For those willing to get their hands dirty, a suitable SFF pc with DVD drive and an install of Daphile will give you a great ripper/tagging solution.
To be fair I have not had to rip anything in like 6 years or more, I did my CDs years ago and have not had cause to purchase in years. The last one I remember purchasing was Blackstar by Bowie.
What I really like about daphile is it will happily rip direct to network, which makes a lot of sense to me.
I find that it is but there’s a long thread going on the Roon forum highlighting deficiencies.
Roon uses various metadata sources once it knows what the album is and is very aware of things like composers and very importantly compositions.
Here’s a few screenshots. I chose Chopin from the Composer view in Roon.
You can see that each work is listed. If you touch on a work you will get to see where this work is present in your library (I have 8 versions of this) and also QoBuz/Tidal (there are 446 versions on QoBuz!).
I find this easy to use, you can easily filter down the list if required, here I have filtered on Etude
As always you are reliant on Metadata quality, but even if yours isn’t that good as long as Roon identifies the album correctly you are likely to find it’s reasonable.
Gazza,
Prior to your mentioning Melco I’d seen them recurrently brought up, but never thought much since dealer I’ve work with and those I’ve considered don’t carry line. Prompted by your remarks I went to Melco website and was met by deluge of what at least from distance seems like classical music storage turnkey. Do you own Melco gear, or have you known Melco owners who have found it convincing option?
Perhaps I should post this question.
My dealer prefers Melco and has a number of classical music customers. There are many on the forum who own Melco, such as @Darkebear who may be able to give you a better insight. You can also directly download from one-of the download sites, i think its Hirez audio…no need for a computer, just need to set up an account.
Trickydickie, thank you for your illustrated response, seldom see that.
How are you ripping and storing, via Uniti Core, or another way? And is end of your digital player Naim?
Thank you again!
@Stevesky @charlie.henderson the issue that the UnitiCore allows searching on composers and conductors but doesn’t allow the user to edit the metadata for these fields is frequently given as a reason why classical music listeners should avoid buying a Core.
The present situation is absurd and leaves the user totally in the hands of the person who notified Rovi of the metadata for an album and even if the metadata is correct, there are numerous issues, like for example the different naming conventions in different countries. W Mozart, Wolfgang Mozart, Mozart, Mozart Wolfgang etc. And that is not to mention those most unhelpful of words that crop up - “unknown“ and “various“. I could elaborate on this issue, which goes a lot wider than this one example, if you wanted me to.
I have previously lobbied a senior Naim software person, whom I won’t name here, on this problem when I was on a factory visit about a year ago. Several other forum members and @Richard.Dane will remember that when I mentioned this issue, the said software person replied “Is this your own opinion or a general opinion?” Well as I said then, it’s not just my opinion and I think the fact that Naim isn’t even acknowledging that it exists is hurting sales of the Core.
I would be happy to explain further off-line if that would help.
Best
David
Gazza,
Thank you for reminding me that Darkbear uses Melco. Can I request to reach him, I’d like his feedback on current Melco range, though I’m not predisposed to doing anything more than plugging in and turning on.
I rip using DBPoweramp and have a Roon Rock Server. Music is stored on the Roon server with a NAS for backup.
I have a Naim NDS. There’s a workaround using a bridge which allows the NDS to be used with Roon. All works really well.
There’s a cost of course as Roon isn’t cheap, I bought a lifetime subscription before the price went up.
I stuck Gary on my last reply to you, i am sure he will respond, though i am not sure how much classical music he listens to. Our french friend @frenchrooster is also a user and may like to comment.
David, thank you for your follow up. Happy to hear from you!
I’ve not done more than email Naim who said nothing of use and my dealer is like the three monkeys and took the money and ran. The bottom line is their justification for struggling with Uniti Core, or is best to walk away and sell as market allows. And have you personally addressed this to your satisfaction with alternate pathways. I was very impressed from skirting Melco’s site, but I don’t know what it looks like living with it under the covers and hopefully I’m prepared for the naked reality.
Good note David, i too have raised with Naim reps at my dealer to no avail.
Gazza, thank you.
Would very much like to get feedback from anyone whose used alternate systems. Regrettably wouldn’t have to do this if Naim were mindful of what I think is obvious.
Trickydickie, I thought Naim gear was now “Roon Ready?” Or is that only for current generation? Does new gear like ND555 come with bridge to Roon?
Current gear is Roon ready so it will work as long as you have a Roon server.
The legacy equipment is UPNP only so a bridge sits between Roon and the streamer and received the music from Roon and sends it to the streamer via UPNP.
Yes, I have the Melco. As Darkbear, Steve, Bertbird, Meni, and probably others.
However only @BertBird and Meni listen to classical music.
Bert should respond I feel, because personally I have no skills on metadata problems.
I listen to a broad range of music that does include classical, but I’d not count myself a classical ‘expert’ - I do know some friends who go into it somewhat deeper that I do. I know what I like and enjoy and that includes many classical items, both large-scale symphonic and intimate smaller groupings of players - solo piano and bowed string instruments seem to be what I play a lot of at present.
…but to the Melco - yes it does these all very nicely to my hearing of it - very neutral natural dynamics, good ‘start-stop’ of notes and natural harmonic decay. It was a lot better than a standard NAS, which sounded very murky, distant and colored by comparison.
My Dealer does all Naim stuff so the Core was also on demo, but the Melco had it in terms of immediacy for me - and that suits to my Active system set-up. Active tends to reveal timing problems so I like to remove them as best I can with system component choices - the Melco did that for me.
I have the earlier but very good Melco N1Zh-2 (6TB).
The later versions with external PS do sound cleaner and should be even better for classical. The cost to swap is not there for me in the SQ difference with what I already have, as it also does some aspects of ‘immersive deep-bass’ very well that I want to keep - it is easy to upgrade-away things you enjoy.
The Melco does get-on very nicely with the ER switch and probably other very good network switches so that aught to be auditioned too.
As to High-Res music - I’ve not had great success that way so far and find that how the music is mastered (simpler) has a vastly more powerful impact on the performance than the final ‘container’ of bit-rate/bit-depth it is presented as. All else being equal the Hi-def would be better - but unfortunately for a lot of music I like it is remastered and ruined before getting to hi-def, so I carefully select earlier ‘CD quality’ masters to rip and these are miles ahead in terms of everything on my system - silly-better.
But I think there is a lot more good classical and jazz music that has been done very well to high-def so these will be a lot better for the better mastering.
DB.
some are missing the key feature of the Core
the core also offers (which the Melco does not) a very high quality, low noise, and low jitter , stable SPDIF BNC output, which can be used with NDAC, or a Chord DAC.
I can only go by audition - my Dealer let me listen to Core feeding Naim Streamers (NDS and then ND555) via the non-Ethernet digital link vs Melco using Ethernet - and the Melco was clearly better in terms of what I value of immediacy, detail, micro-dynamics and timing.
At the time it was considered the Ethernet-connected Streamer should not have been performing better, but it did, for me. I have an all-Naim system otherwise, so I was biased toward preferring the Core, but Melco was better. I know people with Core you vehemently prefer otherwise so it may come down to personal taste and the rest of the system.
I’m sure the Core can work excellently as well, just worth having a demo if you can if considering both.
DB.
