This is why Google is such a useless business failure:
And Amazon, too:
And Tidal and Qobuz:
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If only Google and Amazon knew better, they’d be REALLY big and successful.
Well, your assuming that these sources understand your “regular expression” which they do not. It’s just gobbledygook to them.
And how would it know you wanted the track instead of the album?
I think the search is a heck of a lot better and I really don’t mind scrolling down a bit to find a track etc.
My point exactly.
The world doesn’t use regular expressions, or Boolean logic.
Programmers do.
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Programmers enable regular people to leverage that logic without using it per se.
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Yes and no.
Yes, and this is a discussion about user interface.
No, cloud type search does not use classical tools internally either.
To its benefit: it is easier to find something at Amazon than at home.
@Frank_Daman is asking for classical query, and many others ask for Boolean logic, and I don’t think that would be a benefit for most users — although it may very well be a benefit for those guys who ask.
You can scoff all you want, fact is Roon search doesn’t deliver exact results.
All other music managers do, even the free ones. They give you the option to narrow your search to artists, albums and tracks. Roon doesn’t.
Google is worthless when it comes to retrieving noiseless information (that’s their business model), Amazon at least gives you the possibility to start a search within a given category and Roon…
Roon can’t do a search worthy of the name.
And this is a comment I can’t make heads or tails of. How is not being able to find a specific item in a music repository a benefit?
What good is a digital collection if you have to forego the one huge benefit: speedy and exact retrieval?
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There is very little moaning on the forum about search but an eruption about cover art leading me to believe that you are an outlier in your opinion on search. Could it be better, yes; is it as bad as you make out, I don’t think so.
I actually like it being a bit fuzzy, it normally finds what I’m after and I like looking to see what else came up. I see that as part of the music discovery bit, especially as it now searches across the streaming service.
I have always found what I searched for. It’s never stopped me playing my music. I am sure it will just get more refined over time… no biggie…
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There is a lot of moaning about the search on this forum, just not in the main 1.6 thread.
As for the UI… Well, for me that’s no biggie. It’s just in everyone’s face so it gets the most whingeing.
The biggest problem I have with Roon is that it’s a multitool instead of a toolbox.
It does a lot, but with the exception of the network transport and the play queue, it does nothing very well.
The overview pages work, but refining their content is not very intuitive. The focus idea is a brilliant idea, it just doesn’t work well because it relies on tags and these tags are not well defined.
The overviews are cumbersome and picture centric instead of data centric. Information on a 10" screen doesn’t benefit from being displayed in a thumbnail grid. It’s just messy as opposed to a neat list grid.
The discover page, well least said soonest mended.
Under the hood, Roon tries it’s hand at things like room correction. Strange, room correction isn’t supposed to be done at source level. It’s supposed to be done at room level first and failing that it should be done as close to output level as possible. In practice, this means at amplifier/receiver level or at active speaker level.
I can live with all these things - except for the search, which is starting to near deal breaker level - because Roon has one clear advantage over every other bit of software out there: the ease of playback manipulation.
Want to add something to the play queue? Select, specify where to add and ipso presto: it’s there. Want to remove something? Same procedure and barring an inadvertent screen touch, this can all be done without messing up the play queue.
Change the play order? Drag 'n drop, no fuss.
This is Roon’s main value for me.
The rest is all close but no cigar as they say. So yes, as long as I’m paying for Roon, I will be pushing my wishes and preferences, just like everybody else does on this forum 
Yes, I know you don’t follow my perspective.
So, without claiming to state Roon’s point, let me explain.
First, during the ’70s and ’80s there was extensive research that showed that when users tried to refine a search by adding qualifiers using Boolean logic, regular expressions and similar formal techniques, they more often moved away from the intended result than toward it. I.e. these tools are not just difficult, they are actually counterproductive.
Of course, this applies to regular people. Programmers use it. And hence, people with a technical background often ask for it, because it works so well for them, in fact it’s a necessity, and they can’t understand why it’s problematic for others.
Second, when Brin and Page first built Google, they didn’t base it on Boolean logic. They understood the requirements of the users, and they understood the value they gained from the scale of data, and they built completely different algorithms. Pagerank, for example. The coin of the realm is relevance, which defines the value of the result, not the accuracy. If I search for “Afro blues” and Google responds with Afro Blue by John Coltrane, is that result accurate? What does that even mean? Is it a valuable result? That’s the guideline.
In the twenty years since then they have of course evolved their algorithms and their cloud-scale infrastructure for even greater relevance. And they won’t tell us how they do it, because that’s the secret sauce that let them trounce all competitors and puts them on a path to dominate the global advertising business (not search advertising, not online advertising — advertising). But what we do know is that it is not built by putting a nice user interface on Boolean logic or regular expressions.
Just like a cloud-scale database is not based on a bigger relational database. An iPad is not based on a laptop. A modern automatic transmission is not based on automating a manual transmission (e.g. using GPS mapping to know when a hill is coming and downshifting in advance).
Roon’s search is not perfect. But the right move, in today’s market, is not to revert to formal logic. The value will be greater if they move forward. Even at the expense of jettisoning some old-school techniques.
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I think what you are seeing is what is the top result in your library. I get something similar - I have the track Help on a different album, and that shows up first, rather than Danny’s result. You will see that the Help track also appears in your results - but it is available via TIDAL, because you don’t have it in your library as yet.
Our search and UX as a whole is biased towards your library. That said, your TIDAL-only “Help!” is #3 and #4 on the tracks list.
We’ve designed the app as a whole to be you-centric first, and then reach out to the mess of millions of tracks in the streaming services. “you” means part of your library.
Which is why any decently designed search engine will present the user with fillable fields for each search term and will present toggles for boolean operators. This is still a valid and current use case. Especially in catalogue type applications.
Exactly, which is why Google’s search results keep deteriorating on a daily basis. The goal is to direct users to sites that pay Google instead of letting users find the information they are actually looking for. It’s their business model. It’s also why Google phases out the advanced search operators faster and faster. Even putting phrases in parentheses has stopped working in Google for a long time.
Relevance depends on the user’s needs. Google still returns some useable results because it trawls a great sea with lots of comparable searches to extract relevance from. Provided the relevance doesn’t hurt the bottom line too much.
For specific uses - like Roon - developers either implement parametrized searches (with or without boolean operators - there are umpteen ways to derive relevant an accurate results) or implement third party content analysis tools (NLP, NLA, semantic models,… take your pick) all geared towards… you might have guessed it: a search result that is as accurate as possible.
The relevance is derived from the context. Which is exactly my point: the context Roon tries to apply - i.e. everything and the kitchen sink - is too broad. It’s fine for exploring but not for pinpointing.
And I want pinpointing. I like the exploration stuff, don’t get me wrong, but Roon still has a long way to go before this will become good enough to boast about. The pinpointing on the other hand should be easily implementable. No need to reinvent the wheel. Wheels enough to go round.
Which is exactly the opposite of what your marketing blurb promises:
And this isn’t just for your local files, it works for content from TIDAL too!
Which I take to mean: the whole of Tidal, not just what I added to my library.
it does work for TIDAL… look at your 3rd and 4th track result.