Not quite. I’ve had some fun understanding the nuances of this…
In album browser Roon sorts on the Album Artist field. But how does it interpret that field?
Firstly, if, in that field, Roon can match a primary artist from those listed for that album, it will do so. This may happen for more than one artist. Having done so, if you have a primary artist at the beginning of that string, then the artist sorting by name rule comes into play and the artist’s last name is used.
Perhaps an example may help…
I have edited the album artist string to match the Primary artist links in the order I want. The album is sorted under W.
If I switch the order to Claudio Abbado/ Wiener Philharmoniker the album is sorted under A. Why? Because Claudio is recognised as an artist object and will be sorted according to the Last-First Sort Name field, which is “Abbado, Claudio”
Now suppose I wanted Brahms in there instead in the album artist field - “Johannes Brahms/Wiener Philharmoniker”.
Roon sees this as
and is sorted under J. Note I had not added Brahms as a primary artist for this album. Thus the first artist in that field, Brahms, has not been recognised as an artist object and so the whole field is simply taken as text, even though Wiener Philharmoniker is recognised.
Clear as mud? Logical when you understand the rules Roon is using. I wanted to elucidate in some detail so when you do the bulk editing, you achieve what you want.
I invite others with better knowledge than I of bulk editing in metadata editors to comment here.