Better album browser please

Definitely not. I think something similar to this would be better, but the downside is fewer albums per screen. Edit: 3x7 matrix vis-à-vis 9x4.

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Looks good. Allready much better then the current view.

Fewer albums per page is not allways a bad thing. Like Renee said about lack of negative space,.you need some negative space for your eyes to be able to focus on details in a big field of visual info. This space can be occupied by usefull info wich makes it not more cluttered but easier on the eyes like you can see in your example and with the benefit of providing more info wich helps in better id-ing albums at first glance. One more line of info with genre tags maybe would even do better I think. With more then that it could become cluttered again.

@Nyquist, this is just horrible. I would dump Roon immediately. But I know you have better suggestions in mind. In fact, we had a discussion of our own and if I’m correct, I can recall you and Danny discussing your holistic view and (partly) agreeing. I sincerely believe the team is working on a better way of displaying this (no info at all, just experience). And as thy did with the playlist and many other things (at least for me), they came up with an improvement that surprised everybody, and served a lot of requests — and then some. Raising expectations here… :wink:

You do realise that this was an example of what I don’t like to see, don’t you? It’s an example that simplification does not allways lead to a better view. Martins example is getting somewhere.

I guessed so, yes. That’s what I was hinting at your better suggestions :wink:

Edit: I wasn’t sure everyone got the irony, because not everyone followed your previous post like I did, that’’s why I responded. I think we (and @RBM) agree far more than we disagree! :smiley:

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Thanks for pointing this out. Edited my post so it’s more clear to everyone that it is not my idea of a good view.

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It’s $50 now, plus conversion fees outside the US, versus a lifetime license. Also jriver is just too bloated it’s

Versus the roon

To be fair: that’s only true when you look at it as music player. It’s much more than that. Me thinks it’s almost impossible to compare roon & jriver Media Center; or apples and oranges. :sunglasses:

In the album browser I get all the information I need. Artist name, album title, album format, live performance, compilation, bootleg…

If I want to narrow down my search results, I can use focus, tags or bookmarks etc. I think all this works really great. I always find what I’m looking for in next to no time. In the vast majority of cases I only use the magnifying glass icon for my library (or Tidal) searches.

I absolutely LOVE Roon’s functionality and the way everything looks on my iMac27 or my iPad Pro 12.9" (in dark mode!). I like Roon a lot better than any other audio player I know (Audirvana, Amarra, Decibel, iTunes, JRiver…)!

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If you have read correctly you might know that I dislike all the players you mentioned, allways have, alleays where vastly mediocre to what I was used to but unfortunatly my old player is no longer supported. That’s what brought me to Roon in the first place. I have mentioned this countless of times.

I do like the funtionality of Roon but it strikes me that while in most parts of the user interface there is generously broad layout relative to screen real estate wicth lots of info everywhere wich everyone seems to like while in the album browser everything is cramped together with next to no info at all and you have to rely on searching, focussing, clicking. No overview at all. Just some simple basic extra information is all I mean.

For example I have focussed on Rock Music. As search results I get a field of album covers with only an artist name and an album title. Now there is a big difference between rock music from say 1973 and rock music from 2017. Now I can offcoarse narrow down my results but that was not the way I was looking at things at the moment. Just wanted some rock music, no particular era in mind. Now if there was just some little more info in the album grid, like for this intance release year I would have narrowed down the results myself in a blink of an eye while I still have an overview of the rest of my rock albums because they are still in sight and did not dissapear like they would when narrowing down results. Besides with this extra line or two lines of info the album grid starts to look more like rows of albums instead of a matrix of albums. Rows are faster to scan for the eyes. Ever tried reading a book in wich there is not enough space between the lines, horrible, but that exactly what the album grid looks like now.

Now before everyone starts posting a workaround for this particular example, this is just one example, I do not need a solution to this one particala example and I know all of the workarounds I know how to search, I know how focus works and I do use tags and bookmarks. It’s a visual overview I’m after.

Since you mention this it seems to be of good use to you that you can let the browser show album format. It is of no use to me, says nothing about the music itself but I’m not complaining the option is there. So you probably can imagine that others have more use of other optional info, or not?

I knew that. I’d read every single post in this thread before I decided to reply.

As I outlined above, the album browser provides all the information that I personally expect from it. What’s more, I really LOVE the way it looks. I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point. If you think the album browser should be changed, then, of course, you have every right to post a feature request. It’s the only way to find out how many Roon users share your view. All I’m saying is that I don’t share it.

No, I don’t usually use this option. I just meant to point out that there are quite a few things you can configure in the album browser. To be honest, I don’t use any of the options I listed - at least not on a regular basis. For my taste that would be too much information already. I’d find that distracting. All I expect from an album browser is that it allows me to browse my library by album artist and album title. Just a matter of personal preference, I suppose.

But what is the problem of making it optional. The album format label is optional so why not some more optional info. Roon is all about metadata, why not provide it in a place where you suppose to have an overview. After 1.5 years of using Roon I still miss this a lot. Why is everyone content with showing things like dynamic range, audiopath, audioformat etc in the foreground ,wich all have nothing to do with the music itself, while on the other hand find usefull data cluttered?

My music friends whom I have let try Roon think of Roon at first sight as a player made for audiophiles, not for music lovers and do not see any worth in it because they say they can’t hear the difference anyway. I have to convince them to look through the audiophile part of it but that’s the first thing they see. That says something doesn’t it. I hope Roon focus back on the music data on the foreground and make the audiophile part more hidden instead of the other way around. Yes its a matter of taste but I find all the audiphile indicators more distracting then metadata about the actual content.

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I always pay early :stuck_out_tongue:

As far as I know it’s 25% off so even full update it’s $24

It’s $50 to start

The master license is $70 start and $33 update

Mike

There is no doubt that each player has pros and cons. Indeed how you navigate to a pice of music has to change to match the player

I rarely use the album view to start , I tend now to search for an artist and go from there

Mike

So you are saying we humans have to adapt to the machine instead of the other way around?

I think that all Mike is saying, is there is a learning curve involved in using Roon :wink: Which I think there is. And I think that’s a good thing, because it suggests there’s a lot included in the software. But I think you might have pretty much absorbed it all by now. So this doesn’t necessarily contradict your (and my) opinion that there is room for further improvement.

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If optional, I can’t see why someone would have problems with a more informative browser.

I’ve got a simple Kef speaker and an old Cyrus amp which gives me the musical joy. I don’t care about dynamic range, format and that kind of information, in my opinion it creates a cluttered interface, so if that info can be optional, great.

The album browser instead (and the tag browser, too me it’s not on the same track / level as the album or artist view with info and hyperlinks) can be improved with info mentioned above, with some more space around the images and maybe the possibility to let me choose the image size, but hey, “De gustibus…”

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roon and I haven’t spent much time together yet but there are a few things mentioned here I’m missing (or not) - in particular order :wink:

:+1:

:+1: … on higher resolution displays it may become a simple option to have a second, more generously spaced grid which then could show additional information - like the release year.

:+1: I wanted to do that too - especially when browsing thru recent purchases or after focussing on a certain topic / genre. :smiley:

:+1: … and extending the scope: the composer browser - what I miss there is at least the birth and if applicable :roll_eyes: death year (maybe on the right corner). Those periods offered by roon to focus on don’t do much for me.

Liked the post already but to be honest: sensibly implementing something along this line might prove to be tricky.

Hmm, too much of it and you’re where jriver is now. roon seems to be not so much about configuration but out of the box experience. It’s closer to itunes / Apple Music (and probably more under threat from there) than it seems. Explore the content, not the content provider / content providing tool…

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