I have a very large (156k+ trks) local library hooked to a computer on usb drives. I have a lot of files that are on the drives but I can’t find them anywhere in roon. Some cases, 3 discs show up and 2 don’t out of a set where they are all in the same folder. Others are completely absent. I’ve forced rescan and no change. Everything is using wired connections. Over 60% is classical and that is definitely more troublesome than the non-classical–especially multi disc sets. This is really frustrating and if I can’t get it figured out I’ll have to go back to jriver. Any suggestions? BTW I am not good at digging in and fixing problems which I now see may have been a mistake in starting with roon. The frustration level is outrunning the advantages of roon. so, HELP!
I originally come from Foobar2000, costs nothing and can certainly not less than JRiver
I walked around for almost a year rather frustrated because I knew too little about Roon and always saw problems. I then read like a champion, found solutions and my fascination is really great.
But it was indeed a big rethink and I have not abandoned Foobar2000, it can do other things better.
Here in the community there was a tip to start first with Songkong to find Roon best tagging.
See my post…may be related to your issue if Roon stopped recognizing a drive….
All drives are recognized. Random albums simply don’t show up. As I said originally, sometimes some of the discs in a set are missing. They’re in the same folder, they just aren’t findable in roon.
I even sent a drive to a friend with exactly the same albums. He couldn’t find some of the same albums that I couldn’t find. Some he could find but when duplicating his search method I could not find them.
Roon Core Machine
Windows 10,Acer,Intel I5-6400,12gig ram
Networking Gear & Setup Details
direct hookup
Connected Audio Devices
USB hard drives,Auralic Vega dac
Number of Tracks in Library
156,679 tracks at moment
Description of Issue
I have lots of albums that are not showing up in roon-DSD,FLAC, Some cases, 2 discs in a set are missing. How do I fix this? No apparent pattern.
Hey @Steven_Gladstone,
We’re so sorry we didn’t get a chance to reply on this thread until now. Please, know this is not a measure of our interest in helping out, rather a discrepancy: small team vs. volume.
I wonder, have you ever checked the Skipped Files area in Roon? That should give us an idea as to why the albums don’t show up in Roon.
Roon is exhausting. First, I have been dealing with Norris (of Roon Labs: Technical Support) so I don’t know if he is “Roon” or just a guy. Second, sigh, yes I have looked for skipped files. I uploaded some files to Norris and he tried them successfully. However, I still can’t find them through any kind of search. He gave me instructions and they didn’t work. I think at this point the only way I will ever get this figured out is to have someone more knowledgeable get on my computer and show me how to find the files. It doesn’t help that I ask a question and get a response 3 days later. This time it was on me because I was out of town but roon is so complicated that I honestly don’t know how anyone can use it without have access to an expert. I’m at about my wit’s end here so please help me get someone who can really show me how to do this. I learned how to program in assembler language quicker.
Hello. I’ve received no response from my last email.
Hey @Steven_Gladstone,
Thank you so much for following up on your last post. I can see how things can be disappointing on your end, when replies are so much delayed and haven’t resolved your issue yet… 
. I can only say we’re so sorry for both of these 
And now, to the troubleshooting (I read your conversation with Noris here, and I’m chiming in while he’s out of office this week). It looks like the last step was to search for those albums by “Mahler: Symphonies”. Can you please clarify which titles do not show up in the search? Could you please post a screenshot of the search result for “Mahler: Symphonies”?
OK. Here is what I get when searching Mahler(composer) then symphonies:
This is not even in the same universe to what I actually have in roon.
Now, here is mahler then SYMPHONY:
I’d like to point out a few things. First, the album that showed up from the “symphonies” search does NOT show up from the “symphony” search. Second, the order resulting from the “symphony” search is so jumbled that finding anything is extremely difficult. Third, the only orders that I can select for display are title(not useful for classical),date(useless) and popularity(give me a break).
I was working with Norris on the Klemperer recordings which include (on my drive) symphonies 2,4,7,9 in DSD. Only #2 shows up in this search although #4 at 24/96 shows up. Where are the others?
Searching for Artist:Klemperer with filter for Mahler gives this:
which shows 2 of 5 works on the discs in that folder-Das Lied and Sym 2. The Sym 4 shown is 24/96 and not from the DSD folders I sent Norris.
I have worked with a friend who has been using roon quite a while and he can’t figure it out either. He’s the only person I know who uses roon for his stored library but his is much smaller than mine. Because of these search problems, I can’t listen to a huge portion of my collection. And so far, every suggestion I have received has been either uselessly simplistic or just like the info above-it doesn’t improve my results. At this point, I honestly question whether roon is capable of dealing with a classical library. It sure hasn’t yet for me. HELP. PLEASE.
Hello. I’m tired. It’s been a week and I have received no response to this email, from either Norris or Rebeka. This is not an acceptable situation and the lack of response leads me to 2 possible conclusions: Either I am being ignored or there is simply no answer for this problem. I have subscribed to this software and had intended to purchase a lifetime subscription. Now obviously, that ain’t happening. I expect support to be able to use this software to listen to music. At this point, all I can do is browse because the odds of finding the particular album I want to play are not very good. I may have not been the most gracious person while pursuing this problem but after a year of frustration I simply have very little patience left.
At this point, I need to be in contact with a support manager.
steven gladstone
Is there a way to play an album in roon from File Explorer? Any other way to play an album that I can see outside of roon but can’t find inside of roon?
First of all my great understanding for your dissatisfaction, I also knew the feeling for almost a year. I was with my knowledge part of the problem, the team is certainly striving, but it lacks in special situations like this, the team strength to support customers quickly and sufficiently. Then in the community we often help ourselves with sharing experiences.
I decided on August 22, 2021 for a second year despite known problems because I just love this presentation
and can manage 2.7 million music tracks or 300,000 albums. I think this is unrivaled, but unfortunately not flawless. Of course, you can play any piece of music in file explorers, Groove, JRiver, etc… I prefer to use Directory Opus or Foobar2000. Every program needs training.
The old Roon search was a pain under special circumstances (AI fuzzy teething problems) and has now made great strides forward. I will review my Schubert search experience. Is there no progress on your end today either?
I also search for alternative checkpoints and work out solutions by self-study. As a pensioner I have the time for it.
I can only describe you my way and hope it brings you profit and satisfaction too. If you don’t like it, let me know. You could also access your knowledge about JRiver. Maybe it will be a good exchange of ideas that will also help others to improve your situation.
My native language is German and I translate automatically with Deepl, so not everything will be perfect, but hopefully understandable. I am too lazy to check every translation again. I am not a linguistic talent. Logic and mathematics are more to my liking.
https://www.gpsoft.com.au/
https://www.foobar2000.org/ plus this components foobar2000: Components Repository
Hi. I’m very grateful in any guidance you can provide. At this point I’m pretty desperate. I have to say that 300,000 albums is amazing. I have a big library at 12,000+ but you are on a different planet.
Part of my problem is probably rooted in the fact that I have a large LP collection-about 22,000 LPs. I am also a pensioner but I don’t have the patience or aptitude for researching software problems. I was never very good at it and my computer skills started declining after Windows NT so now I am really pretty handicapped.
I assume that you saw the screen shots that I provided to Norris at Support . I do not really understand the search that he told me to use so what I did 2 searches that I THINK he was suggesting and the albums did not show up. I don’t believe the problem is corruption on the hard drive but at this point I can’t prove that. However, there are so many albums that I can’t reach that I know I have a big problem. I’ve chosen this Mahler folder (6 cd’s) because it a perfect example to work with-2 of the discs show up and 4 don’t. There are probably at least 6 complete Beethoven sym sets that are missing just to pick an easy example.
I know that I could use other software but unfortunately roon sound much better than jriver (I have never upgraded beyond mc19 so I don’t know if the newer versions sound better and haven’t been able to find any information about that online. In jriver, you can go directly to a folder and play a track without importing it into the database. Is there a way to do that in roon?
I just tried importing the folder directly and the albums are in fact now in roon. However, I still can’t find them all because I can’t figure out how to search for them. I can find 2,4,Das Lied searching for artist-otto klemperer and searching for composer-mahler. I can’t find sym 7 and 9 but I know they have been imported into roon. This is what is driving me nuts.
ANY help would be appreciated. Thanks. gladbag
I’m grateful that you don’t pounce on the developers like an angry mob and badmouth everything that can be badmouthed. Anger and despair is understandable, after that it must be good again and look forward. Maybe I can contribute some search hints on the computer, because in fact I also find out again and again that sometimes I myself am the limitation that does not come to the realization. This should not diminish the joy of this product in a good community. We complement each other.
In the team work also only humans with your errors and limitations. I am glad that there are so many people on the road here who gladly accept help with respect and dignity when problems arise and also give it themselves. Everyone has different strengths and life experiences. It’s quite possible that developers will have to tinker further here until everything really appears in the library.
22,000 LPs is evidence of an incredible passion for collecting. There will be only a few people who can understand this love for music and I guess you haven’t found much of it on music services yet. Some of it will therefore have to be digitized yourself. Have you ever tried that? If you like to put vinyl on the turntable, there should always be a program running at the same time that makes nice and well maintained flac files out of it. So you have two possibilities to enjoy the music again later, when Roon finds these recordings. I set my Roon now to English language, so that it is more understandable. Foobar2000 is always in English language and Opus Directory I will put now also in this world language. I recommend you as a friend of classical music to take a look at this provider as well:
Here you learn very well how classical search works. I just typed in gus and was able to select Gustav Mahler. Then I selected Albums. I see 787 Composers, 71 Instruments, 786 Ensembles, 520 Conductors, 2090 Soloists a treasure trove for your needs and all that can also Roon with some practice, large private collection or music services like Qobuz or Tidal. Adagio shows you around 2 million classical works, which can also be streamed in good quality for €10. Roon also shows these works. Above all via Qobuz, which scores outstandingly here in many comparisons internationally. But we have to learn this step by step after. So not all explanations at the same time, but here the 1st step.
On your pictures you notice that the Discography is not displayed. Take a look at my picture.
Is there an explanation for this? How did you start? I just searched for Gustav Mahler in the start image and selected the artist.
In the second part, I look at what we see when music services are logged in. Here we see the Mahler selection from Qobuz and Tidal. I have specially created a new Roon, where none of my own music is included yet. I hope so it learns better and can apply the knowledge to their own music later.
How should we do to move well through 71 major albums, singles and EPs, works with Brahms or other appearances or composes by? Where is the conductor Otto Klemperer?
Part 3 Focus on/off
How should we do to move well through 71 major albums, singles and EPs, works with Brahms or other appearances or composes by? Where is the conductor Otto Klemperer?
I think we should learn from the specialty provider Idagio.
Roon built Focus to separate and find everything well. Here I just clicked my library and get the wonderful soloist Jessje Norman, but only in poor MP3 quality. So I did include an example from my own collection.
Is that all?
No, there is much more, even if much more is read in. To do this, I go back to the music services, which simply display more.
There are Type, Format, Source, Conductors, Ensembles with just one click.
and more click right or left
Find Label, Role, Genre, Performers, Producers…
with more by Conductors we will find Otto Klemperer
and the 9.th Symphony…
If your own collection was maintained as perfectly and Roon can identify these albums, it should work the same way with the local collection. For good maintenance I use Foobar2000, MP3Tag, AlbumArtDownloader all open source.
Roon tries to get around the problem of poor data maintenance and builds its own layer of metadata. So it may very well be that Gustav Mahler can not be reliably assigned in all cases. Since I have a lot, I’ll do the practical test and explore together with you what is missing and why.
Steven, I’ve been reading through the posts here, and it seems to me there are a couple of things going on simultaneously:
- The import of your music in files and folders hasn’t been 100% successful
- The key to successful Searching in Roon is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the Focus and Filter functions.
I also think that you are not a subscriber to either Qobuz or Tidal, because that screenshot of the Mahler page does not show a “Discography” entry. That being the case then you are even more reliant on having your local collection identified as fully and correctly as possible.
Let’s take (2) first, because this is clearly causing you some frustration.
The Filter function is a very blunt tool - it simply looks for the string of characters that you enter into the Filter field in the titles of things. If the searched for string does not exist in a title, it won’t return a result.
Also, the string “symphony” is not the same as the string “symphonies” - so as you say, ‘the album that showed up from the “symphonies” search does NOT show up from the “symphony” search’.
As @Uwe_Albrecht is pointing out, the Focus tool is much better suited for selecting what you want in a search.
The Focus tool also shows you criteria relevant to what you are looking at. For example, on your Mahler page, look at Focus for both the Overview list and the Compositions list - you’ll see different selection criteria to choose from. And this goes for all the Browsers (Albums, Artists, Tracks, Composers, Compositions, etc.) - the Focus criteria are tailored to fit what you are browsing.
And now back to (1). I assume that @noris has pointed you towards a couple of helpful articles in the Knowledge base:
- File Tag Best Practice - getting the file metadata right is key to getting Roon to identify albums correctly
- Identifying Multi-disc sets - getting the folder structure and naming right is absolutely key to helping Roon identify box sets. Without this, you’ll get discs missing or extra albums popping up in your library with a different name.
Hope this helps. As you see, the community here are willing to help you out where we can. The official Support team of Roon is very small, and they have their hands full most of the time - particularly now with the latest release of Roon. That’s where the community comes in.
If I now query my file manager Directory Opus about all drives on the personal computer, it searches for Gustav Mahler for about 1 hour and finds 10 folders and 66 files in the lower left corner in which Gustav Mahler occurs. I would have thought I had considerably more, but the names of the folders and the files do not show up in the file manager.
I open a second window on the right, select the thumbnail with image and copy all 66 files into a newly created folder Gustav Mahler. This location is monitored by Roon and it should find it. I about check it:
Roon and the file manager come to the same result, 66 files were recognized and read in. So runs the simplest test if it worked and then we look at the beautiful pictures (fresh added):
I learned I put a cover in the folder so Roon also recognizes my .ogg files with image. With .MP3 and .Flac it works under Windows 10 also so.
Yes the expert on Gustav Mahler immediately recognizes I am a beginner in classical music, but Roon and the community is helping me get better.
…and if there is an album (Boulez) where perhaps only one title is by Mahler, it will of course be shown as well. The album or artist name invites this. So also Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester comes to the display, even if no title of Gustav Mahler is played. Can it be even better? Yes with Foobar2000 in the next tutorial.
those who are visually looking for recognition will also notice, Roon returns a different image depending on the setting. With Boulez, this is nice because my image is very small. With two other albums, I could believe they were not found. But they just got another picture of a later release. I’m sure this will happen more often with LPs if you don’t tell Roon to give priority to your own image.
So here you can see Foobar2000 in use. The whole appearance is very flexible adjustable. I put less emphasis on the beautiful view. Here functionality and ease of use is my focus. For the nice look I have Roon.
The small bright window shows how I have maintained my music. I say it is the 11 song on the first disc. So I refrained from dividing by CD 1 to 12 here, that’s how Roon will work too unless it finds better meta data.
Amazon says more correctly it is the 1 track on CD2.
If everywhere only Various Artist and no Gustav Mahler is given, it is not to be found at all.