Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos - Rough guide to Ripping and Importing

Lossless uncompressed FLAC was all the rage with the audiophile community a while back - it gives you the benefit of FLAC metadata without the "supposed" drawback of CPU drain during the playback phase (and more like the size of a WAV file instead of the approx 50% compression of normal FLAC on the file server).

Sooloos will play back uncompressed FLAC (I had to test it to see if I could hear the difference, I Didn't!). I use compression level 8, which used to be referred to as "insane" but CPUs have gotten faster and RAM more plentiful.

I too cannot hear any difference (whereas I could on a previous Naim system, albeit very slight). My understanding is that any potential difference in noise floor due to processing more compressed files is removed from the equation in Sooloos by having the file uncompressed in the core then streamed to the endpoint. On the Naim forums at the time a popular thing to do was have the NAS decompress the file and then stream it to the NDX, with a similar result. I.e. On a Meridian system, don't worry about it. Personally I use the default 5 now.

Thanks everyone. I will leave it at the default.

I'm having a problem importing some files using Control:Mac (on Yosemite).

I download the FLAC files to my Mac and then import them into a TwinStore/Control:10 using Control:Mac over a wired connection. Most of the time it works fine, but some files will not import.

When I navigate to the folder in which the files are stored, select the sub-folder and then click 'open', Control:Mac starts extracting the tags and the progress bar runs from 0 to 100% as usual, but when it reaches 100% it goes blank i.e. it does not contact Sooloos database as usual and does not show the files as ready to import.

I have tried re-importing old files and that works fine so it is working for most files just not some of them. These are all from the same source i.e. Linn Downloads or HD Tracks and there is no pattern to what works and what doesn't.

I tried converting FLAC --> FLAC and that solved the problem for one album but not the other.

Any ideas?
Thanks.

Are any of them albums where the tracks have different sample rates?

Sooloos does not support these, the work-a-round is to upsample the lower once to match the highest.

Also check for any "odd" characters in the file names, that can be troublesome too.

Regards,
Carl

Thanks - not sure it's any of those because after posting I converted to Apple Lossless and it imported OK. Must be something to do with the FLAC encoding I suppose.

As I just recently got into Sooloos via a QNAP and am in the process of digitizing my music collection I have a question that may already have been addressed but I'm unable to find an answer.
When I rip my Cds that contain multiple artists using DB poweramp the song title and the artist both appear when I view the individual tracks on my PC but when I import it to ControlPC and view it the song titles appear but the artist name is not next to the song title.
I have tried ripping straight to ControlPC with the same result.
I have followed the instructions in this thread and ticked off the "use local metadata" box etc. when importing. Can someone explain what I might be doing wrong or is this just the way Sooloos is for multi artist albums.
Thanks in advance
Joe

Unfortunately, I think what you're referring to is the need for track level metadata in Sooloos. This is one of the most requested features, I believe.

We had a promise that something was in the works a year or two ago, but nothing has materialised within Sooloos yet, although I believe Roon might have it.

I might be out of date though, so I'm sure others will chime in if I've not described the current state of affairs accurately.

Yes - track level metadata is what is not importing. I could edit the data myself (which is what may be necessary) but I have about 35 multi artist albums and it is time consuming. I thought by using DB poweramp that ControlPC would just accept the metadata as is but it doesn"t.
I even asked my son (who works in the computer industry) to have a look and he was very frustrated by the Sooloos software.Now I further understand why Roon happened.
That being said I would still like to use the Sooloos program so if anyone knows of a way to do this - short of manually editing each album- I would appreciate the help.

Roon was originally Sooloos 3.0 before it was spun off as a separate company. It has track metadata, as requested at the time.

My imperfect workaround for this is that I use dBpoweramp for ripping and when I'm ripping compilation albums with various artists, I choose a separate profile whose settings manipulate the Title of each song to include the Artist.

The rule is set under DSP Effects / Actions and reads as follows:

IF Title=[anyvalue]
SET Title=[Title] / [Artist]

It doesn't replace true track-level metadata but at least I can identify and search for tracks by their artist when they appear on a Various Artists album.

I can provide addition screenshots and pointers if needed.

Soundserge

Thanks for the info I'll give it a try