Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Meridian Sooloos update

Yes, it's all Sooloos after all.
Just to be clear, Sooloos software is not purchased either, when you purchase the hardware you are just granted a licence to use the software ... you never own it.
Very wise to be cautious, but 'past performance is no guarantee of future performance' so it cuts both way really. The only certainties are death and taxes
Yes it will be, once launched.

Personally I'd not worry about the hardware too much, going forwards there'll not be much in it, what's more important the user experience of using the two software applications ... And that of course is for the individual to decide on.

OK me being the forum thicko again perhaps, but where do these time to import assumptions come from? Is there no need to import to roon or is this simply pointing roon at your existing library (in which case there's no difference in time 'cos it's already done?) Or is there no library in roon, you simply import a list of albums and it gets everything from Tidal? In which case does the roon subscription include the Tidal subscription or do I have to pay two people now to listen to the CD I have on my shelf but find more convenient to play on my Meridian/Sooloos system.

Maybe I've missed some significant step in the process but I'm genuinely confused.

Richard

Tidal subscription is a separate entity, as in Sooloos. Roon doesn't really import the albums as such, more of a database about them, to use a poor analogy, populated by Metadata found from it's own sources.

Hi Richard
My post was made with the assumption that a User was only deciding whether to invest in Sooloos or Roon NOW for the first time……..and this does apply to some HH’s even now [e.g. SpinalTap]………..and was stated clearly at the start of the post

So my starting point was if a User already had a 1,000 Albums ripped into iTunes or by dBpa etc., and those Albums were in a Folder(s) on his PC/NAS [again a typical situation], then he would have to do the following with each respective eco-system

Sooloos: User needs to Drag & Drop each Album in turn into the C-PC window…….wait for the Sooloos Album ID to occur……sometimes Manual editing of the Metadata is required for adding Reviews and Tags etc; checking Genre info; finding and copy / paste Higher Res Album Art; making sure Track Names and Sequences are the same; adding Artist Names to each track of Compilation or Various Artist albums……click to Import and the album tracks are then imported into the Sooloos Store’s hard drive storage…..an average of 5 minutes per album I always found was a good approximation to ensure that the Sooloos metadata associated with the Album didn’t need correction later…..some albums took less than that, and other albums more

Roon: User points the app towards the Folder with all 1,000 Albums in it…….Roon then uses its processes to identify each album….and the album gets added into the Roon library……..as such each Album folder stays exactly where it was and is not pulled across to another Roon hard drive…………all of this happens “unattended”…….and Roon is generally FAR better at recognizing the correct Album and pulling in the correct metadata than Sooloos is [IMHO and experience]

Roon pulls its metadata from Rovi plus several other databases and stores this date for each album in its own ‘database’…….none of this is in any way dependent upon Tidal …………indeed at present, I don’t have Tidal activated on my Roon system

As long as one pays to subscribe to Tidal separately, then Tidal can be added to either Sooloos or Roon…….but in either case, Tidal is NOT necessary to enjoy “listening to my own CD’s”…….but as mentioned by a few people above, there if a significant difference between how the Tidal service is integrated into Roon versus Sooloos

Roon also fails to identify plenty of 'Non Mainstrem' material in which case you have to visually go through your library looking for what's wrong, look at the album, decide it's wrong and use original metadata.

Once you have the basic data, there is no other data that makes all the connections in either Sooloos or Roon so great. At the moment we have no way of adding this, but when we can, we will have to do it manually.

This has been time consuming for me, so it's not always plain sailing.

Just Balance, Chris

Fine Chris
But I think we'd have to be careful about the term "non-Mainstream" IMHO

To many, non-Mainstream might mean anything that isn't a major seller or from the most popular artists

Unlike with Sooloos, where it couldn't identify many albums that I found quite easily in the Rovi / AllMusic database.......I've yet to come across an Album that was in Rovi that Roon wasn't able to identify on its initial pass.....or infrequently on a re-identify 2nd pass at the same album

And Rovi has metadata for 3 Million albums and 30 Million tracks.........so IMHO a lot wider than the common interpretation of "Mainstream"

Of course Roon isn't perfect......and has lots of room to grow.......but it's a lot further down that road than Sooloos is, with its well documented database limitations

Chris is referring to the CD's he picks up at LRB😃

My post was from my experiance, and I have had a good few miss id's. That's not a complaint, it's just how it is. So grooming is a reality in Roon as well if not to the same extent as Sooloos. Chris

Great to hear details of Sooloos developments.

It feels like an appropriate time to ask if John, or Bob, are able to give some indication of how far off we are from expecting track level metadata in Sooloos? It really would be much appreciated, as I have no desire to move outside Sooloos standalone architecture to a PC/Mac Roon-type route, but I really do want this feature to appear.

Hi Chris
I knew you were referring to your eclectic tastes for let's call them the "lesser known" artists........and all the Music Databases [Rovi, Gracenote, MusicBrainz] are ALL lacking in data when it comes to those kinds of artists......resulting in the manual insertion of metadata when adding these albums to an electronic library

This lack of data applies to Roon and dBpa to name two programs.......and it most certainly applies to Sooloos as we know

However, the main thrust of my post was to clarify for all readers what "Mainstream" actually means........and that in all likelihood, Rovi's 3 Million album database will cater to most of the albums that people will be adding to their libraries

But there will always be exceptions that aren't in those databases......including the lesser known and up-and-coming artists........as well as Classical CD's......as well as Jazz

But Rovi's [and therefore Roon's] 3 Million album database should be able to cater to the majority of our music libraries

I believe that Sooloos licenses Roons database although I'm not sure if its the same Roon server or just the data on a Meridian hosted server - I think it is the latter as when Sooloos metadata service recently went down the apology came from Meridian.

Yes Ian
Ostensibly, Sooloos relies on the Rovi database [albeit an internal version of it]

But look at how many posts on here have reported the issue of Sooloos not being able to identify a particular album........but the album is easily seen on the Rovi site

I think that just about everyone who has used Sooloos has consitently encountered these anomalies down thru the years.......and it's not due the database being down temporarily, as other CD's would ID just fine