Put this in a graph database and the impossible and impossibly slow should turn possible and possibly fast.
Add some smartness learned from user behavior and things would be even speedier. But it’s at the cost of actually developing it of course. Graph databases should be used none the less for these types of tasks.
Well, I can’t say I know the innards of database tech. All I know is that the same queries are instant in Foobar and JRiver and in Roon they are measured in minute, not usable.
Ideally Focus should allow boolean logic AND, OR and NOT ("&, “|”, “-”) and throw in brackets as well to make it complete… Would make everyone happy, the ANDers and the ORrers !
There are those among us that believe we are too stupid to understand Boolean logic and would have a mental breakdown when taxed with where to place a bracket.
Hmm that can be solved with a good User Interface (and Roon is good at that). Remember the rules you could build in iTunes? Easy to use for everyone, and that would be a good start.
And a “guru” mode for the boolean masters 
user Flere has found an excellent workaround/solution to eanble an ‘OR’ function
Supertag to enable ‘OR’ function
Dirk
iTunes had (has?) a good interface for and/or/not logic in their rules. Good enough for anyone.
Ugh, that workaround reminds me of the saying, “going around your a** to get to your elbow”. 
Hopefully Roon will fix this so we don’t need such workarounds. 
This is my primary issue with Roon currently. I can get over design aesthetics. I can forgive a couple of unnecessary mouse clicks. But I have Roon to provide a listening experience. I need to be able to easily play what I want to listen to.
The fact that it’s easier to listen to what I want in iTunes should be embarrassing to Roon.
Which is sadly the state of the roon application (part of it) today: smart workarounds to questionable (I’m being polite) functionality… It may be a thing with the software today, keeps the users vigilant!!!
The need for a simple Boolean Logic feature in Focus has been highlighted by a change in behavior introduced in v1.8. For previous versions, I had a Bookmark that focused on all albums with any of the following engineers listed in their production credits. In v1.7, this bookmark returned a hundred or so albums; in v1.8, none:
Apparently, the operation used when multiple Production credits are selected changed from OR to AND. This change has its own users; I can now search for albums that were mixed by Al Schmitt and mastered by Doug Sax. But, I miss being able to use my “Best Sounding Albums” bookmark.
I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes I want to cast a wider “Focus” net with OR while other times I want to be more selective (with AND). If Roon Labs added this functionality, people would not have to use it if they didn’t want to. I don’t see the harm.
Putting my software engineering hat on, implementing this in the current UI has its challenges. There are actually three possible states when searching for albums that match a specific attribute value. For example, when Focusing on albums released under the “Columbia” label, Roon will encounter:
That third case creates some interesting problems when trying to achieve behavior that respects the principle of least astonishment. The fact that “Label” is missing from an album’s metadata does not eliminate the possibility that it could have been released by Columbia. When should albums with no Label specified be excluded from Focus searches? Should they ever be included? This problem becomes more interesting when we negate Focus terms. If I Focus on albums not on the Columbia Label, should albums with unknown Label be included in the results? Probably not.
I’m not sure how to account for all of this or what it might look like, but if users are not driven completely mad by the complexity of Procedural EQ in Roon’s DSP, perhaps there’s a way to introduce this functionality that does not result in heads exploding with the next release.
I’m not sure why this is so f… complicated: just allow all the Boolean logic selectable for all the focus criteria. Click once on Bob Ludwic, switch to AND, click twice switch to OR and so on.
This is only a problem when you implement it only one way or the other. If I’ll have the choice to switch the logic at will, the result will follow the chosen logic and it will be proportional with the accuracy of the focus criteria. If an album has no label, there should anyway be a focus value (No Label for example) under the labels criteria.
So what does “A and B or C” mean?
(A and B) or C is not the same as
A and (B or C)
If I’m not wrong, AND has precedence over OR so A and B or C = (A and B) or C
It does indeed, but suppose you want the other way?
Yeah. I was thinking about how grouping might work in the UI as well. Perhaps by allowing the user to draw a (negatable) box around adjacent search terms.
Then let me drag OR Bob Ludwig over OR Doug Sax in interface and by doing so I’m telling to some smart code behind to give this precedence over AND Bernie Grundman (and I really want copyright for this idea)!
Or if you drag them one over the other. I really believe that the issue here is not how to do it in the interface (though after 1.8 i have serious doubts about this too), is the unbelievable stubbornness from roon side no to see things in the middle.
Sure. I mean, Roon’s UI was designed more like a video game than a text-based browser. There’s no limit to what’s possible.
