Roon OS CDROM

Overview

Starting with RoonOS Build 175, CD audio extraction support is included: Roon OS will "rip" CDs.

Further stability improvements of this feature have been recently released with RoonOS (Operating System) Build 254.  You can verify which RoonOS build you are using in the RoonOS Web Administration Interface. Full RoonOS release notes (here).

This support is meant to be as hands-off as possible. Obviously, you will need to physically load and unload CDs, but not much else in terms of setup or usage.

This support is also meant to be used in conjunction with Roon, and not other software. You will find it lacking if you use it with other software.

Hardware Support

Many Roon OS devices do not have built-in CD drives, so you can attach an optional USB CD drive to the device.  This also gives you the option to try different CD drives for better extraction results. If you have a device with a free SATA port, you can also use SATA CD drives.

Please note that the CD drive needs to support Linux.

You can use a variety of CD drives that include DVD/BD/CD-RW/etc, but only CDs can be ripped.

Ripping performance and accuracy

Roon OS uses CD Paranoia to do the actual extraction. It runs with all the "paranoia" turned on. This means that your CD is very likely to rip accurately but at the expense of time. It can take hours to rip a badly scratched CD. It may end up failing anyway, but CD Paranoia will try extensively to accurately extract the audio off the CD.

Additionally, no errors are allowed to persist. If CD Paranoia determines it can not rip accurately, the whole CD rip will be aborted. Then it's up to you to try to clean/buff/de-scratch the CD or try another CD drive.

The AccruateRip database is not consulted, but there are external tools to help do this if you require it.

Disc support

Audio CDs are supported.

There are some CDs that come with a small "data" section; we've discovered that these types of CDs have a higher risk of not ripping properly. This being said, it might be worth giving ripping a chance anyway.

Another type of CDs that are much less reliable than normal CDs are rewritable ones: they tend to deteriorate with time, so decades-old CD-Rs might not retain the quality you've initially started off with. 

Data CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and M-Discs are not supported. 

Rip format and location

CDs will be ripped to FLAC format, with 1 file per track.

Roon OS will automatically place your successfully ripped CD’s flies into connected storage (internally or USB connected). NAS storage is not supported. If you need to rip to a NAS, we suggest adding a small FAT32 formatted USB flash drive (16GB or higher would be fine), and Roon OS will rip to that. Then you can manually move those files to your NAS.

If you have multiple drives plugged into your Roon OS device, the rip location will be determined by the following rules:

1. drive must have at least 2GB free
   
2. drive must be writable
   

Of all eligible drives you have connected, Internal Storage is chosen first, then the largest USB disk.

A list is made of all drives with internal storage being placed at the top, and then largest to smallest USB disks afterward. Disks with less than 2GB free are eliminated from this list, as are drives that are read-only. The drive at the top of the list is chosen automatically.

In the drive chosen, a folder will be created at its root, called `CD-Rips`. Inside that directory, we will create a folder called `CD-Ripped-YYYY-MM-DD--HH-MM-SS`, using the time that you started the rip, in UTC timezone. Inside this directory will be your files named `trackNN.flac`.

There is no way to choose a different drive, directory, filenames, or format.

If you use a USB drive, to ensure your ripped CDs are automatically imported into Roon, you will need to make sure the root folder or the `CD-Rips` folder has been added to Settings -> Storage.

Operation

If Roon OS detects a CD drive attached to your device, the web interface will display a new section called CD Ripper. If this is missing, that means your CD drive was not detected by Roon OS. This interface does not automatically update, so you will need to refresh the web browser for an updated status of your drive or the rip in progress.

There is a button on this CD Ripper section that can be used to eject the CD drive. This button will eject even if a rip is in progress.

You can start a new rip by inserting a CD into the drive and closing the tray (if it the drive has one). Roon OS will automatically begin ripping the CD -- no additional action is required. When the rip is completed, it will automatically eject. You can check the status of the rip by refreshing the web interface.

If the rip was successful, Roon should automatically import it and find rich metadata. This requires your storage location is set up to find the CD-Rips folder. If the CD metadata was not found, you will need to edit it by hand. Note: tags will not be written to the FLAC files.

If for any reason you delete a CD and try to re-rip it, you'll need to wait 24 hours before being able to rip it again. 

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