Now that I’ve been buying and downloading music, I’m trying to figure out how to manage the files. Apple Music doesn’t seem to have a good way to discern between Apple tracks and owned tracks. Considering moving streaming to Spotify to draw the line. Also tinkering with Roon…
@kordumb I use tags in the Grouping metadata. I note ‘Bandcamp’ as a tag in the Grouping category for anything I purchase, and then have a smart playlist that pulls only songs that contain ‘Bandcamp’ under Grouping.
@kordumb I haven’t tried it yet, but you could probably also create a smart playlist that excludes any ‘Apple Music AAC’ files under Kind, which should leave only music that’s locally on your drive(s).
@MDonaldson what format do you usually download from Bandcamp? I’ve been using ALAC, but am not really an audiophile so not sure what is really “the best”.
@kordumb I usually do ALAC just to 'future proof' the files (if I want to encode them in other formats someday) — but AAC is pretty solid if you're staying in the Apple ecosystem and don't need audiophile quality. (On most speaker setups — including the office setup where I do 90% of my listening — you can't really tell the difference between ALAC and AAC tbh)
@kordumb If you're buying from Bandcamp, you may as well download ALAC, which is lossless just like FLAC, and you can downconvert that to whatever lossy format you want anytime. And Roon is awesome, btw. It's the best way to listen to stuff you download!
@twelvety I’ve been really digging Roon, it’s beautiful, but at the price I don’t know I’m getting that much use out of it. Mostly playing out to Sonos from my laptop with it. Do you have any experience with Plex’s Plexamp? Looks nice, a bit cheaper, and on-the-go is a huuge feature for me.
@kordumb whoa, I had no idea about Plexamp. On-the-go is one thing Roon cannot do. Roon really lives its best life at home, with a dedicated or at least always-on server.
@twelvety yeah I think I might have to dive into Plexamp a bit before deciding to pay for Roon, although the Roon forum makes it seem like someone has knowledge that on-the-go is on the product roadmap. Also this might be a dumb question, but I’m hooking up my Harmon Kardon speakers directly to my laptop through the headphone jack as an output for Roon and am curious if I need an amp or something in between to get the final output to Lossless... 
@kordumb Not a dumb question at all! If your HK speakers are regular stereo/hi-fi speakers and don't have a built-in amp, then yep, you'll definitely need some kind of amp to convert the headphone/line level output on your laptop to something the speakers can use. Your Mac is already outputting lossless if it's acting as a Roon player and you're feeding it ALAC. All you have to do is give the speakers enough juice. Any old or new amp/receiver with enough output watts (based on your speakers' minimum power rating) will do it.
Or, if the HKs are computer/multimedia/powered speakers, then they likely have a 1/8" stereo cable that can plug right into your laptop and you won't need an external amp to drive them. In either case, once everything is wired up, set your laptop output to between 75% and 100% volume to give the amp/speaker setup the right level to work with. Let me know if you get stuck or if things don't sound right. This is one of the reasons I was put on the earth!
@kordumb @twelvety That stupid Signal Path dialog in Roon ends up costing so much money. I want everything to be purple!!! :)
@jack Me, every time Roon tells me something is yellow-path: “But eMusic said it was highest quality! I have tiny nibbling anxiety now!”
@kordumb I think it’s worth checking whether your laptop can output 44 kHz at 24 bits. If it’s an older model it might only manage 16 bits, hence the change in the signal path indicator. You should be able to open the Audio MIDI app if it’s a Mac and check the settings. If it’s a PC laptop I have no idea, but there will be a sound card settings thing somewhere!
@kordumb Oh! I didn't realize you had SoundSticks. Those definitely do not need any extra amplification. I found out why you were getting the green dot. I was getting it, too, but I had never noticed it before because I always play Roon through devices other than my Mac.
I just posted a solution and screenshots on my blog. If that doesn't fix it, let me know!
@twelvety Purple Dot! Huzzah! Really appreciate you looking into that and writing up the solution, Phil. Still on the fence about sticking with Roon (giving Plexamp a month first), but the purple dot feels good.
@kordumb Ah, great! Yeah, the obsessive level of detail in the documentation on the Roon Advanced Audio Transport spec had me hooked before I even signed up.
