Banning, tagging, TIDAL and the whole crazy Radio thing

[Jeff_Bellune]

TL;DR: How do banning and tagging tracks affect Radio?

Specifically:

1. Assume I have a local copy of an album in my Library, but I don’t have the TIDAL version in my Library. Further, let’s say my copy is 24/96 from HDTracks and the TIDAL version is 16/44.1 (Example, Michael Kiwanuka’s Love & Hate album). From which album version will Radio choose to play the track?
2. Again, assume I have a local copy of an album, and the TIDAL version is NOT in my Library. If I ban a track in that local copy, will Radio respect that same ban for the same track from the same album in TIDAL?
3. What if the TIDAL version of that album IS in my Library and it is grouped with the Primary local version? Do I have to ban the track in both versions?
4. What if I have a track banned in the TIDAL Super Deluxe Extended Remastered Collector’s Edition that’s in my Library; will Radio respect that ban for the TIDAL 2012 Remastered version and the TIDAL original release version that aren’t in my Library?
5. Moving on to tagging. If I play a Bookmarked or Focused search that specifically excludes certain tags, when Radio commences after that, will Roon look and see if the next track to be played would have been excluded by the Bookmark or Focus before it sends it up to the queue?
6. Regarding the ROONRADIOBAN tag specifically, if an upcoming TIDAL track in Radio has a matching local track that is tagged with ROONRADIOBAN, will Radio honor that tag and exclude the TIDAL track?
7. Should I just ignore all this stuff and enjoy the music, limiting my curating to giving the next track up in Radio a thumbs up or thumbs down?

[Jeff_Bellune]

Does anyone, including @support, have any insight into this?

NB: I know at least some of the answers are scattered in various places around the forum. Searching is of minimal help, at best, and some of the stuff I found pre-dates 1.8. I want to know how Roon is handling this currently, so I know what to expect and so that I can focus my efforts. I’m doing other curating things because I’ve re-subscribed to TIDAL, and it would be nice to include tagging or banning while I’m curating. Or to find out if I can skip those tasks altogether because they will have little to no effect on Radio.

[jamie]

Hey @Jeff_Bellune, I’ll take a swing at these for you.

@Jeff_Bellune

Assume I have a local copy of an album in my Library, but I don’t have the TIDAL version in my Library. Further, let’s say my copy is 24/96 from HDTracks and the TIDAL version is 16/44.1 (Example, Michael Kiwanuka’s Love & Hate album). From which album version will Radio choose to play the track?

It will randomly select either unless you set Roon Radio to only select from your local library.

@Jeff_Bellune

Again, assume I have a local copy of an album, and the TIDAL version is NOT in my Library. If I ban a track in that local copy, will Radio respect that same ban for the same track from the same album in TIDAL?

No, Roon doesn’t assume that the ban extends to other versions. Many users apply bans based on quality settings in order to prefer high resolution versions over lower ones. A global ban would negatively impact their efforts.

@Jeff_Bellune

What if the TIDAL version of that album IS in my Library and it is grouped with the Primary local version? Do I have to ban the track in both versions?

Yes

@Jeff_Bellune

What if I have a track banned in the TIDAL Super Deluxe Extended Remastered Collector’s Edition that’s in my Library; will Radio respect that ban for the TIDAL 2012 Remastered version and the TIDAL original release version that aren’t in my Library?

No, Roon isn’t designed to do this, for reasons previously mentioned.

@Jeff_Bellune

Moving on to tagging. If I play a Bookmarked or Focused search that specifically excludes certain tags, when Radio commences after that, will Roon look and see if the next track to be played would have been excluded by the Bookmark or Focus before it sends it up to the queue?

It won’t limit specifically on the parameters of the tag or bookmark but will continue to seed based on other factors, similar genre type, etc.

@Jeff_Bellune

Regarding the ROONRADIOBAN tag specifically, if an upcoming TIDAL track in Radio has a matching local track that is tagged with ROONRADIOBAN, will Radio honor that tag and exclude the TIDAL track?

Still no, based on reasoning previously mentioned.

@Jeff_Bellune

Should I just ignore all this stuff and enjoy the music, limiting my curating to giving the next track up in Radio a thumbs up or thumbs down?

That’s what we recommend. It’s easy to become distracted by these minor annoyances in such a way that simple music enjoyment can be negatively impacted. When you thumbs down you’re supplied with a selection of responses that help to teach Roon your preferences. These prompts are more effective than playing whack-a-mole with banning.

If there’s an artist that you particularly loathe you can the artist to you library and then multipress the favorite button to ban them. You could give that a try.

[Jeff_Bellune]

Hi @jamie ,

Thank you for the detailed information!

I grok most of what you said; however, I’m still a little confused by your answer to my question #2 regarding a “global” ban in Radio on all instances of a certain track once I ban a single instance in my Library.

If you have time, may I have an example of how a user might do what you said, that is, use a ban based on quality settings to prefer Hi-Res versions over low ones, please? I use album grouping to force Hi-Res versions to the top but maybe there’s a better or more efficient way? I’m always willing to learn new stuff.

Again, thanks for your time and the good info.

[jamie]

Hey @Jeff_Bellune,

We’re checking with the dev and product team for a definitive answer on how these features are intended to function. I’ll follow up with you as soon as I have more details. Thanks!

[brian (Brian Luczkiewicz)]

Another attempt to answer this

1. Assume I have a local copy of an album in my Library, but I don’t have the TIDAL version in my Library. Further, let’s say my copy is 24/96 from HDTracks and the TIDAL version is 16/44.1 (Example, Michael Kiwanuka’s Love & Hate album). From which album version will Radio choose to play the track?

Radio is going to choose something available from TIDAL or Qobuz, then it will match that against your library if it’s able to upgrade the quality using your local files after the fact.

In current builds of Roon, that matching is primarily based on ISRC’s (international standard recording codes) + a little bit of special sauce on our end.

Data is imperfect and not all of our upstream data source deliver accurate ISRC data. Exactly what happens will depend on exactly how your album was identified, and whether or not its identifiers match to what is available from TIDAL and Qobuz, and that is a detail that is invisible to both you and to me.

In general, you should assume that Roon is making an effort to match over to your higher quality recording, and in our analysis, it works a great majority of the time, but there are no 100% guarantees with this sort of data system. Worse, as someone who’s spent some time with this problem, even humans disagree sometimes about what constitute equivalent albums or tracks.

2. Again, assume I have a local copy of an album, and the TIDAL version is NOT in my Library. If I ban a track in that local copy, will Radio respect that same ban for the same track from the same album in TIDAL?

Only if the tracks are considered equivalent by our systems, with the same disclaimers as (1).

3. What if the TIDAL version of that album IS in my Library and it is grouped with the Primary local version? Do I have to ban the track in both versions?

Only if the tracks are considered equivalent by our systems, with the same disclaimers as (1).

4. What if I have a track banned in the TIDAL Super Deluxe Extended Remastered Collector’s Edition that’s in my Library; will Radio respect that ban for the TIDAL 2012 Remastered version and the TIDAL original release version that aren’t in my Library?

Only if the tracks are considered equivalent by our systems, with the same disclaimers as (1).

5. Moving on to tagging. If I play a Bookmarked or Focused search that specifically excludes certain tags, when Radio commences after that, will Roon look and see if the next track to be played would have been excluded by the Bookmark or Focus before it sends it up to the queue?

No.

6. Regarding the ROONRADIOBAN tag specifically, if an upcoming TIDAL track in Radio has a matching local track that is tagged with ROONRADIOBAN, will Radio honor that tag and exclude the TIDAL track?

No. That tag applies only to the exact file that you tagged.

7. Should I just ignore all this stuff and enjoy the music, limiting my curating to giving the next track up in Radio a thumbs up or thumbs down?

Yes, please.

There is no practical way to communicate the complexity of these systems in a forum post. They are not purely rules based–many aspects based on machine learning algorithms, automation and statistics. They are tuned to meet a performance standard, but nothing in this space is ever 100%, and trying to understand them through a rules-based lens is a mistake, since that is not how they work inside.

[Jeff_Bellune]

@brian , thank you for that detailed explanation. The Roon devs should be proud of Radio; it’s really good at what it does.

Example: I seeded a Radio session with “Shame” by Matchbox 20. I was able to listen to 32 songs that Radio chose. I gave a thumbs down to exactly 2 of those. And I added a half dozen albums to my Library because of the tracks that Radio selected. Not even Pandora in its heyday could do that well!

You said nothing is 100%. So true! But with only 2 of 32 missing the mark, it’s pretty darn close.

Thanks again for taking the time to post the additional information. Between you and @jamie, I’m working on a plan for my Library that involves a lot less banning and tagging with ROONRADIOBAN. Which means less time curating and more time listening.