2 separate libraries

I’m not saying her music tastes are great, we just coexist with it. And both can listen to what we want when we want no need for two libraries.

I can see a lot of good use cases for this concept, but as suggested, I could also see it being detrimental to convenient use. I would want everyone to have access to anything, but also for there to be some means of protection. I would want separation of views rather than separation of physical libraries and be able to choose what is in my view.

This feature request also seems to be something that requires extension of the way user profiles work. There is also Roon Security via Profile -- aka "Party Mode" / "Do No Harm" which could be satisfied by means of a read only profile.

I think that extending user profiles to have collection that go beyond just private or shared playlists could be a good approach - some very quick thoughts for discussion:

  1. Introduce the concept of a system tag that is associated with each user profile - called it a user tag. These tags are used only to drive a user’s personal view of the library for browsing, search, and roon radio including any user feed on what the radio is playing. Like other tags, multi user tags can be associated with a single item. (Is one of them considered an owner? - probably too complicated?).
  2. This tag would be automatically assigned to library item according to some user actions from the current user profile at the time of the action: Adding to library from Tidal/Quobuz, Adding a radio station.
  3. Allow these user tags to be associated with music import folders, so music from that folder automtically gets the user tag during import.
  4. Add user tags collections (so that like playlists, they can be private or shared giving each user the means to organise their private view of the library).
  5. Metadata might seem to be a problem - I dont want to be managing other poeple’s import metadata, but if its wrong, I want to correct it, but I also dont want other to make correct metadata wrong - so I dont have a view of how this could work.
  6. Each user tagging is effectively a reference. Reference items cannot be physically deleted until all references are removed.
  7. Editing of a tag or a playlist etc from another profile requires it to be first copied into the current profiles unless it is a shared tag or playlist. However, I can see a use case where not all shared playlists and tags should be universally editable - ie share for read only, or share for anyone to change.
  8. Allow for a guest profile - these are effect party mode. It has read only access to other profiles, but unable to change anything that has an impact beyond itself. Once in party profile, a PIN is required to exit it (think like guided access mode on iOS).
  9. An admin profile - also PIN protected - it is the final arbiter of anything. It can force remove, correct metadata, maybe lock it down etc.
  10. Maybe all profiles could be optionally pin protected for entry and maybe exit as well in some cases.

These of course go beyond this feature request to encompass other possibly related ideas (related in that they could be satisfied by a single feature set or ‘epic’ for the agile practitioners here).

Another important consideration - for the techies among us - permissions based systems are well understood, however in my experience for non-techie users, they often just end up being a barrier to convenient use and can drive users away, so the intent here is to gain some segregation, some protection, but without generally imposing the kind of barriers and complexities that many permission systems end up imposing. Maybe think in terms of open source - anyone can see anything if they want. You can copy it and adapt to your needs, but you cant mess up the original without some arbitration going on.

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Proliferation of tags will take a hit on system responsiveness. Take a read of some of the users who have tagged everything in the system down to the track level.

Separating things by tags can get confusing and potentially increase support efforts. Keeping things silo’d eliminates those support issues and questions. And actually satisfies the OP request.

That is the way that it is now. The OP is rejecting that explicitly and wants an environment where things are separate. And, in threads other than Profile Security, I have actually discussed wanting separate libraries. The answer then, as I suspect it is still, is to have 2 licenses and run 2 cores.

Actually, your suggestions really are their own feature request and probably should move to its own thread. Let me know if you want it to and I’ll move it.

This is for Roon to deal with if that is a problem as I think it is not a problem that users should worry about in terms of describing how they may like the system to work (I havnt hit this, but if its a bug - its a bug). If Roon think this FR has merit, I am sure they would make the underlying mechanisms support the usage better if required, or find another mechanism that can. That’s their responsibility that I trust them to own - not ours :slight_smile:

I only mention tags as a concept that we are already familiar with, but please don’t take it literally to mean must use tags system - really - just whatever N:1 concept works. It is not our place to say how the internals of Roon should work, just ask for how we might like the external observed behavior to work.

I think you are also taking a single phrase out of the post as a means of dismiss it all :slight_smile: My point is the existing behaviour is still desirable, but I also agree with the original feature request concept of having some means of separating the experience for each user in terms of what portion of a whole that they interact with (physically separate libraries is an implementation detail that is maybe not for us to care about).

And you are right - as a work around for those who wish to do so right now - to libraries, two cores, two account etc is the way to go today. That is not a reason to dismiss they way it could work (if licensing issues allow for this - which they may not). However, that is a hard separation, and I dont think that is an ideal for a family either.

Anyway - my post was intended an illustration of external behaviour to give segregation for users in the context of some other related issues that could be solved by a single approach. It is not intended as a dictate for how it should be implemented. As such, I think it belongs here, not as a separate FR, or maybe you think this FR is only asking for a means of hard segregation? If so, then maybe this is different and more general? Thinking about it - maybe I don’t have a view either way :slight_smile:
Maybe if you moved this part of the thread - it would end up without context and thus be hard to read.

I would suggest the FR is renamed as N libraries (for a family) rather than two (for a couple), but I think we can understand that the concept equally applies.

That was the intent I got from the OP, maybe I’m wrong. I read it as wanting to open Roon, select Profile, and access a segregated and discreet database (aka library).

I guess let the OP decide then :slight_smile:

Hello there

Exactly. I’m not that kind of guy that will spend hours and hours of tagging files properly because of OCD. Instead I just want 2 separate libraries, independent and switch automatically between library A & B, without complicated options to setup. Goal is just to enjoy music, not get lost in settings. Hope you don’t mind this approach.

I’m beginning to think that this won’t be implemented because it seems today the only way is to buy 2 licenses and Roon needs the $$$.

Hello All,

New to the forum.
I’m just about to invest in a lot of Roon. And now I see this thread!!! Scary. My wife really – and I mean REALLY – doesn’t like some of the music I like, and I think this is a quite NORMAL situation. Somehow, somewhere, I received the impression that a FAMILY could break up via profiles all of our little loves and experimentations. Now I see that was a false impression!!! I can’t (and won’t be) buying two Nucleous devices just to support my wife and I, and not to mention the kids. I’m also afraid to hear the lifetime membership option may be going away (!!!) which I was going to purchase with my Core device – literally tomorrow (as it is holiday in the USA today).

Roon you have what seems a really cool product – why leave your users hanging with such limited profile configuration options – my wife and I purchase music together but sometimes we don’t listen together – and I really never listen to much to the kids music.

Coming from a background of many decades in the computer industry this issue seems just a real no-brainer. A college student with something less that a complete CS degree could UP your profile game in a very short time I would imagine – are you fearful it will get out of hand – so restrict profiles (and I mean good segregated and secure profiles) to a small number per license (10 maybe).

This seems crazy your users are discussing this so far into your game plan.

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Hi John,
Welcome to Roon Community, and I hope it won’t be shortlived!
How do you keep your music separated now, and how ‘separate’ does separate need to be? There is the case where one user absolutely doesn’t want another user to see or touch their library (and I can understand that), and then there is a case where you just don’t want to see the other stuff when you take your turn at Roon.
It doesn’t seem possible for the first case, but it may not be very difficult to achieve the second with Profiles.
For example, if the music is in separate folders it’s easy to segregate music using Focus and a Bookmark. Then only one view of the library will be shown.

Scott,
Thanks for the reply – I’m not at all familiar with the Roon interface at this point. As the purchase of the Nucleus is about 1/2 a day away (and hopefully lifetime memberships are not eliminated by Sept 3rd) I’m still planning to move forward with that.

What do we do today?? Haha, nothing impressive, we all have separate Apple accounts – and we airplay to multiple Marantz systems (non-roon-ready – except Airplay) and bluetooth speakers. But we want to up our audio game considerably. And the new editions: Roon Nucleus Core, Naim Uniti Atom, and possibly Buchart S400 speakers if the Atom can handle them (enough power).

Okay, but what you say “Focus” and “Bookmarks” – I’m hoping for my wife that her profile would take her imediately to her F&Bs – I’m not really into a strong secure separation between the profiles but I would think that would be important to several. And my family are not separate islands either – we do have a common sweet spot in the center (yes, my kids like -some- of my classic rock ;-)) It almost sounds as though I’d have to duplicate that common-ground into all the separate profile directories? Maybe Roon supports and follows file/directory symbolic-links?

I should really probably stay out of this discussion till I’ve actual used the Roon interface :wink: – I’ve been holding off to save my “first core” be the Nucleus.

No worries, this is what the community is here for. There is a lot to absorb with Roon.

One can use Focus to set up dynamic selections. This is really worth spending some time with. Note that it’s functions change depending on the context of viewing. If you are in Album view you get the widest selection of options. If you had each user’s music in its own folder it is easy to select a view by Storage Location, then Bookmark it. Then each user selects their own Bookmark and will only see that selection of music. Each time new music is added, the library view is dynamically changed. You don’t need to do anything.

If there is a lot of overlap, that might not work as well because each user would need to copy music among the folders (although, that is certainly an option). Tags let you identify almost anything. You can tag an artist, an album, a track, etc. Then you just select that Tag view and only that music will come into view. This is how I select new music that I think my wife might like. She clicks that tag and its her view of stuff to consider. Since each piece of music can have multiple tags, you can get use across different selections. Tags are tremendously versatile, but they require an action (which is pretty simple).
When paired with Profiles you can start to get close to the ideal state of totally separated libraries.
But you need to try this out for yourself. It may work great for you or it may not. But I’m pretty sure you are going to discover a ton of other attributes in Roon that you probably haven’t even considered. If you have questions, just ask. There are a lot of savvy Roon users here with a lot of experience and backgrounds.
You can do that today with what you have on hand, and just port that database over to a Nucleus if you decide to go that way. With your background, it will be pretty easy to get things up and running. Best to have your Core wired though. Roon is a data sucking beast and needs robust network access to do it’s best.

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As mentioned earlier, using focus, bookmarks is a palliative. What we need is 2 separated librairies. I’m beginning to believe that it was not implemented to pis people to buy a second licence. We haven’t heard from Roon on this yet, what is preventing this feature request to be implemented or at least reviewed?

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The problem with the focus approach to separate libraries is that things like Roon Radio will not respect that focus in picking tracks to play. The best solution to this is for each user to have their own database but that should not mean a second or third Roon core - some back end re-architecting of Roon should be able to accommodate separate databases.

In respect of how one then points Roon to different libraries, I’d think something like this could work:

Folders trees: his, hers, kids, common and any variation of these eg his & hers, dad & kids, mom & kids etc… Each profile is then pointed to those parts of the tree the profile user wishes to incorporate in their database.

@Support

Please, one account, two users/profiles, two virtual libraries… PLEASE!

It is fine both users share the same “fisical” library, the HDD, but having album from Tidal added to the same “virtual” library (fisical + added from Tidal from that specific Roon profile) it is a kind of nightmare… when we select a user then every activity can be tracked/registered in a separate dedicate flow/history… when we change the user selection the “virtual” library will not be contaminated by choices of the other one.
.
… I’m not a software guy but I think it shouldn’t be an impossible task to achieve, just add automatically at the history (automatically, don’t ask customers to use complicate work around… it has to be easy, otherwise we would have choice to stay with Windows) a tag about the profile and, later, when we profile is selected, apply a proper filter…

Netflix is able to do that and they don’t ask us any powerful computing hardware (just a TV, not NUC or more), why you don’t?

… I have the feeling many many Roon customers would be happy having this feature
.
Thank you in advance for your positive reply.

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Totally agree with you. I was so fed-up I deleted all the music of my gf, but I haven’t told her. I’m in trouble. :flushed:

Please Roon make it happen :sob::sob::sob:

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Your will up to date? :rofl:

The focus and bookmark method is a true jury-rigged workaround that doesn’t go very deep. Yes, you can get a single display of a portion of your collection. But the rest of Roon doesn’t honor that - searches, radio, etc. And as mentioned above, if there is overlap, you have to have copies in both folders. Also doesn’t support multiple streaming service logins per profile (I don’t think?). It’s a partial-whole-house solution at the moment. J River does it pretty well.

That said, it’s probably not a minor project and there may be higher priorities (fix whatever slows Roon so dramatically). But that said, there is little excuse for not having a set of read-only profiles that cannot delete files or modify existing playlists or tags.

Hi All,

Thanks for your interest into this feature request. We’re always actively thinking about different ways that customers use Roon in cases such as these, but we have nothing to announce at the present time. Thanks again for the suggestions!

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Thanks for communicating on this. Hope this will be looked upon. :hugs:

Beyond just using different user profiles, multiple libraries is really the only way I’ve found in any management software/system that effectively deals with a collection that contains both Classical and other types of music. Interacting with Classical is just different in kind than with other music, and there is almost no occasion I can imagine where searching, browsing, or other library activity needs to cross the divide between the two (and in fact actively interferes with each).