More experience on ripping with RSA 780

[Henry]

I was happy about the function of ripping directly to an internal memory.
Therefore also ordered the CD-LW RSA 780 and bought a 2TB SSD.
Installing was no problem with installation and formatting. Unfortunately, the documentation in the instructions is completely insufficient in my opinion when it comes to the memory settings.
Something like that shouldn’t be the case with a beautiful product like this!
Ripping a standard CD wasn’t a problem either. But weaknesses are already becoming apparent with both double CDs and CDs from small labels.
Double CD:
There’s only ONE cover for it now. That was also found correctly. Unfortunately, it is only displayed correctly for one of the two CDs. When playing the first CD it stays black.
But looking at the file (on my PC) tells me that the cover is stored as a JPG for both.
A single CD that isn’t recognized immediately (Shazam seems to do that in the background?) doesn’t bring any useful results at all. I’ve had several different bad experiences here.
For example, there is no cover, but the artist and title are displayed.
Cover found, but artist and title are displayed with many character errors (wrong character set?). This is only the case on the device. When I look at the SSD via the PC, it looks fine.
No editing or deleting option of “accident” albums on the device.
Are there any solutions?

Thank you!

[ROSELOA]

Hello,

Would you let me know the name of the CDs with issues?

[alessandro]

@Henry @ROSELOA

I am afraid it’s not a case of a specific CD but - fundamentally - Rose software issues.

Having ripped hundreds and hundreds of CDs, I have experienced similar issues when ripping and reported these on the forum numerous times.

These are:

1. Rose does not recognize double albums so unless one manually edits the album number information BEFORE ripping (eg: edit in the album window something like ‘CD1’ or similar), a double album will end up been saved as a single one.

2. Some CDs are ‘hybrid’, eg: they also include a CD-ROM or a Video file at the end of the music files. Rose doesn’t like these CDs and - in certain cases - it freezes and asks for a reboot when one of these CDs is inserted for ripping.

3. Unlike many other ripping software platforms (eg: I-Tunes, XLD, etc.) Rose doesn’t offer choice between multiple options of metadata. Some CDs (particularly those of classical music) have multiple metadata options available before ripping when it comes to choice of the metadata. Rose doesn’t provide any of that. So, it’s often the case that a CD to be ripped is shown as having an album title in English but the song titles in Japanese (or another language) characters and similar messed up scenarios.

4. When a CD contains within album name/artist name/song title an hyphen, an apostrophe or an accent, it’s also likely to be saved once ripped by the Rose:

• split in two parts - the majority of songs in one part of an album and the other remaining songs/tracks in an another one

• showing all sort of character/type/font mistakes and errors on the saved data

• just to offer a clue to Rose’s team and as @Henry correctly highlights, when looking at the SSD via the Mac (or PC like in Henry’s case) the files look - generally - OK. They also look fine in the “Folder” option within '“Music” but - unfortunately - all the errors and albums split in two are fully visible in the App and in the “Album” folder within “Music” on the main unit display.

Both of these results are very frustrating as saved data cannot be deleted or edited, so - as in my case - you end up with a library scattered with albums that display plenty of errors, which is very annoying!

I have documented all these isses with pictures and screenshots in previous months and I’d be happy to provide more evidence to the Rose team, hoping that these issues get looked at, let alone being resolved.

And, just to repeat again, this has nothing to do with specific CDs as there are clear patterns repeating - over and over again - with a variety of different CDs (genre, type, age, format, etc.)

I cannot stress more how all this gets in the way on what I still regard as a superior listening experience which the Rose hardware provides, utterly sublime sound quality.

Unfortunately all these software issues are on-going source of user experience frustration and disappointment.

We live in hope.

[allan46]

one of the good points of cds is the price crash ,lots of box sets etc BUT in many cases meta data issues due to sourcing music. in the past ive spent time fixing it but dont bother now /cd1 cd2 cd3 etc can be a pain like you described . a collection of well over 4000 cds a few have the same problem

[Henry]

Hello Roseloa!
“Long Journey Home” produced by irish musician Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains from 1998.
Some gaelic titels/words sare shown correctly, some not.
For Example “Paddy’s Lamentation” > Paddy’s Lamentation

“The River” by Bruce Springsteen. Double CD from Columbia/Sony.

just CD2 shows a cover at the Rs201-Display, my phone shows the upper half of that cover.

German Artist:
Reinhard Repkes Club der toten Dichter: “Zweifach sind die Phantasien”
No Image at all but all tracks shown correctly

Thanks for reviewing!

[ROSELOA]

Hello,

About Reinhard Repkes Club der toten Dichter: “Zweifach sind die Phantasien”,

You can search for album cover manually.
Would you delete some part of the search word and do searching again?

---

Also, I agree with it’s not issues about certain CDs. Just in case, there may be a new pattern, so I would like to purchase the CDs that is available for purchase and check it out.

[Henry]

Hi there,
I tried to edit the cover of the CD on my computer. I searched for the picture on the net and added it to this album as “front.jpg”.

But unfortunately, this is what the result looks like. Before, the ROSE logo was always visible, now only when the CD is played. What’s the problem?

That looks all fine!

But what the heck?

Why does it all have to be so unsatisfying!?

[Henry]

And here is the next problem.
I renamed the third track although there was only an apostrophe before.

The result is now this!

The third track is now unplayable but still looks like this Paddy’s Lamentation on the RS201.
Did I do something wrong?

[aswiss]

Hi Henry

You can try to use a Software called “MP3Tag Editor”.
The name you see (wrong or correct) in a Flac file does not correspond to the file name.
Its a TAG inside the FLAC - this can be solved by modifying it with MP3 Tag.
I’ve done all my CD’s on my PC and with MP3Tag Editor due to have full control of all the TAG’s inside a FLAC Album. And you can Add the proper Album Pic directly to the Flac file - so the file will be plattform independent, and will display the Pic also when not connected to the web.
Yes, it’s more work, but eliminates issues with characters to be displayed by the device.
https://www.mp3tag.de/index.html

[aswiss]

And beside MP3Tag - I always do a cross check on discogs, to see if everything is correct.
BTW - here’s you example.

Various - Long Journey Home (Original Soundtrack)

Inside MP3Tag, you can mark the CD - and then validate against Discogs (or Musicbrainz).

[alessandro]

Interesting suggestion Adrian - @aswiss - thanks - in my experience (and I am a Mac user) - we cannot edit successfully the data of the FLAC files saved onto the internal SSD. When attempts have been made, similar horrors/mistakes to what @Henry has shown here do appear. I check and re-check FLAC files before I rip a CD directly onto the Rose or - even - before transferring a FLAC folder from the Mac to the Rose. Same issues, same problems. As pointed many times before, my Rose music library is full of these errors and even albums split in two parts.

Still no answers nor any indication from the team at Rose on whether this will ever be looked at, let alone fixed.

[aswiss]

I had a cocktail Audio X45 before - and started years ago with CD Ripping - so I had a lot of learnings during this period.
For MAC, MP3Tag is available as APP (https://mp3tag.app/ )

I did also check the quality and size of the ripped material, and compared to what I got with ripping direct on the PC. My files were a bit larger - but soundwise not really a difference.
All my files are stored on my NAS. My Central PC has the Roon Server installed and is attached with 10 GB/s to the NAS. Very fast (but expensive) solution.

You can copy all the ripped files to you PC/Mac, do the Tagging, and then create a separate Folder with your clean music.
Once your happy, you can delete the ripped material from the Rose. Keep in mind that it’s a good idea, to store your ripped material on an external disk for saftey/backup reasons.

Give the Rose Team some time - the nearly fixed all the issues over time - some quicker, some took longer, but got fixed.
I use Roon for the management of my music, it’s faster, contains way more possibilities than the Rose, but of course, requires an additional device running in your LAN. (you could use a Intel NUC or any other and install R.O.C.K which is a stand alone server based on Linux). Roon will also run on MAC.
Roon is capable, to awake the Rose from Standby over Network.
Back to the ripping, manual control over tagging delivers best result (but needs some time and work).
All my over 6400 Album are identified properly into my Rose DB. Took a bit more than 24 hrs to rebuild.

at last some words if you plan to do a logical structure of the Music.
I have 3 Main Folders
Music\Album
Music\Sampler
Music\DSD

Under Album, I created the alphabet (Album\A, Album \B etc)
next level is Artist.
Album\A\Aaliyah
level down is Album Name
Album\A\Aaliyah\Aaliyah
last folder Level is Format and Bit and Samplerate
\Album\A\Aaliyah\Aaliyah\FLAC (16bit-44.1kHz)
in this folder I store the music.

Looks complicated, but is very efficient.
\Album\A\Aaliyah\Aaliyah\FLAC (16bit-44.1kHz)\01 - Artist - Title.flac
\Album\A\Aaliyah\Aaliyah\FLAC (24bit-96 kHz)\01 - Artist - Title.flac

I you have different qualities of your material (like HiRes Version).

For Sample I decided to have genre as a primary structure.
something like 50ies-70ies, 80ies, 90ies, Rock, Pop, House, Dance, Disco, Electro etc.
Example
Sampler\House & Dance\De Maxx\De Maxx Long Player 1 Classics & Routine (2001)\CD1

Wish you good luck and fun.

[alessandro]

Thank you Adrian for taking the time to expand and explain. I really do appreciate your kindness. Very clear and very good filing/structuring method I would say!

Basically what you’re suggesting is to copy on my Mac all the FLAC files stored on RoseDisk and saved from the CD ripping I have been doing and manage these through a dedicated software such as Mp3tag. And, yes, like you suggest, this would be a way to ensure I can also have a back-up of the whole music library.

My concern though is that once all the cleaning and corrections have been done and putting back the files onto the internal SSD of the Rose, the Rose might still be likely to read all this info incorrectly again and show all the weird characters/fonts as shown in my earlier post as well as - potentially - keep splitting albums in two parts, which is one of the most frustrating and disappointing aspects of all this…!

For example, the albums ‘split in two’ (and I have so many of these in my Library!), look like one folder on the main file directory. They look fine. They don’t show any character/font error either. So, my hypothesis here is that ANY file (either CD rip or PC/Mac transfer) that is transferred to the Rose can be badly converted/read showing all the errors and this is primarily down to some problem with the Rose software.

Moreover, unless I decide to delete everything that is currently on my SSD, I was told by Roseloa here that files stored on the SSD cannot be deleted, nor edited - at least at this stage. So - as far as I know - I cannor cherry-pick and just choose the FLAC files showing errors.

Therefore, as a net result of all this, I can also understand why so many people here use Roon and thus bypass the Rose software…I just wasn’t expecting this from a Hi-Fi component that costed as much money as the RS 150 and - therefore - budget an annual Roon subscription on top of that to really enjoy it.

Like you say, it may be that the Rose Team will - in the future - fix this - eventually.

It would be just nice (as well as generally polite) to know that they have acknowkledged the problem and - potentially - give people like me an indication of WHEN they might be able to fix it, if this is something that they would want to fix.

So far, even when asking the Rose Team people directly (I have done this at least 3/4 times), all you get is silence and anything written on many other posts before this one doesn’t get any answer.

Thank you once again for your kind words of advice, Adrian.

[aswiss]

Hi Allesandro
No worries about my time - it’s part of the hobby

I agree with, that the useability of the rose is not relative to the price we paid.
The software is not able to build up Album with multiple CDs.
Reason here is, that the only scan for the TAG artist, and not first Album Artist and then Artist.

It only shows the first artist of the sampler of each CD. useless.
Offers no possibilities to have Album with artist seperated from a sampler.
Sorting is very limited. etc. pp

About the editing: Yes, it’s a better way to do the tagging on the PC/MAC as you cannot edit files directly and if, it has to be done manually by song - useless.

Roon is the best way to manage your local music, and offers the capability to expand the own collection with all the missing stuff, including showing the complete discography of an artist, when combining it with Qobuz or Tidal.
I see roon as additional device - and invested the 700 bucks life time to be Player Independant.
this is how it would look like in Roon with the same material

And I agree - certain things need to be fixed and optimised for the music Player (and other features).

I continued ripping CDs on my PC, store all my music after tagging on my NAS, and then they are read in roon - and I’m happy. And as advantage, Roon is able to wake up the Rose from Standby.
and you could also send it to standby from roon.
as a learning from the past, I waited for posts like these, before I buy the RSA780 - which is now no longer wanted.
I use my oppo203 over S/PDIF as a CD Transport, attached to the RS150 - works very good.

[alessandro]

Thank you Adrian once again.

The difference with what can be displayed by Roon when compared to the Rose is startling.

I have bought the Rose primarily because of its sound quality. I was hoping that ripping mine and my closest friends’ CD collections (a huge number of CDs…!) would be a much hassle free experience than what it has actually proven to be…and my library remains full of these errors and gremlins.

Let’s hope the software relative to the ripping and music file management/display processes will improve with time.

[aswiss]

Same for me - Sound (which is great) and the Display…

I have several other streamers with CD Rip function - at the end, doing it on the PC was the more effective way - specially when you plan to RIP lots of CDs.

But to be honest - just to try out things, I already know can be done easier on a PC, its a no buy for the RSA780 for me.
Wish you good luck with it - and enjoy music.

[Henry]

Hallo Adrian,
danke für die tolle, umfangreiche Erläuterung! Ich hab jetzt wegen der schlechten Erfahrunggen erst mal nichts mehr gerippt. Aber ich werde es sicher nach deiner Anleitung versuchen. Roon ist aber erst mal kein Thema für mich…

Hello Adrian,
Thanks for the great, comprehensive explanation! I haven’t ripped anything more because of the bad experiences.
But I’ll try it for sure following your instructions. But Roon is not an issue for me at first…

Viele Grüße,
Henry

[aswiss]

Hallo Henry

Wenn Deutsch kein Problem ist. Ich habe vor ein paar Jahren eine Anleitung fürs Taggen von Musikdateien geschrieben.
Vielleicht hilft es Dir.
Musik Aufbereiten mit MP3Tag

[Taiko]

Hello Henry
I use more or less the way of working of aswiss.
I bougth dBpoweramp to rip all my Cd’s to my pc, it is working very simple and in 99% of the cases you don’t have to edit the tag’s anymore.
But you can if needed. You can rip in different formats but I use only Flac.
Combined with the program you get PerfectTUNES; this is to look in your music libary for bad Covers and shows you other ones with better quality and you can update these bad one’s

After Ripping I copy all to my NAS with a 2x2Tb disc in Riad1 (always a copy if one is faiing)
And then I copy it to my Rosedisc and this works very well.

As Ripping Cd’s is time consuming it is better to have some copy’s of you music libary.

Hope this can help for someone