Roon 1.3 Adds DSP PEQ, Sonos, Multi-channel, and more

[watchnerd]

If it works for you, fine. It does not work for me, based on the details. But, I suspect my classical library is quite a bit larger than yours.

I have about 30,000 classical tracks on my local NAS.

I don't know if that's bigger or smaller than yours, but it's bigger than most people I know. And large enough that I have a representative of tagging that ranges from good to awful.

 

[watchnerd]

Good point. I guess what I'm asking, more precisely, is whether Roon does its own indexing of the albums in Tidal - or does it just use whatever metadata or album classification Tidal provides them with? If so, garbage in garbage out. In Tidal and Sonos there is no way of searching for "Bach" or "Poulenc" and getting all the albums which contain works by these composers for example - not to mention the possibility do a refined search within these albums for specific performers etc. But if Roon does its own indexing, it's possible that it may be better than Tidal's own search system. And it may improve even more in the future.

Below are screenshots using the Tidal desktop UI (without Roon). I'm not advocating for or against this UI, just documenting for those who may not have seen it:

#1. Searching on "Bach"

#2. Drilling down "Johann Sebastian Bach" (much more extends below the page):

#3. Search on "Bach Cello Suite":

I don't have an example of a case where I know Tidal has a certain classical performance and I haven't been able to find it. I'm not saying it's not possible, I just haven't encountered it yet.

 

[Sal1950]

I have about 30,000 classical tracks on my local NAS.

Quick question strickly out of curiousity.
In Classical music what is considered a "track"?

 

[watchnerd]

Quick question strickly out of curiousity.
In Classical music what is considered a "track"?

That varies a lot.

For a symphony, it's usually a movement.

For shorter pieces like sonatas or overtures, it may just be the one 'song'.

For opera, it's all over the map -- arias, leitmotifs, dialog. Operas probably have the most 'tracks per hour' of anything.

 

[Sal1950]

That varies a lot.

For a symphony, it's usually a movement.

For shorter pieces like sonatas or overtures, it may just be the one 'song'.

For opera, it's all over the map -- arias, leitmotifs, dialog. Operas probably have the most 'tracks per hour' of anything.

AH, So you make it up as you go along. No wonder no one can create a meta database to make you guys happy.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Quick question strickly out of curiousity.
In Classical music what is considered a "track"?

That varies a lot.
For a symphony, it's usually a movement.
For shorter pieces like sonatas or overtures, it may just be the one 'song'.
For opera, it's all over the map -- arias, leitmotifs, dialog. Operas probably have the most 'tracks per hour' of anything.

Actually, it is much worse than that. I have many pieces of music which are "tracked" differently on different recordings. When you raised the issue of how many "tracks" you have, I ran over to my server to looke up how many I have and realized that this number is less meaningful to me than the number of "albums," even though that is also somewhat mushy.

 

[amirm]

On a lot of classical music the tracks actually cause interruptions. "Gapless" playback is therefore a requirement in media player. We (Microsoft) could not implement it for years because Philips had a patent on it and wanted a lot of money to license it to us!

 

[Sal1950]

"Gapless" playback is therefore a requirement in media player. We (Microsoft) could not implement it for years because Philips had a patent on it and wanted a lot of money to license it to us!

Dang, learn something new every day here. LOL
Really, had no idea that gapless could have some kind o f patent issues.
Its a mad mad world we live in.

 

[March Audio]

I agree with Amirs initial points about Roon, but I will add that one of the major things for me is the way Roon alliws you to discover new music.

The rich metadata leads you from one artist to the next. With the Tidal integration I have never been listening to more new music.

Any issues with the way Roon lists the music ( I prefer a folder based view organised how I like it - Roon dont do dat) I Ssimply go and edit the metadata for the tracks.

To my mind no other software comes close, not even same ball park.

 

[watchnerd]

Wow, we got way off track from the DSP topic!

Executing a U-turn.

@dallasjustice I've never used a convolver for living room. What's the best tool to make a file to feed into Roon?

I have an Umik microphone.

 

[amirm]

He uses Acourate. http://www.audiovero.de/en/acourate.php

 

[watchnerd]

He uses Acourate. http://www.audiovero.de/en/acourate.php

Aww, crap. It needs Windows. Don't really want to fire up a virtual machine just for that...

There must be some Linux/Unix/Mac OSX alternatives...

 

[Sal1950]

Aww, crap. It needs Windows. Don't really want to fire up a virtual machine just for that...

There must be some Linux/Unix/Mac OSX alternatives...

Yea, we don't do no stinkin Windoz

 

[Mivera]

Unfortunately the up-sampling suck so far. But I shared some constructive feedback so hopefully they will be able to beat freeware soon:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/dsp-up-sampling-features-in-roon-1-3/19293/70?u=miveraaudio

It would be nice as the GUI is slightly better than Daphile.

 

[FrantzM]

I agree with Amirs initial points about Roon, but I will add that one of the major things for me is the way Roon alliws you to discover new music.

The rich metadata leads you from one artist to the next. With the Tidal integration I have never been listening to more new music.

Any issues with the way Roon lists the music ( I prefer a folder based view organised how I like it - Roon dont do dat) I Ssimply go and edit the metadata for the tracks.

To my mind no other software comes close, not even same ball park.

My opinion, EXACTLY!!

I have been too lazy to edit anything in Roon .. I just let it work its magic... I need to explore it and master it. Roon with these new additions, could become the centerpiece of a serious Music system.

 

[March Audio]

Unfortunately the up-sampling suck so far. But I shared some constructive feedback so hopefully they will be able to beat freeware soon:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/dsp-up-sampling-features-in-roon-1-3/19293/70?u=miveraaudio

It would be nice as the GUI is slightly better than Daphile.

Care to expand on that, your feedback wasnt very enlightening.

Personally I like red M and Ms followed by blue followed by brown.

 

[dallasjustice]

You only need Acourate to take the measurement and make the filters. You can use the filters on any OS since they'll be mono .wav impulse files.

At one time, I tried using OSX and Jriver and it worked okay. I don't know whether Roon works on OSX. If you are doing pro work and need filters for monitoring on OSX, I'm not sure how you'd do that since ASIO isn't available in OSX. I don't think Acourate Convolver works on OSX but I know you can use it on Linux in another form.

Aww, crap. It needs Windows. Don't really want to fire up a virtual machine just for that...

There must be some Linux/Unix/Mac OSX alternatives...

 

[watchnerd]

I don't know whether Roon works on OSX.

Yes, it works on OSX. I've been running it on a Mac Mini headless server for about a year.

 

[Sal1950]

Aww, crap. It needs Windows. Don't really want to fire up a virtual machine just for that...

There must be some Linux/Unix/Mac OSX alternatives...

I may be wrong but I thought the files could be created with REW which is available for free?
https://www.minidsp.com/applications/auto-eq-with-rew
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/78476446/REW 101 HTS Current Version.pdf

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Below are screenshots using the Tidal desktop UI (without Roon). I'm not advocating for or against this UI, just documenting for those who may not have seen it:

#1. Searching on "Bach"

View attachment 5395

#2. Drilling down "Johann Sebastian Bach" (much more extends below the page):

View attachment 5396

#3. Search on "Bach Cello Suite":

View attachment 5397


I don't have an example of a case where I know Tidal has a certain classical performance and I haven't been able to find it. I'm not saying it's not possible, I just haven't encountered it yet.

I do not have a track count, but my album count is > 3,200 in my main SACD library, mostly classical, mostly Mch. Many albums are multi-disc operas, etc.

Yes, thanks for your example. It goes to core philosophy about maintaining a library: either carefully edit the tag data for consistency and ease of searching or make each search for an album an adventure in digging through the inconsistent data provided by disc authors, as your example shows.

Yes, of course, there is considerable work in carefully editing the tag data. But, we feel it pays huge dividends in finding stuff later and in knowing what you have/do not have in your library. As I said earlier, if your library is not too big, it's no big deal either way.

We use JRiver. We can do text string searches like you, but we prefer to use carefully edited tag fields in our multi-dimensional database.

In our library, tags are maintained so that the Composer tag field has, for example, "Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)" in it, each instance identical in word order, spelling and syntax throughout the entire database. That value just gets quickly copied from earlier entries during editing. It is not retyped each time. Other fields are similarly maintained in a standardized way so that all occurrences of an artist or ensemble name, a composition, a record label, a genre are spelled identically and consistently. We believe in that approach so that we do not get the variations, typos, word order variations and just plain confusion that exists in the metadata supplied by disc authors.

But, if one believes in editing the metadata, I think there is still a big question about whether Roon is the right tool for that approach.