Before discovering Roon, I used Logitech Media Server (LMS) to manage my musical library. For personal convenience, with LMS I used a “work” oriented tagging, particularly for classical albums: the Album tag of my files contained the work of the composer, and not the actual album title. This allowed me to easily identify (and play) works in LMS (as well as to list the different versions of a same work). Moreover, this tagging had the advantage of being very flexible: whatever the album and the genre, I could decide myself how to organise the “works”. For example, I have a 3 CD set of Procol Harum (the 30 Anniversary Anthology) that contains 4 of the group’s original albums as well as some rarities and unreleased titles. With LMS, I did not tag this album as “Procol Harum - 30th Anniversary Anthology”, but instead, entered in the Album tag the name of the original album to which the file corresponded (one CD containing two of the original albums). For classical albums, this way of tagging the Album tag has an obvious advantage: it allows to easily organise classical albums according to the composers’ works.
With Roon, I decided to do things differently, and to tag my files according to the album’s name, thinking that Roon could identify, within one album, the different works. Generally, it is the case, and I really love the Roon’s approach. But for some particular cases, it is not satisfactory, and I would have appreciated more flexibility regarding the way I can manage the works (and, because the definition of a “work” may vary according to personal criteria, the possibility to decide by myself which tracks belong to a particular work).
So, I have a few questions:
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Would it be possible to create a work manually, and to decide which tracks are to be attached to that work? One advantage of that possibility is that it would allow the user to correct some errors due to albums that are misidentified by Roon; it should also allow to “force” the recognition by Roon of two different versions of a same work (e.g., I have different versions of the violin concerto by Beethoven, and some of them are not recognized by Roon as corresponding to the same work).
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Is this “work” approach the good way to deal with CDs containing more than one original albums, and to identify (and name) within one CD the original albums that it contains (see the example with Procol Harum above)? Otherwise, how could we make these albums “visible” in Roon?
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Many rock and jazz CDs contain one original album plus bonus titles. Generally, I like to play the titles corresponding to the original album, and not the bonus titles. I thought that considering the original album as a “work” (as far as Roon allows the user to designate this album as a “work”, which is for now not possible, I think) would allow me to easily play this album (without its bonus tracks). Am I right? Or would there be a more appropriate way to do that? (I do not want to make a playlist for each of these albums…)
Sorry for this rather long message, and thank you for your answers!
Thierry