Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Hardware with Roon Application Roon Cataloguing

Chris, not as daft as you might think, but, I wouldn't recommend it.

I always had a native export folder and a couple of years ago I hit a fairly odd bug in Sooloos. An entire range of the library couldn't be accessed (K to L in my case).
Given it was a bit weird and we suspected a database issue, I reluctantly wiped Sooloos and re-imported everything. I had about 15,000 albums at that time.

When complete, my SB3 and SBT in minor rooms had access to 100% of the library.

Needless to say this took me about ONE WEEK to do. Painful!!! There are a bunch of things to watch out for with Sooloos import so it is slow.

Roon, just for comparison, would have taken 2 hours to read the same library.

Just for the record....the bug I had was that if you had 256 artists in a sub list of the library explorer view, then the list would get into a loop and you could not access it. This bug was fixed.

Or the Sooloos disc structure and file format could simply be abstracted by the NAS server on Sooloos store being modified to present a more normal file structure and serve up virtual files by recreating the missing meta tags on the fly or running a one off to add this missing info back into the underlying file.

So basically:

• A parallel share to Music2, with a revised folder structure containing symbolic links to the underlying music files.
• A one off utility to create the revised folder structure and tickle the underlying files with meta data
• A change to core functionality to keep the symbolic links up to date when adding tracks.
• A change to core functionality to not delete metadata when importing files from internal CD rip

I think if you have ripped via dBpoweramp etc and your files do contain metadata, then it probably would not be too difficult for a utility to come up with the revised share.

All beginning to sound like a masters in IT is required!

Why Icy box Russ? Apart from price. I though the preferred NAS set up was QNAP - but maybe that was Sooloos related.

I hope we are all going to get easy solutions soon, that will use our precious investments.

Regards Huw

Icybox is just a USB HDD unit. No IT dark arts there.

However, HQ will be well aware that there are many clients, perhaps just like yourself, who want boxes that "just work".

That's entirely reasonable and M will have to work this out. Or alternatively, Sooloos isn't broken so keep enjoying what it does. Migrating to Roon is certainly not mandatory.

Yes Nick I do suspect there are more like me and mine, who just want simple boxes to work and enjoy the music... Even my son who is a techie is highly critical of what we have so far - Roon wise I mean.

And yes what was wrong with Sooloos she cried - why are you screwing things up for us etc. Fair comment in a way.

I think it's nice to make progress but Roon without the needed Sooloos integration from M is a worry, also because this Forum suggest there may well be less "Sooloos" in future.

I also believe the launching Roon without tablet availability is a mistake for most of us. We don't want to cart laptops around the house. I have 4 listening rooms.

The need to toggle in and out of MS200 and Mac output is not winning any friends either.

It is not crystal clear by any means, and us poor souls with low bandwidth have to be very careful how we manage.

Best regards
Huw

Huw

The Icybox was just a cheap option for exporting your Sooloos library to, if you prefer you could buy a NAS (QNAP is not the only option with Roon), I will be copying the data from my Icybox to my NAS in the near future.

Russ

Yes Russ I gathered QNAP was not the only option with Roon but it is with Sooloos, so I thought about killing two birds with one stone
Regards
Huw

Huw

Good idea, I am not sure that QNAP will be the only NAS supported for storage with Sooloos when watched folders are allowed, it looks like it will be the only one if you also want to run core on the NAS, though quite a few of us have one or more core devices already.

Cheers

Russ

Huw, I share your concern. I have never wanted a computer in my living room, I work with the damn things all day, my living room contains art, not gear. And I don't want a typical computer interface -- JRiver is an exemplar of a great Windows 95 design, but Windows 95 was 20 years ago. And I do like boxes that just work. Meridian Sooloos does that well, and even there we are subject to the vagaries of networking.

But given that, Roon is interesting:
1. It builds on the great metadata model which allows serendipitous discovery and relationship navigation, not surprising of course since it is the same team.
2. The user interface is modern
3. Sound quality is good because it uses the standard Meridian end points
4. If the core and store are in a separate room, they don't have to be as pretty as Meridian gear.
5. There is hope that the computer complexities can be hidden. It will be challenging to achieve "consumer electronics reliability" in an open system. Roon is certainly not ready yet. But we have learned some things, it is not unreasonable to hope.

In the meantime, I keep both systems hooked up.

The wacky structure of the Sooloos directories is not what trips up Roon.

Roon is actually really good at reading that structure and can often get good hits out of it that even Sooloos could not.

The problem is when there is no metadata at all in the FLAC files on the Store, and the CD does not exist in any of the databases Roon uses.

Then all Roon has is unnamed, untagged tracks. It keep them together as albums, since the wacky structure allows for that, but it can't identify them because it have no clue as to what the tracks are.

If Meridian wrote out tags to those files, Roon would identify them correctly.... or, if Roon read the auxiliary files in those album directories, then they would present themselves sanely.

It is our plan to read the auxiliary files.