I have just unravelled a box set where discs were incorrectly allocated
This happened because the box in question contained albums as part of that box that already existed in my library
The Box is Hogwood’s Bach recordings. CD 10 & 11 are also a 2 CD set of the Orchestral Suites
When i look at the track groupings the tracks for CD11 are showing as CD1 or CD2 as appropriate, presumably because the same identical tracks exist as tracks on CD1 or CD2 of the 2 disc set.
The 2 discs are not identical as the 2 CD set includes 2 other works which are on CD6 of the main box but again were allocated to CD1 and 2
So the Grouping view for CD1 was a mix of the real CD1 and CD11 and CD6
The Brandenburg concerto discs escaped because they were CD1 & 2 in both scenarios , if not I suspect they would be scrambled too
Both albums had metadata set as per Roon’s standard for boxes , one fixed album name per album and one Album Artist per album. Sub folders are bare CD1 etc
I have just tried via folders for the big 20CD box , Select all > Edit>Group Tracks
I see the album identified as Bach: Orchestral Suites which is the 2 CD and incorrect for what I selected (it should be The Bach Recordings) set also Disc 11 is identified as Disc?
I’m seeing this regularly but only notice on a case by case basis through usage. The latest example is my Rattle 2-disk Stravinsky Rite of Spring munged with my Rattle 4-disk Stravinsky.
This is new in the past 3-6 months and it must be coming from roon through recent library restructurings. It’s not coming from me, as the affected albums/boxes I have often added 5-8 years ago when there were no issues, and the albums were clearly on different directory trees, even different storage devices.
I am also seeing something similar with versions. I am finding versions grouped that shouldn’t be grouped and I haven’t grouped. The pattern is single work albums. For example, Mahler’s 5th, where all the orchestras are the same but there are different conductors. Or vice versa, all the conductors are the same but different orchestras. Or both conductors and orchestras are the same, but the performances are 10 years apart.
Is this all preparation for a box set release? Hope not. The mess needs to be cleaned up first.
I know this behaviour for some month now. Some of my box sets which contain the same disc(s) are mixed up together. It took me some work to get this discs sorted back to the correct set(s) and to clean up.
I hope that we will get some updates in respect to box set handling very soon.
My best guess is that the ID algorithm identifies albums where specific tracks exist and then prioritise them as its “best guess” of the album it comes from .
In a lot of cases where DG/Decca et al have re released back catalogue a specific track may exists on multiple albums , Argerich is a good example of multiple re releases
The ones in question have the album name set to the single name CD but is obviously ignored as extra data to improve the ID accuracy. (devs heavy hint ??)
Pure speculation but my thought is that this is a lead in to the box set mods as errors like this all seem to be biased to a box set rather than the original album. In this case the box has been removed and a library clean done so there will be no reference to the box in the metadata Roon is using
This is painful for users with lots of box sets (read me !!)
Is there a systematic way of finding these? I hope examples are not all over the place. I tried “contiguous” tacks” in “Inspector”, but it is not box-set aware and does not use the common sense that contiguous tracks must be both track number contiguous and directly tree contiguous. This makes this issue deeply invisible. I am only noticing it over the last 6 months or so where version groupings as a consequence of this make no sense, or I cannot find an album because it has been munged into a box-set. I have a sense that something is going on behind the scenes, finally, about box-sets, but it’s been a 10-year wait, so what is the motivation to rush it now, adding other problems? Also anyone who is interested in box-sets already have their workarounds after such a long time. Is that being taken into account? Very worrying.
I don’t know a logical way to find offenders, I see them as I browse and try to fix em. I periodically look for unidentified albums which will also throw them out. The BIG problem is that as far as Roon is concerned they are ID’ed correctly
I suspect also that the online “improvement” of metadata is joining in as well but no way to tell.
You will need to move affected albums / box-sets out of monitored folders. Then “clean up library” to flush out persistent mappings. Finally re-import and re-identify. So yes, quite a mess to disentangle once it starts.
I am not sure that will work even, if the single album is still in the library
when I feel brave i’ll try it
The primary reason for this post was to draw attention to the bug (if that is what it is) I don’t think it will be a 5 minute fix but as commented above it needs fixing before any mods to box sets are launched as box set ID is not currently reliable.
This is a super common procedure you may not have come across if your box-sets are primarily on J-River. Quite safe. I‘m not trying to say because there is a workaround, it’s somehow ok. Quite the opposite. But it’s never been fixed, and it seems unlikely it ever will. Historically, a lot of posts tripped up on this, I‘m afraid. Very common, but more common now because of these more recent issues you have identified.
It’s a workaround I use often and also recommend to others my concern is that the Argerich box is no longer in a watched folder and I have done a library clean up as you suggest
BUT the box still shows with 12 discs in it after all that needless to say it won’t load, I just get the wait icon jelly fish , but shows in the discography
It’s picking up on tracks on other albums and allocating them to an imaginary box
I’ve had similar issue with some box sets and was able to break out of the frustrating cycle by individually “Group-Tracking” each errant disc. Roon then remembers the correct assignment instead of “disc ?”.
Navigate to disc 10 only, and individually group it as 10, then repeat for disc 11.
Sometimes that is enough to let the algorithm immediately siphon them back into the box, otherwise re-group the box after…
Does not always have effect, but sometimes you are lucky!
Thanks for the idea, thats how I eventually fix them , great minds think alike
The real reason for the post was not necessarily to fix an errant box, but to highlight a bug in the ID code that allows this to happen in the first case.
With “box set improvements” coming soon (hah hah) it willbe a lot moe important
I got the 3 Eloquence Mercury Antal Doráti boxes recently and as I sometimes do I broke them up into the individual albums and MP3 tag processed them individually, attaching the appropriate album covers which came with the set, of course putting multidisc sets such as Sleeping Beauty Ballet in a single album with 2 discs. They are 16/44, so if I already had a high resolution copy of a certain disc that sounded better, I just erased the box origin 16/44 disc. And generally I tell Roon to use my metadata rather than theirs. I haven’t done that with all the boxes however, and have had no problem with the 90 CD Alfred Brendel Philips>Decca set.
I assume you mean the 114 CD Philips Brendel, have you left that as a single box and not split it.
As it happens that box splits well BUT Roon tries to put it back together by IDing split albums as part of the box even though the box is not in the library. I have already sorted that one out so I can’t demonstrate
