I’ll add a Hallelujah to playlist improvements!!!
4 Likes
What would be great is if there was a stand alone tag menu bar (certainly plenty of negative space in Roon’s UI to add one on every screen). So one click and it brings up a list of existing tags you can add to (and a blank field if you want to create a new one), another click on the wanted tag and you’re done (and no need for yet another click to save, except perhaps if making a new tag). It’s the somewhat onerous process of doing anything in Roon that keeps many of us from utilizing it as much as we should. As Shawn says above, it’s a hobby, not a job.
3 Likes
Yeah, like instead of saying “Not Available” because there is a refreshed copy on their database, just replaced it with the current one. A bit annoying working through playlists finding dead links and find ones that work.
4 Likes
The whole point of Roon is not to do this. Roon defaults to ignore user tags, as it deems it’s own superiour. Everybody who cares about tags runs its own tagger. These often do music related file management, too.
Roon also does not touch user data, and this is for a reason. Doing that opens a can of worms. Just think of what can go wrong. So better leave that to those that know that business. There are quite a few.
1 Like
Well, yes. And known limitations of search. And of filters. If all this very powerful machinery worked well, I imagine there’d be less demand for folder browsing. Certainly seems like a review and rethink of the database philosophy is a good idea.
And the bizarre UI problems. They are currently generating four different UIs, if my counting is correct: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. They’re all slightly different, they’re all implemented against OpenGL, I think, and they all break in various ways. (The solution to the volume increase bug (“sensitive pixels near the volume increase icon”) kind of boggled my mind.) Why not a Web UI? Because the Web doesn’t run on OpenGL, I bet. Maybe time to rethink the UI architecture, as well.
4 Likes
What’s the point of having user tags then? Aren’t they just another tool for the user to arbitrarily group things they want to find easier? Then why not make it easier to add items to those tags then? Or maybe we’re talking about different things?
And there are cases where Roon’s intrinsic genre tags are wrong. Very wrong. For example, the new Andre 3000 ambient album that I’ve had on heavy rotation. No matter how I change the genre tags, if Radio starts afterwards it does so with Outkast or similar rap, which is all wrong for this release. Talk about killing the mood.
2 Likes
Nobody wants the original user data touched, just the occasional poor Roon data. If Roon wants to dumb down the software for the masses, then they are barking up the wrong tree, because the masses neither need nor want Roon. They want everything in the cloud, not having to run some finicky server that they have to buy or repurpose. Roon is for audiophiles, and we may be finicky and even prone to delusion at times, but we are not stupid.
1 Like
We all are wrong from time to time ;-).
The music industry / producers could have provided correct tags to musicbrainz. They decided not to to. Blame them.
Not touching user data does mean just that. They do not touch your files. But they store whatvever you tell roon in the roon database. So if you enter a different genre it should be right there and it should be used if roon is told to do so.
I’d consider it a bug should that not be the case.
1 Like
I’ve been thinking a little more on why I’m still attached to the folder view option, and I wonder if it comes down to being somewhat of a visual learner. I actually still keep most of my large CD collection in a tall chest of drawers in our living room. These days I don’t actually pull them out to play very often, but there are times where I’m trying to locate a specific disc that I can’t remember any title or artist information for, but I can literally see in my mind that it was in the 3rd drawer down, and had a red cover with a dog on it. Crazy, right?
I’m the same way with books, and I would never think of replacing my bookshelves with a searchable card catalog. Even with the ability to add every possible micro-genre tag to my files, if I can’t actually see their organizational structure, I’m limited to my own memory of how I might have grouped them.
I’m perfectly prepared to acknowledge I’m probably very much an outlier in this particular bell curve.
9 Likes
This limits you to exactly one organizational structure. Tagging lets you rearrange with ease.
Now that would be an interesting browsing UI! An image of shelves with the spines of CDs arranged on them. Hover over one, and the full metadata pops up in an overview panel. For the spatially conscious listener.
2 Likes
Didnt iTunes try that with cover flow years ago.
2 Likes
I disagree. I’m happy to also be able to search by every other criteria inside of Room, including when I’ve added my own tags. I just want the folder view as an additional option. The fact that Roon can locate files in my library without me specifying the path shows that the actual physical directory structure doesn’t limit search.
I understand you don’t think that folder view is a good way of accessing library content. Respectfully, I don’t think you can convince me that it shouldn’t be desirable for me either.
1 Like
JRiver has a version too. Seeing all of them at once is a little overwhelming, although kind of fun to revisit cover art you haven’t seen in a while.
Wasn’t the iTunes Coverflow just a fan-out sequence of covers? No real spatial arrangement, not even 2-D. Not even the spines, just the covers.
I think that’s all valid stuff and everyone thinks like that sometimes, but book libraries still introduced index cards for a reason because at other times it’s necessary too.
The problem isn’t having both kinds of views. The problem would be if manual folder-based organization were to impact/limit what could be done with the metadata database because it would have to contend with all the manual schemes people might (and will) cook up.
I still don’t know if the danger is real but I understand if it isn’t taken lightly.
4 Likes
Absolutely agree. I would never want folder view to break existing functionality. I hope with the new corporate mandate and money they can find a way for them to peacefully coexist.
1 Like
Coming soon to Roon for Apple Vision Pro!
2 Likes
Sure. To each his own.
1 Like
In traditional archive practice there is a strong notion of something called ‘Respect des fonds’, in short respecting the order which in which they were originally collected and organised.
Personally I see a place for both.
Tagging is great for genre, moods and and ‘bookmarking’ (ie. ‘listen later’ or ‘jazz favourites’ style tags) and obviously tags can be nested.
But there are times where a stronger hierarchical structure to the user interface seems more appropriate, or at least useful as a supplement.
For me playlists is one such area, I probably have a hundred or so playlists, being able to store them in a relatively shallow hierarchy, 2 or 3 levels deep with long(er) descriptive names than I might use for tags, feels useful and intuitive (assuming the UI is well designed).
In the case something like Archived Radio shows, Podcasts and other non-album content, a nested folder like structure with a ‘breadcrumb’ style navigator/visual aid would allow a user to quickly and visually ‘drill down’ (or up) to a particular show ie. Radio Station->Show->Season/Year/Month/Week.
In the above example, each of those tags on their own might not be particularly helpful ie. ‘Season 4’ is only really useful (and possibly only makes sense) when shown in the context of its parent as a ‘breadcrumb’.
Obviously you can implement a folder structure with tags, but I’d never want to filter my library by the tag ‘Season 4’ and get back the Season 4 episodes of any show in my library. I’d only ever want to filter by Season 4 of a particular show. This is where using tagging to manage a folder like structure breaks down.
What I am describing is more about how the UI could afford for a more nested based interface for drilling down though a users library, without having to manually setup loads of nested tags to act as ‘pseudo folders’ which you may or may not want to be displayed as part of your regular list of tags, rather than a literal replication of the desktop folder paradigm.
In short whatever UI improvements Roon does (or doesn’t) implement to handle the browsing of user’s (file systems based) folder structures, it might be useful if those UI paradigms could be used elsewhere in Roon to browse playlists and non-album based content, alongside (or in addition too) regular tagging.
After all, in 2024 when we could all rely purely on tagging to organise our bookmarks and desk based files, Most of us still fall back to using folders (possibly alongside ‘tags’ and ‘metadata’) at least some of the time, because in many cases that is still the quickest, easiest & most useful way to file things away for later discovery.
5 Likes