I’m definitively a newcomer to Roon, but the way that sort “By most played” works for the Albums left me baffled, until I made some research and discovered that the “ranking” is based on the total time in seconds that I listened to the album.
So, if I have an album that last 60 min and another one that last 30 min, and I listen to the first one 1 time and to the second one 2 times, they will be at the same “ranking” even though I effectively listened to the second definitively more than to the first one.
I like to listen to tracks in random order during the day while I’m working; at evening/night, I sit down and enjoy an album end-to-end. I like to keep track of “what album I didn’t listen to in a long time”? Hence the sort “By most played” in reverse order. It’s a workaround, I agree, but it works perfectly for me.
Now, you know what happens: short albums like EP or singles, with few tracks, stay always on top even if I effectively have listen them more time that a double album of Bach sonatas.
What I intend with “album played” is an album played start-to-finish, regardless of how many tracks it has or how long it is. So, a single played 1 time and a double LP played 1 time should be at exactly the same level: “listened 1 time”.
I though about it and would like to propose the following algorithm to calculate the “played” factor:
given an album:
Option 1
- get the track the was played the less (min) and use that number as the “played” for the album. Reason is that I never listened “THE ALBUM” until I listen to ALL its tracks
Pros: fast to calculate
Cons: not very precise
Option 2
- get the track the was played the less (min) and the one that was played most (max). You have this number, because tracks can be ordered that way already.
- if (min==max) than that is the number we are searching for: played=min
- else
3.1) get the number of tracks that were played (min) times. Let’s call this number “tot_min”
3.2) get the total number of tracks in the album “tot_tracks”
3.3) played = min + ((tot_tracks - tot_min)/tot_tracks)
3.4) [Optional] Round to 2 decimals, multiply by 100 and use the integer part as “played” so you can avoid working with floats
With Option n. 2 we are effectively checking the percentage of the album I’ve already listened to (regardless of how many more times I played a single track. That’s why I’m using “min” and not “max”).
Pros: precise
Cons: require a query to the database to get the data needed, but I do not expect that to be more taxing than recover the time played as you do now
Example:
Album n. 1 - 10 tracks - duration 60 min
I’ve listen to 5 tracks already at least 1 time
min=0; tot_min=5 ; tot_tracks=10; played=0+(10-5)/10=0,5 ==> 50
Same Album, but completely listened 1 time and then listened again 2 tracks
played = 1,2 ==> 120
Album n. 2:
3 tracks - duration 30 min
1 track listened - 2 to listen
min = 0; tot_min=2; tot_tracks=3
played = 0 + (3 -2)/3 = 0,33 ==> 33
Same album, listened at least once:
played = 133