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If you are a music fan, you shouldn‘t be listening to mp3. It‘s as easy as that. There are much better audio options, we have huge possibilities in storage, there is no excuse really for mp3s. Musicians give their best, recording engineers give their best, labels try their best, no reason to destroy it afterwards.
It all depends on the quality of the codec and the bitrate. Blind listening tests show that most people can't hear a difference between lossless and mp3 / AAC at 256 kbps using a good quality modern codec, and once you get to 320 kbps, the listening test scores come down to random chance.
Here's an online listening test where you can see if this is true for yourself:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
I do agree, though, with storage space being so cheap these days, it just makes more sense to go lossless.
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So I am not sure if and what Roon will really bring to the table, or if it brings anything at all (yes, nice cross-references with various artists and albums, neat, but not essential... in classical music, that information is often already in booklets anyway) but I am willing to try it out for three months. :-D
Let me know what you think of it after the eval period.
Yeah, will do.
We use it extensively for demos here, since it passes all different formats at their native resolution to hardware that supports those resolutions. It's optimized for sound quality above all else. It also has a very good DSP section for EQ and other effects - often it can be used to surgically fix problems with speakers that benefit from EQ.
It also lets you get into the weeds re: recording formats, codecs, etc.
That's all cool, though as I said, my setup is straightforward, my own music is on a NAS, and I use Qobuz for streaming.
Now my streamer (a T+A device) just plays everything I throw at its DAC... MP3, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, even DSD, so in my setup, I don't see how Roon would (or should) have any influence on the sound quality at all. It just delivers the files to my DAC? Nothing else to do for it.
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Actually, I doubt it will do anything for sound quality (though they claim it will).
Do you care if you can mix Qobuz tracks in with your own library seamlessly and into your playlists?
Do you care that their database links you to reviews, background info on musicians, composers, producers, etc.?
On my end, I always tell people - if you want better sound quality, upgrade your speakers, or make sure the acoustics in your room are decent.
Competent electronics have almost no effect on sound quality, nor should they. Their job is just to pass through the signal without editorializing on it. Not that hard to do. 
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Actually, I doubt it will do anything for sound quality (though they claim it will).
That would be an odd claim. Why would a FLAC/ALAC delivered by Roon sound differently than the same FLAC/ALAC delivered by MinimServer or Asset UPnP?
Do you care if you can mix Qobuz tracks in with your own library seamlessly and into your playlists?
Not really... In fact, that would probably be more odd... I usually listen to albums (or parts of albums, like a symphony on a classical album), and only have a few playlists for certain occasions. I do have a few playlists on my NAS and a few playlists on Qobuz, but nothing important, they don't have to mix... nothing I could not re-do relatively swiftly.
Do you care that their database links you to reviews, background info on musicians, composers, producers, etc.?
That seems to be the most interesting thing. But not that important. But the background information and "connecting the dots" feature is actually the most interesting thing about it.
On my end, I always tell people - if you want better sound quality, upgrade your speakers, or make sure the acoustics in your room are decent.
Competent electronics have almost no effect on sound quality, nor should they. Their job is just to pass through the signal without editorializing on it. Not that hard to do.
Fully agree with that, that's why I'm sure Roon will not effect sound quality. (Why would an ALAC or FLAC file played via Roon sound better? Makes no sense.... the bits and bytes arriving at the DAC should be the same?)
Now the one thing that can still make quite a difference in sound quality besides speakers is your amp, especially if your speakers tend to be power-hungry and the amp cannot sufficiently drive them.
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Posted: |
Nov 30, 2024 - 4:15 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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As someone who has thought about (not more!) Roon, I'm grateful to you Nick for having posted those images. Unless there's a way of breaking down those box sets into individual works within the main library then I know Roon is not for me. I have spent many hours building my music library (Lossless, within WMA and converted to FLAC for streaming using AssetNAS) and I want to see the "album" I'm looking to play without delving into a box set to find, e.g., disc 14, trs. 1-4 (from, say, 8).
Maybe Roon will provide this ... e.g. my library for the same work by Brahms reads from the menu options "Album Artist / B / Brahms,Johannes":
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Abbado/BPO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Ansermet/OSR]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Giulini/CSO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Giulini/VPO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Karajan/BPO/1977]*
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Karajan/PO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Kleiber/VPO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Klemperer/PO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Solti/CSO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Stokowski/PO]
Symphony #4, Op.98 in E minor [Wand/NDR]
Each "album" will be supported in AssetNAS by an image which is, wherever possible, the original LP/CD front cover.
Of these, only the Kleiber recording was bought as a single disc, others were from collections by Composer or Conductor or Label.
Will Roon allow you to see all recordings of this symphony (you have Chailly, Abbado and Böhm in those collections) or will you have to select via Conductor, Orchestra ... or Box Set (yuk!)?
You also made reference to Roon's selection for "Artist" and "Album Artist". For me, with classical (& soundtrack) the latter has to be the Composer with the performer (e.g. Conductor, Orchestra, Soloist) as the "Artist". Once these are mixed a library of thousands of recordings will be unmanageable. I also prefer "Brahms,Johannes" as this makes scanning lists far easier (e.g. SoundtrackCollector.com uses "John Barry", "Roy Budd", etc. which is more difficult to scan quickly).
If Roon merely reflects what's in your own library there should be no problem but if it seeks to standardise everything in its algorithm generated format, I'm definitely not interested
(*I usually only include the year to distinguish where required but here the 4 symphony cycle from the mid-80s included the non-digital 1977 recording - apparently Karajan did not sanction release of the later digital recording - and so I included the year for when I sort by Conductor as I have both recordings of each of the first three symphonies).
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Ah, great! I’ll be happy to share my experiences. A while back, I mentioned that I was planning to test various music server software. Since there wasn’t much response, I assumed the topic might not be of interest to most folks, which I completely understand.
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=157602&forumID=7&archive=0
(Maybe I transfer and continue it over there in the end.)
I’ve always wanted to try out Roon, but its trial period was only a week(!). That felt too short to justify the effort. Setting up Roon—especially without knowing how long it might take—only to have a single week to explore its features didn’t seem worth it. I don’t even listen to music every day, so a week isn’t much time to assess its capabilities. However, when they offered a heavily discounted Black Friday three-month trial, I thought, Why not? Let’s do this.
As MusicMad’s post aptly illustrates, we music enthusiasts all have different needs and preferences. There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to how music software should work or present content. We may share a passion for music—particularly film music, as evidenced by this board—but we differ greatly in how we want to organize and access our collections. So before diving into my experience with Roon, I thought I’d briefly explain how and why I organize my music files the way I do. Different needs, after all, call for different approaches.
For legacy reasons (I started with iTunes), all my music files are in ALAC format. It’s essentially the same as FLAC but integrates better with Apple devices and iTunes. Ironically, I'm on Windows and could easily use FLAC, but that's another story, and I'm hesitant to convert thousands of ALACs to FLAC. Either format is just as fine anyway.
Since classical music is a major focus of my collection—and iTunes was clearly designed with pop music in mind—I had to develop a system that worked for me.
Most casual listeners are satisfied with basic tags like “artist,” “title,” and sometimes “album.” For example, “Winter Wonderland” (Title) by “Robbie Williams” (Artist) from the album “The Christmas Present”. Very few people bother to include the composer (Felix Bernard, in this case—I looked it up because my tags are meticulous ??). While I think composer information is valuable, even for pop music, many listeners are content with just “artist” and “title.” But as collections grow in complexity, spanning multiple genres, the limitations of this minimal tagging approach become evident.
I still use iTunes to curate my collection because if I can make it work there, it usually works everywhere else too. Programs like MusicBee allow for far more specific tagging, but many other platforms don’t fully support those additional tags. For instance, iTunes now lets you tag classical music with “work,” which looks great in iTunes but might not display correctly on a car stereo.
My Tagging Requirements:
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Tags must work seamlessly across devices—iTunes, my home stereo app, Android music players, my car stereo, and so on.
Clear Identification: For pop music, “Englishman in New York” by “Sting” might be sufficient, but for classical music, “Allegro” by “Haydn” definitely isn’t.
Consistency: Tags must be uniform (e.g., always “Ludwig van Beethoven” rather than a mix of “Beethoven, L. van,” “LvB,” or “F.J. Haydn (1732–1809)”).
Classical music collectors often face the challenge of managing multiple recordings of the same piece. Consistent tagging helps keep everything organized. For instance, I own three complete Beethoven symphony cycles conducted by Herbert von Karajan, each tagged to distinguish them:
Album: Beethoven: Symphonies / Karajan (1977) (or 1963, or 1984, depending on the cycle). This helps differentiate one cycle from another.
Album Artist: Ludwig van Beethoven. Since iTunes uses “Album Artist” for folder structure, I use this tag for composers in classical music. I prefer “Ludwig van Beethoven” without inversion (e.g., not “Beethoven, Ludwig van”), as it looks cleaner, and I use sorting tags to ensure it’s filed under “B.”
Artist: Herbert von Karajan: Berliner Philharmoniker. Ideally, there would be fields for multiple performers, like soloists, conductor, and orchestra, but most programs don’t handle that well.
Genre: Classical. Unfortunately, not all programs support multiple genres.
Year: 1977 (the recording or release year).
Title: Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21 I. Adagio molto - Allegro con brio. For generic titles like “Symphony No. 1,” I preface the composer’s name for clarity.
Unlike MusicMad, I prefer to keep boxed sets intact. For example, my Karajan Beethoven cycles are tagged as single albums (e.g., Disc 1, Disc 2, etc.), rather than splitting them into individual discs or compositions. I then often still give the individual discs individual cover images. This reduces clutter and makes browsing easier for me, though I understand why others might prefer a different approach.
The way it looks in my iTunes: Boxed Set Covers:
The way it looks in my iTunes: individual Covers for the various discs:
I typically don’t split discs into separate albums, even when they contain multiple works. This is partly practical: tools like PerfectTunes help me periodically verify disc integrity (e.g., ensuring bit-perfect rips), but only if the disc is complete.
Finally, My First Impressions of Roon:
I’m still exploring it, so I don’t have much to report yet. However, I noticed something strange right away—where is Jerry Goldsmith? When I searched under “composers,” he didn’t show up. That’s odd because I expected him to be listed there. It turns out there’s a setting for “show only classical composers,” which seems to exclude Jerry Goldsmith. Hmm… we’ll see how this goes!
Nice clean UI. The setup was very easy. I installed it on my QNAP NAS, set the directory for the database (on an M.2 drive) and directed it to the folder of my music. It started to create the database and it did find my main streaming unit right away and works.... Easy basic configuration! So now I can do some testing.
Some albums show up double currently, perhaps because I have them on my NAS but also marked as favorite in Qobuz?
Some things I noticed right away:
1. Roon changed some of the covers I have. (Roon did NOT change the files, just displayed its own covers... don't know yet if that is configurable, there are a lot of settings.)
2. Inconcistency:
The Nic Raine recording for HOURS OF THE GUN gets the year 1967... so that's the year of the original film.
The Karajan Beethoven recording gets the year 1993... which is the neither the composition nor the recording date but the remastering year for that particular recording from 1984.
But hey, I'm just starting and trying it out.
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Posted: |
Dec 1, 2024 - 2:54 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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Thanks, Nick, for all the info and the images ... these are very useful in helping me to understand how this interface works. I am left with the big question, though: what would Roon bring to the table for me? I can access all albums in my library (now>12,00 albums / 87,000 tracks) to stream by album title or via album artist or, indeed, "performing" artist, year or genre, often using a combination (e.g. my wife often selects an album from the classical album artist by seeking year ... but is wary when the album is, say Cello Encores [Fournier/Lush] as she knows this may include works from more than one year).
Similar to you, I started this journey ripping CDs and then finding a way to catalogue them. For me, having been conversant with MS Windows I opted for WMA, initially streaming to a Logitech Squeezebox. It was only when I upgraded to a Hi-Fi streamer - and found to my horror that it did not accept WMA - I found how to convert my (then) small library into FLAC.
Classical works, and to an extent, Soundtracks (which at that time were the majority of my collection) created problems which is why I decided to use "composer" as the album artist even though this is contrary to how CDs (and downloads) show the info. Also, Various Artists never seemed to work consistently but happily this no longer causes me sleepless nights
Another issue revealed by your images is the amount of space wasted ... it's as if the screen you're presented with is the back of an LP sleeve. For me, my control points are iPhone and iPad (also an old iPod which does work if I don't unplug it!) and so space is at a premium. With some works it's difficult to see all the relevant info and I fear a screen, such as those above re: Karajan or Hour of the Gun would mean I'd not see what the tracks titles, etc. are.
Hence, I'm unconvinced as to Roon's usefulness ... or perhaps have more firmly convinced myself that Roon is not for me.
Thanks again for all the info, etc.
Mitch
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Thanks, Nick, for all the info and the images ... these are very useful in helping me to understand how this interface works. I am left with the big question, though: what would Roon bring to the table for me?
Good question. We both have extensive collections and already spent some time considering tagging and how we want our music to be organized and presented, have set up a music sever and configured it to present the music in a way that we want. We have done a lot of the work that Roon is designed to do for you already, so obviously, it brings less to the table for us than for many other people. If you have a cluttered, unorganized music collection with non-unified tags, Roon seems to be able to bring it into an organized and presentable form with just a few clicks. That's pretty cool, even though it is of no relevance for you. Not sure if there is much that Roon can do for us that we don't already do.
So far, I quite like the interface and that it is amazingly simple to set up (if you have the hardware) and works. It immediately found my (Roon Ready) streamer and everything worked out of the box as expected.
I will post my next "Roon posts" over in this thread, as this has more to do with the technical capabilities, so it's not constantly up on the "film music" side of the board:
https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=157602&forumID=7&archive=0
One thing that I just discovered and will try out next (haven set it up yet). Roon ARC
So you can play your entire own music collection from anywhere via Roon, which seems to be pretty nifty feature I admit. I don't think I'd pay the hefty Roon price tag just for that, but it is a good feature. I'll try it out.
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If you are a music fan, you shouldn‘t be listening to mp3. It‘s as easy as that. There are much better audio options, we have huge possibilities in storage, there is no excuse really for mp3s. Musicians give their best, recording engineers give their best, labels try their best, no reason to destroy it afterwards.
It all depends on the quality of the codec and the bitrate. Blind listening tests show that most people can't hear a difference between lossless and mp3 / AAC at 256 kbps using a good quality modern codec, and once you get to 320 kbps, the listening test scores come down to random chance.
Here's an online listening test where you can see if this is true for yourself:
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
I do agree, though, with storage space being so cheap these days, it just makes more sense to go lossless.
That listening test isn't all that useful for me, as all the sounds would come out over built in laptop speakers on my side. My computer just isn't connected to any higher end speakers or headphones. But apart from that, I will say that it's a misconception to think blind tests are in any way sufficient to sway one to listen to MP3s or any other inferior sound format, if better formats are so readily (and often cheaper... let's face it, Qobuz often sells high-res files for less than Amazon sells MP3 files of the same album) available. The mere knowledge that it is an inferior sound format is already enough for me to not consider that. Just because one could not distinguish some MP3s from a lossless or high-res file doesn't mean one could never distinguish any MP3 from a lossless/high-res file of the same quality. Just because oneself would not be able to do that also does not mean nobody would ever be able to do it. I did make a blind listening test between CD and MP3 format years ago, and there were cases where it was easy to distinguish between the CD sound and the MP3 sound, interestingly especially in chamber or solo instrumental works rather than orchestral works. Pop music was the most difficult to discern I admit.
But, most importantly, very often, imperfections in recordings and music files become only evident if you really know what to listen for and focus on it. But once you have heard them, you can never "unhear" them again. Lossless rips at least help you there: if it's an AccurateRip confirmed rip, you know it's not the file, but that it is on the original CD, so you don't have to worry about it, nothing you can do about it. That's what happened to me with the imperfection at the opening track on the 50th anniversary release of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. It was an AccurateRip confirmed file, so it's on the CD, nothing one can do about it. Move on.
And last but not least, even if hearing is lost one day due to age, or maybe you become deaf on one ear, that would be no reason to switch to MP3 or mono and think "it's good enough". I don't even consider myself particularly audiophile. For me, it's about listening to music without fuzz, I don't spend too much time thinking about formats, gear, or setups. In fact, that's one reason I pick only lossless or high-res files, because I don't have to worry at all about whether any sound information is lost. It's not, period. So it's worry free. The mere idea of the possibility to listen to an inferior sound format would be enough to impair listening enjoyment, regardless of whether any difference is directly heard.
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After trying out Roon for two weeks now, I have to say I like it and enoy it quite a bit.
It was easy to set up, and once I worked out some of the kinks, it has a nice UI and presents my collection in a nice way.
It had no obvious problem with how I tag my music (there were some kinks to work out because of some idiosyncrasies in my collection, but that's on me, not on Roon), despite some hard pushback from some folks in the Roon forum, who insist that unless change my way of tagging classical music, where the composer tends to be in the "Album Artist" tag, I will face grave danger and Roon will sooner or later break down and implode or something... I could not quite figure out what the worst case scenario is supposed to be... which doesn't seem to be the case anyway, as Roon never objected to my tags at all.
It is highly configurable THANKFULLY does have a folder view by now (there were some issues I would not haven known how to correct were it not for folder view), and it can streamline your music collection with your streaming service in pretty much any way you seem fit, which means you can view it separately, or as one, or as one but with markers identifying where an album is located.
What I really like is the "focus" section, where you can zoom in on parts of your collection to all kinds of criteria.
That way, I found out I have six albums with MQA encoding, I didn't even know that. My system doesn't have an MQA encoder (and now, since MQA is more or less history, it doesn't seem to matter), but Roon automatically unfolded MQA and sent it to my streamer... nice. That is actually a unique benefit I haven't yet replicated with other tools, that Roon makes your system all of a sudden MQA compatible. But I have only six MQA albums, and who knows if there will ever be more, so while Roon compatibility is a nice touch, it's certainly not more than that: a nice touch.
The way Roon presents my own rip of La-La Land's THE SWARM
So yeah, so far I like Roon, it's certainly a good thing to have a few months to try it out (no way one can get to the bottom of this in a week, unless one is retired and doesn't do anything else). It's certainly worth some money too, but so far, I don't see it is worth the price they are asking for. Yes, there is a lot of work in it and it has some nice benefits, but it's not as if you can't get most of it for a lot less with other tools or configurations.
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Posted: |
Dec 21, 2024 - 4:36 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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Nick, notwithstanding my (current) view that I see no reason to introduce Roon into my Hi-Fi streaming set-up, I've enjoyed following your descriptive notes - far more info than I've gathered from elsewhere. Thank you.
Not specifically "Roon" but a query which has taken time to emerge from my cluttered brain, re: our distinct approaches to Box Sets where, I understand, you keep the collection together - I break them down into the original albums ... indeed, I'll split albums up into individual works if this seems appropriate (such as two symphonies on one album).
But, back to Box Sets, how do you access - via your control point (iPhone, whatever) - a particular work? e.g. if you want Karajan's 1982 recording of LvB's Sym #6, I assume you know which Box Set to access ...
... but if you had (the wonderful) Deutsche Grammophon Mono Years 1948-1957 collection, surely you wouldn't recall all of the works on the 51CD set? It doesn't matter to me if I select, e.g., Elly Ney's 1956 recording of LvB's Piano Sonata #31, Op.110 which Box Set/CD it's from: I can see the work in my menu under LvB or Elly Ney (or year but I'm unlikely to know that without checking) ... but how would you find this, the last work on CD40? To complicate matters, Sonatas #14 & 23, included on CD40, are from a different original album.
It seems to me as if you have another menu level to go through - or is the "Box Set" merely the Folder in which those recordings are held on your NAS and when you access a particular work the control point menu looks beyond that folder at the "Album Artist" or "(Performing) Artist" - provided these are correctly tagged - and it is merely the Box Set image which you then see (I replace this with original album sleeve images where I can)?
Just wondering ...
Mitch
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Hi Mitch,
I can just show you what I mean. First of all, I know there is no ONE way to tag and sort classical music; when iTunes started back in the day, it had certainly foremost "pop" music in mind, where you have a "Song" and an "artist", and even composers are an afterthought at best. Whereas in classical music, you have the composer and often several artists.
So I know some people break up their recordings in individual works. The idea behind that is that a "CD" or "album" is an artificial "container" anyway to transport the music, so unlike say a pop musician who may have created an "album" as a work, in classical music, Beethoven composed his "Symphony No. 6" as a work, not "an album" with the Symphony and maybe another symphony or some overtures or whatever. So they practically make individual albums out of the "works". Which I think is a logical step and perfectly "legitimate" (I use "legitimate" here just in the sense that I can see the consistent logic behind it; obviously, any way anyone wants to tag his music is perfectly fine, whatever works and makes you happy).
When I say that I keep my "box-sets" together, I meant I'm doing this for "practical" reasons. I find it easier to navigate through my collection if some boxed sets are kept together and if I don't split up CDs into several sub-albums.
In case of the Beethoven 1982 recording of the Symphony No. 6, I would just scroll to the appropriate set, click on in and scroll the the symphony. That works on iTunes or MusicBee or my Streamer App or Roon. Yes, I could of course split this all up, and some people might prefer that. I prefer to keep some sets together, if like the "Beethoven" sets; find that easier to navigate around. What I do though is then use individual covers for the individual CDs, so when I scroll through a box-set, there are some additional visual identifiers.
Here is how the Beethoven set and symphony you used as an example looks in various applications that I use (always from the same files on my NAS):
MusicBee:
Roon:
Roon recognizes the album and uses its own system to categorize the symphonies here, as you see, it groups the works on a box set "logically" into symphonies (and overtures etc.)
Music Navigator on my Phone:
This is a (partial) screenshot from my phone of the app of my streamer. I can scroll to the Karajan 80s set, open it up, scroll to the symphony, and voila. The Individual different covers (visible top right in the MusicBee Screenshot) help to quickly scroll leven larger box sets.
I already had a screenshot to show how this looks in iTunes, so I skipped that.
By and large, I found my music collection easy to navigate like that... works for me at least. Since I use various players and apps, it's important to me that the tags work across the various platforms.
However, I am not ALWAYS keeping sets together, especially not if they are stuffed with all kinds of various recordings.
I don't have the set you mention, but if I had that 51CD set from Deutsche Grammophon, I don't necessarily think I would keep that all together. How I would sort this might depend on the contents.
I have some box-sets -- like a DG Guilini set -- that I separate though, simply because the contents differ greatly, so I list them as individual CDs/albums, so I don't ALWAYS keep all box-sets together.
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Posted: |
Dec 22, 2024 - 6:47 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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Thanks, Nick, for putting my misunderstandings aside ... yes, I now see that the details/content of the Box Set determine its cataloguing in your set-up.
I never went through the iTunes education - I did, years ago, transfer some recordings from my PC:WMA library to an iPod but this was never for posterity (and I recall, crashed the PC  ). I did, also, for a while have a (??? brand) mp3 player which I used when walking the dog but never found it satisfactory.
So, for me, I went straight into streaming by using a PC laptop hard-wired to a SqueezeBox Duo / Touch taking days/weeks/months to rip my then existing CD collection. And once I determined to split a CD into separate works (e.g. Grieg and Schumann's Piano Concerti) I stuck with this. I still make numerous amendments to make any particular album more suitable for listening purposes ... e.g the 101 CD EMI Karajan recordings Box Set has many tracks from some of the original albums split over 2 or more CDs. I've brought such recordings back together to recreate the original albums.
So one further (final) question, looking at your images: I can see that Roon would allow you to play Karajan's Sym#5 as a single work but does MusicBee ... or do you have to progam its 4 movements, or program-out the five movements of Sym#6 which follow on that CD? This, of course, emulates the user interaction with the original CD.
I wish I could find a way to produce an image of my iPhone/iPad control point menu but I no longer have a hosting site to which I'd post such images.
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Thanks, Nick, for putting my misunderstandings aside ... yes, I now see that the details/content of the Box Set determine its cataloguing in your set-up.
Yeah, so I use it in a way that makes sense, like "Beethoven" or "Bruckner" Symphony cycles.
So one further (final) question, looking at your images: I can see that Roon would allow you to play Karajan's Sym#5 as a single work but does MusicBee ... or do you have to progam its 4 movements, or program-out the five movements of Sym#6 which follow on that CD? This, of course, emulates the user interaction with the original CD.
Don't worry about asking questions, shoot away as much as you like.
I should note that I actually use neither iTunes nor MusicBee to play music, I use these only to tag, control, curate, organize etc. my music collection. Because my PC, as good as it is, is not really set up to play music. Its speakers are okay for watching YouTube videos but not for actual music listening.
All my music is on a NAS, where I access it with whatever app or unit I want to play the music.
As you noted, Roon allows for a lot of options "out of the box": to play just one movement, or the entire work, or the entire "album", whatever.
Other software varies, but I never found it a problem to just select four movements of a symphony to play, or an album. You can easily set "on the fly" what you want to listen to".
I have even created a "silence" album (it's basically an album of absolute silence tracks of varying length) that I use if I want to add a gap in a playlist (like, say, playing two symphonies of different composers in a row... I can add a short gap of a minute or two). So that's not really an issue for me so far.
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On my end, I always tell people - if you want better sound quality, upgrade your speakers, or make sure the acoustics in your room are decent.
Competent electronics have almost no effect on sound quality, nor should they. Their job is just to pass through the signal without editorializing on it. Not that hard to do.
Fully agree with that, that's why I'm sure Roon will not effect sound quality. (Why would an ALAC or FLAC file played via Roon sound better? Makes no sense.... the bits and bytes arriving at the DAC should be the same?)
Now the one thing that can still make quite a difference in sound quality besides speakers is your amp, especially if your speakers tend to be power-hungry and the amp cannot sufficiently drive them.
This is how Roon *claims* to improve sound quality. It's actually a fairly substantial list:
https://roon.app/en/sound-quality
Do I believe all those things actually affect sound quality? Not really. But where there could potentially be audible benefits:
Doing on the fly conversions from high rez formats to whatever resolutions the end unit supports. As you likely know, this can either be done well or poorly. My Roon system has five endpoints in the house: in my theater, in my studio, in the living room, thru the whole house audio, and in the bedroom. I also use Roon ARC in my car. The Trinnov preamp in my theater and the JBL powered monitors in my living room play everything at native resolution and communicate directly with the Roon software, so no issue there. However the whole house audio system is fed by an older Sonos system, which operates at 44/16. Roon knows this and does high quality conversions on the fly. In the car the same thing happens. IN my studio it depends on the project I'm working on, and in the studio and the theater the speaker systems are VERY revealing.
How audible all this is is open to debate, but like your point about mp3 vs. FLAC (or the like), it's good to know that quality is likely as good as it can be at any given time through any given source.
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Yeah, my setup is quite simple, so I don't suppose ROON is influencing sound quality all that much. Except perhaps for the unfolding of MQA for my non-MQA system.
Other than that, my Streamer/DAC handles everything you throw at it, DSD, High-res, ALAC, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, so there is no need for Roon to trancode anything (and it doesn't, as it recognizes that). The same bits and bytes arrive whether Roon is delivering or whatever.
How audible all this is is open to debate, but like your point about mp3 vs. FLAC (or the like), it's good to know that quality is likely as good as it can be at any given time through any given source.
Exactly. The thing is this: even if one could not immediately distinguish between a FLAC and a high-quality MP3, you will distinguish between a FLAC and a MP3 several generations down. (We've done it years ago 20 or 30 times, but there is a YouTube video where someone did a hundred conversion, always further down.)
That is the thing: One may not (or not easily) distinguish between ANY two immediately following generations of MP3 copies, but the difference between the first and the last are ENORMOUS. So it's also a question of where you want to draw the line.
I draw the line at lossy compression for myself (except for our cars... where I actually use AAC files.)
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That listening test isn't all that useful for me, as all the sounds would come out over built in laptop speakers on my side. My computer just isn't connected to any higher end speakers or headphones. But apart from that, I will say that it's a misconception to think blind tests are in any way sufficient to sway one to listen to MP3s or any other inferior sound format, if better formats are so readily (and often cheaper... let's face it, Qobuz often sells high-res files for less than Amazon sells MP3 files of the same album) available. The mere knowledge that it is an inferior sound format is already enough for me to not consider that. Just because one could not distinguish some MP3s from a lossless or high-res file doesn't mean one could never distinguish any MP3 from a lossless/high-res file of the same quality. Just because oneself would not be able to do that also does not mean nobody would ever be able to do it. I did make a blind listening test between CD and MP3 format years ago, and there were cases where it was easy to distinguish between the CD sound and the MP3 sound, interestingly especially in chamber or solo instrumental works rather than orchestral works. Pop music was the most difficult to discern I admit.
But, most importantly, very often, imperfections in recordings and music files become only evident if you really know what to listen for and focus on it. But once you have heard them, you can never "unhear" them again. Lossless rips at least help you there: if it's an AccurateRip confirmed rip, you know it's not the file, but that it is on the original CD, so you don't have to worry about it, nothing you can do about it. That's what happened to me with the imperfection at the opening track on the 50th anniversary release of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. It was an AccurateRip confirmed file, so it's on the CD, nothing one can do about it. Move on.
And last but not least, even if hearing is lost one day due to age, or maybe you become deaf on one ear, that would be no reason to switch to MP3 or mono and think "it's good enough". I don't even consider myself particularly audiophile. For me, it's about listening to music without fuzz, I don't spend too much time thinking about formats, gear, or setups. In fact, that's one reason I pick only lossless or high-res files, because I don't have to worry at all about whether any sound information is lost. It's not, period. So it's worry free. The mere idea of the possibility to listen to an inferior sound format would be enough to impair listening enjoyment, regardless of whether any difference is directly heard.
As usual, we don't disagree from a philosophical standpoint. I think the only point of "disagreement" here simply comes out of the two sandboxes we probably play in. I am posting constantly in audio and home theater forums, where you get all kinds of claims of HUGE AUDIBLE differences between lossy and lossless audio - usually from people trying to convince you to spend big money on big upgrades. This is what I am constantly pushing back against (which might be a little crazy on my part, because I am missing out on big profits by not playing this game).
Example -
Recently I conducted a poll on one of the biggest home theater forums, and it was the view of the overwhelming majority that there were HUGE audible differences in sound quality between streaming and 4K disc / Kaleidescape / Blu-ray. People were going on and on about how lossles "destroys fidelity and dynamics." I was called crazy for thinking otherwise (that's ok, I'm used to it - it happens a lot in the audiophile world, lol).
So, my company and I decided to set up a blind listening test between streaming from four different streaming services for the two titles everyone claimed had "HUGE AUDIBLE DIFFERENCES" - Top Gun Maverick and The Greatest Showman.
Guess what we found?
The big audible difference was simply a difference in volume level due to DialNorm being used on the streaming platforms. As soon as we equalized the volume level, people had a hard time telling disc from streaming at all. In one case a fairly large difference was heard, but it was because Amazon was streaming Maverick with a 5.1 mix vs. Atmos on everything else.
I wouldn't have even guessed that people were comparing audio that was -12 db down from disc and drawing conclusions from that. I mean, isn't it obvious you need to match the volume first before comparing? I would have thought so. But no!
Anyhow, that's the experience I come from, so it's the source of my comments here.
As for your point, I agree with you - just go with the best possible source material so you don't have to worry about potential problems. Even though we found that streaming audio can be quite good, we did notice that there were differences in picture quality (though even those were relatively minor). And of course with streaming quality can vary greatly from service to service and based on the quality of your internet connection. So, for the movies I care most about, I download them to my Kaleidescape server or buy the disc. That way I always know I am getting the best possible quality - just like you.
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