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

Hi Dave, glad you find it useful.

I'm not at my PC right now to be 100% certain but cover art setting are in options/meta data. You have to open the menu settings for that. Simply select the size you want
E.g. 2000x2000.

Note that it may not always find such a size so you sometimes have to check all the options that it finds and select the one you prefer. As per the guide it takes only a few moments to do that.

Select "prefer local data" in your Sooloos import setting and it will default to you chosen cover art.

I'm currently re-ripping the majority of my collection with dBpa V15, then importing via file import. Is anyone getting Album Reviews currently automatically? Any magic to looking up the Allmusic data discovered yet?

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the quick reply. I found the setting - I was fooled by it being in Meta Data ...

Cheers
Dave

I can't help sharing a positive rant.

I got my MD600 installed yesterday and have been ripping in spare time since Wednesday evening.

I'm at 70 albums now, and after some initial twists and turns learning the basics, I've got the hang of things. At full tilt, I can rip a CD in about 4 minutes, including fumbling and dropping the disc, spilling wine on it, choosing the best cover art and checking the metadata. It's nice that you can fine-tune imported albums with Control:PC later on, after seeing the results on the iPad.

I was a touch nervous that the ripping process might be a bit clunky, but it's been pretty good after a short learning curve. I shudder to think how long it will take me to get all my CDs ripped, but the outcome is so good that I'm happy to invest an hour a couple evenings a week while listening to beautiful music.

PS. I now understand fully the value of having an iPad: the UI is simply gorgeous! I'm finding that I interact more with albums now than I did with CD cases, partly because of un-readable spider writing (eyes in their late 40's) and because there's now a lovely clear graphic right in front of you, with extra info about artists, composers, engineers etc.

Against my expectation, I think in a few weeks' time, I won't be feeding many CDs into the mouth of my 808.3. I'm a very happy man ...

Cheers,
Dave

IME, on rock/pop albums, which AMG seems much better populated with, that seems to work OK.

My classical CD cases, though, are still out in the room for reference, as Sooloos seems to find little to no info on artists, engineers, or sometimes even composers for classical, in my experience. That and multi artist/composer albums, or compilations, seem troublesome to deal with, especially with the old problem of no track level metadata (another reason my CD cases are still in the room) but YMMV depending on collection/needs/expectations.

Having spoken to Meridian support about these issues in the past, it appears Bob Stuart himself (having a large classical collection) also finds it wanting in this regard, at least that's what I was told on more than one occasion.

Join the Last FM Sooloos HH group to see what you and others are playing and have played. From there, you can follow links to artists songs etc to explore as you listen.
So even if the review material is insufficient, with the iPad app you can really dig into your music.
Chris

Thanks Chris, I'll try that

Apropos of nothing, my Last Fm Scrobbling got turned off in October. I don't look at it very much (obviously) but I assumed it was switched on. Back on now (I had to select zones).

I sometimes have a look at my own personal Top100 charts over time. Interesting to see what evolves in my listening habits.

Just downloaded dBpoweramp and had a question. With the FLAC Encoder settings what do people use? Setting 5 - Recommended or Lossless Uncompressed?

What sort of Level does Control:PC use?

I have always used level 5 (the default I think) with no issues. Enjoy, Chris

I use the default (5). I think I played around with max (9) for a while, but it took much longer to encode for not a massive incremental benefit. It all depends on your priories though.

IIRC, there is no DECODING performance penalty going for maximum FLAC compression; it's a clever algorithm in that sense.