I have recently received a 60 day trial code for Roon with the purchase of some Audioquest gear from my local hifi dealer, so I signed up about a week ago to give this software a try. I have about 80% local files and 20% from Qobuz streaming service. Mostly classical stuff.
As my metadata are generally in pretty good shape, the scanning and album recognition on library worked reasonably well. Reading this forum I found many useful posts and threads that helped me make good headway.
But I am also coming across quite a number of issues that seem to be of a more general nature and have been reported by a number of people, so they seem to be more than just my specific ânewcomerâ issues:
The ones concerning me most are the following:
Roon often jumps back to the first page when browsing thru albums, artists or composers and having a bookmark in place. I find that extremely irritating.
I have a lot of opera albums. Many complete but also compilations of arias or excerpts/highlights. I saw there is a âOnly Complete Recordingsâ button, which I find very useful. But it does not seem to work properly. When I activate it, sometimes half my complete recordings disappear from view as well, sometimes just one, its very odd. Not just opera, also symphonies, oratorios etc. Of my 7 Verdi COMPLETE Verdi Requiems only 4 show up when that switch is active. From reading here, this seems a known problem.
In my Operas, Librettists are shown as âComposerâ. But the metadata have them correct as âLibrettistâ. From reading again, this also looks like nothing new.
On streaming (Qobuz), often compositions donât match correctly. On some operas, i am getting one âAlbumâ per Act instead one Album for the complete opera!! I have not found a way to correct this, while I do know how to do that with local stored albums.
Suggestions made by Roon for âTopâ classical artists etc are often pretty bizarre. It looks like artists on a certain Chinese super budget label (âNaxosâ) are getting some preferential treatment over truly relevant performers?
Again, there are many things I like with Roon after my first week with it, but on those issues listed above, each one on its own would likely be material enough to stop me subscribing once my trial runs out in early June.
So to make a long story short: any chance this might all gets fixed during the coming weeks?
NB: in case you ask, I am running lates Build 790, but nothing has improved on above issues.
I jest (sort of) obviously and everything you have mentioned are valid concerns but sometimes these are much more difficult to sort than might seem apparent.
I would bet a hefty sum of money at odds on prices that all these will not be solved in 60 days - but you may have found other delights of Roon in those 60 days that may change your mind and incrementally over time these issues above will undoubtedly be addressed.
Thanks for asking. Tomorrow afternoon between 4 and 6pm would suit me quite well
There surely are some nice things, but as I said those issues are deal breakers for me. I am looking to improve on my current setup and have no desire to replace that and spend money on something which seems not yet quite in full working order,
I have not even started to mention about smaller issues like all those oddly cropped foreheads showing up on artist pictures and the artist bubbles not being centered on the face.
Iâd be interested to know what you are currently using and does it come anywhere near Roon even with your highlighted failings.
Without digging, I think you will find all the issues you note are already raised so should be addressed.
If this list is a dealbreaker then give up now, there are several even more glaring omissions especially wrt classical music.
Also you will find the rate of addressing issues like you raise does tend to be slow. Out of interest the Show Only Complete flag is new in the 1.8 release , before there was nothing. It probably needs a little fine tuning
That pretty much nails what I am doing here. I am a happy user of MinimServer in combination with Lumin or Kazoo App since 12 years now and in no rush to replace that unless I find that golden egg that does it all so much better. No bells and whistles with MinimServer, but it just works, never had any issues. If something ever looks odd, I know the reason: My tagging is off
But now and then I like to look around. I am streaming more these days and combining local files and streams in one database certainly sounds like a sexy proposition. Qobuz is integrating with Kazoo and Lumin as well, but it is a separate tab from local library, so I always need looking into two different places to play something, which is not ideal.
Thanks for the hint about âonly complete recordingsâ being a new feature. But once-upon-a-time, it used to be that new features would work when they were made available in an official release? Iâve been around long enough to know that a lot of software has bugs and quirks but was a little surprised that they hit me in the face after just a few hours spent with this product.
I see lots of stuff in Ronn all over the various screens. A fair amount of it looks dodgy. âHeavy Metalâ in âGenres for youâ when I listen to Classical??? Maybe I can tinder that away, but have not found out how-to yet.
Sure I like more information, but only if such information is accurate and relevant. Otherwise it is not really âinformationâ but just stuff that occupies the screen.
Iâll just hang out here and play with it a little more and see where things are heading.
Hi @dylan and thank you for confirming that these issues are recognized and being worked on.
As to strange artists, I did not take shots and cant remember all the details but came across some strange artist listings when doing some browsing. I do remember on Mendelssohnâ âVariations serieuses for pianoâ I had an organist as top recommendation. I also saw a trumpeter somewhere, cant remember where but it was piano music. And then lots of unknown Chinese, apart form âLang Langâ who seems to be âstickyâ on anything piano related, just like âYo yo Maâ for Cello music.
On opera, I had several occasions with the work split into parts. One I remember was Callas famous Aida form 1955. But maybe along CDâs rather than Acts? I add photos later.
I was similar, I used and still use JRiver to my Cambridge Audio CXN, as well as Roon to my DAC.
I listen 50% + classical. Roon has its moments with classical but the best bit is the labour saving Composition and Movement bits. Not perfect as you have found but any wayward ones can be corrected and then âpreferredâ
Do you realise there is a monthly sub option, a 2 week trial barely scratches the surface do really appreciate what Roon can do. I did the obligatory trial then a year before I was really convinced.
Itâs not perfect , what software is, but it ha lot more good bits than bad.
My advice would be hang in there and see what Roon does for you after a few months. As @dylan says many of the âhit listâ are known issues and being addressed. Version 1.8 addressed quite a few classical specific niggles. Eg pick a box set and explore the Focus and Filter features they allow you to find specific compositions quite easily.
I am on 60 days trial, I would not have bothered looking at this for only 14 days. Evaluating complex software in such short time if you have just an hour or two a day to play with it is a non-starter. They should really allow at least 4 weeks.
Notes: This is a composition for piano by Bela Bartok. the first artist I get is guy with an electric guitar. The second is some jazz arranger. The third is a violinist. Only No. 4 is a pianist. Whether Helene Grimaux should be considered the topmost pianist is an altogether different story.
Notes: A piano composition by Mendelssohn. The Top Performer is an organist. Sophie Pacini? Why her? Joseph Kalichstein? No clue who he is. Where are the true top pianists?
Notes: Chopin preludes for piano. I get a trumpeter listed here alongside Lang Lang and Eric Lu. One would expect the likes of Sokolov, Pollini, Rubinstein, Argerich or similar here.
These are just 3 examples. I would say that from what I have seen so far, about 50% of all the suggestions Roon comes up with make little to no sense.
Could this get fixed or is there a way to switch this off, please.
That may well be and may make them the âtop performersâ of that specific arrangement but clearly not of Bartokâs original composition for piano, which is the one I am giving as an example above.
Donât get me wrong here, I do not disagree with you, was just trying to explain what might cause this (one example). I donât like that behaviour of roon as well, thatâs why I do not even look at the often wrong linkings to other music roon provides and would prefer a switch to turn that off.
When I am on any album and select the three dots at the right side next to any composition, I sometimes get âGo to compositionâ, which takes me to the composition page to find info, recordings etc.
But very often, I do not get this menu item at all. All I get is a âEditâŚâ menu item.
Question: Why do I sometimes get a âGo to compositionâ menu and very often not? How can I ensure that I get this menu next to each and every composition on any album of classical works in my collection?
This is currently very inconsistent and sketchy. Thanks for any help on this.
I tried the âunidentifyâ method that you described on the other thread on one album It did not make any difference. I even went one step further, deleted that album from Roon, cleaned my library, re-imported again. Still makes no difference. Cant get the context menu for compositions to show up.
I must say this all feels a bit like a âconcept studyâ of a control point that may work one day in the distant future - but unfortunately not as advertised today. I still have 5 weeks in my trial to grasp whats going on, or not.
Unidentify and re-identify with the same metadata does not help. You need to see whether there is an alternative version for the same album. If so, you can try that/them. Vinyl versions work best, the metadata (in my view) is anyway mostly unusable and you can enter them for that specific album. One âbugâ in 1.8 is that for the first track very often the âGo to compositionâ is not shown, however, when you browse the composer and filter for that track, in 80% of my cases the composition itself was there (using the vinyl version). Also, it is not very easy to track the compositions anymore as alternate versions on same albums are not shown on the stack anymore (as it was in the past). I asked whether this can be brought back (see my linked threads), but the guys didnât answer that.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
20
Well, letâs be clear: you canât. Roon works with the metadata provided by various sources, and the metadata for classical is all mixed-up. Lots of it is missing and/or incorrect. There is nothing Roon can do to fix that situation.
I think that in the cases where it can identify the composition and there is sensible metadata, it will give you the âGo to compositionâ link; otherwise, the âEditâŚâ link.
