sensible and kind to the disk space.

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Sadly no - I haven’t gotten much response on this. Probably not a big deal for others (or Roon). I guess at this point, all the energy is on getting the next version out (which is due any day now?).

I’m one of the people who purchased the lifetime subscription on day one and I’m actually not using the app a whole lot at this point as it does not meet some of my main use cases - since I do have a lifetime sub, I guess I will just wait it out :smile:

Anil

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The current technique that can be done is exporting your music to a directory. Then copy that directory to your playback device.

in the case of iTunes and VOX (free iOS) music app: in iTunes transfer files via the file transfer method. (This is different from importing to your library.)

What we lose is playback statistics in Roon. Still both apps use Last.FM so you still get a record of your plays, but not useful for internal Roon song recommendations based on your listening habbits.