Brainstorming Box Set Functionality

Mark_McClusky1 · April 28, 2026, 12:59pm

Like many on the forums in many topics through the years, I see a lot of room for improvement in how Roon handles box sets.

For my use cases, what I’d really love is for a box set to be recognized as an entity, but for the disc/albums inside that set to be recognized as separate entities, with their own titles, art, ratings, etc. I’m mostly a rock/jazz guy, so something like the Beatles in Mono box set, I’d like to see it in the library as the box, but also see the individual albums within it.

But I also know that many other people have other ideas and use cases. Rather than all of us just shaking our fists in the air in frustration, I thought it might be helpful for us to brainstorm somewhere and come up with a dream scenario for how Roon would handle box sets. I’m aware that this particular part of the forum isn’t monitored formally by Roon staff, but maybe over time we could develop a robust enough spec that it might be helpful to them.

I’ve attached a sketch that I did that tries to integrate box sets into the current information architecture of the application, at least as a starting point for discussion. It adds a “DISCS” layout alongside the TRACKS and CREDITS view of a work. Part of what we would need to be able to set is a per disc title and per disc art.

Anyway, maybe this will be an interesting exercise for us. For instance, I know that @Mike_O_Neill has thought a ton about this through the years, and I’ve followed some of his advice on box sets as a workaround. I’d love anyone to jump in here with ideas and thoughts….

Mike_O_Neill · April 28, 2026, 1:34pm

Being vocal on the subject of Box Sets, quite a while ago, I was privately approached to glean my thoughts on where box sets should go. I put together my views (hardly a spec to work from) of how I would foresee a box based on how I have set it up in JRiver.

Cannot attach a Doc file so I’ll paste the text , it will look ‘orrible (not as ‘orrible as expected)

Box Set Handling in Roon

First caveat my main experience is with classical sets and rock sets, generally rock sets have less CD’s an often are simply a collection of a bands album on a specific label e.g. Joni Mitchell: The Reprise Years etc. They often contain unreleased tracks and bonus CD’s which make “splitting” difficult
I have zero experience of jazz boxes.
Performance comments are based on my system of 10i7 NUC running ROCK, 256 Gb OS SSD , 32 Gb RAM, 4Tb internal SSD, 5Tb external USB HDD . The system is rebooted daily for a variety of reasons (I believe my trouble free use of Roon is partly down to this). For Roon Remote an iPad Pro 12.9 (3 yr old).
[Tag] word in [xxx] refer to metadata Tags held in the base files

Assumptions
1.1. A box set comprises 3 CDs or more.
1.2. Artist/Album Artists may vary for each CD
1.3. A “Pseudo Album” is an album extracted from a box set, the [Album] set to a new value to match an existing released album.

Types of Classical Box Sets

2. 2.3. Complete Recordings of “Artist X”
2.3.1. Very common as record labels re-release back catalogue.
2.3.1.1. Eg Alfred Brendel: Complete Philips Recordings (114 CD)

2.1. Complete recordings of a Composer in a specific Genre or Form e.g. Beethoven: Piano Sonatas.
2.1.1. Very common especially where symphonies, sonatas are issued as a complete set
2.1.2. Often relatively small < 10 ish so less of a problem if any.Small enough for Focus & Filter to work properly
2.2. Volume Box Sets (E.g. 1990 Beethoven Edition)
2.2.1. Where individual big sets are sub divided into volumes eg 1. Symphonies, 2. Concertos etc
2.2.1.1. A collection of 4 – 10 CD Sub Sets
2.2.1.2. Roon Tag currently handles these well with one exception, that of sorting. There is no Volume # as such so nothing to sort on. I get around this by renaming the album 01 – Concertos etc. Not ideal as that is not the album name.

2.3.1.2. Sometimes combined as Volume Boxes where split by Date or Composer e.g. Karajan: Complete Recordings on DG split into 10 subsets by date. Abbado split by Composer range.
2.3.1.3. Provided a single [Album] value is used often Roon can ID these. Often with a bit of manual persuasion
2.3.2. May be original CD releases but not necessarily.
2.3.3. Often bonus tracks are added or 3 LP’s made into 2 CD’s to make up CD 70 mins from a previous Vinyl 45 min (Common)

Complete sets of previously released CD. Simply a collection of CD’s . Often the Disc # is missing !!
2.4.1. E.g. RCA Red Seal: Best 100
2.4.2. Original Jackets Series e.g. Glenn Gould
2.4.3. “Pseudo Albums” split out from a box. Roon Tag works for this already in showing a collection of albums. The same comment on sorting applies but alphabetic is actually probably better in this case.

DG Complete works of [Composer] is a special case
2.5.1. The newer Mozart, Bach and Beethoven are monsters Mozart = 225 CD’s, Bach 222 Cd’s
2.5.2. DG didn’t but MusicBrainz has them split into bite size volumes of 20 ish CD
2.5.3. May throw a (performance) spanner in the works when handled as a single box.
2.5.4. The sheer number of tracks in Mozart 225 was tripping up search , it also slows down filter and focus on lower spec’ed servers

Artwork
3.1. Boxes will come with an Overall Image for the Box, currently only applied if all discs have the same folder file.
3.2. Each individual CD will or may have an associate Image.
3.2.1. Some will be a previously released Album Folder, rarely provided with the download, more often sourced and applied manually by the user.
3.2.2. If no album cover as such the overall Box Cover will be applied as ‘folder’ to each disc
3.2.3. Others may have individual “CD Inners” styled artwork, supplied as part of the download eg.

Additional Custom File Tags needed in source files.
4.1. [Box Set]
4.2. [Disc] or [Disc Name]
4.3. [Disc Volume] a per 2.1
4.4. [Disc Volume No.]
Current Navigation Issues
5.1. A box set is treated as a normal album
5.2. The Focus tool works fine but can slow down as CD Count gets high say >50 on my system. Brendel (114 CD) is certainly sluggish.
5.3. Filter works fine.
5.4. CD Number is close to useless unless you know where a specific piece lies in the set , even using Focus some sets may have multiple recordings of the same composition. Eg Brendel has 3 recording of Beethoven “Hammerklavier” in the Box . Admittedly easily found by Focus or Filter
5.5. Search is also dramatically affected by CD count, a few year back I Had Mozart 225 as a big set it actually hung Roon , splitting to 20 ish CD Volumes fixed it.
Suggested Navigation
6.1. I have my really big boxes arranged in JRiver where the Expression Language allows a customsed view
6.2. Images of how I do it there may help
6.3. A Tree view allows selection of Box Sets and opens a screen

image975×443 65 KB

6.4.
6.5. Selection of the Box Required gives a screen by Disc
6.6.

image975×464 63.9 KB

6.7. A further click can open the file listing.
6.8. Things to note …
6.8.1. All art work is manually applied – unlikely to be available through Roon’s nomal sources. I am not sue if it came with set even or simply applied from othe images available.
6.8.2. The overall Box Cover is not catered for in JRiver but I would suggest is essential
6.8.3. All sub names are annually applied , a JR Expression = [Disc #] – [Disc Name] builds what you see.
6.9. This looks like a Roon Tag , indeed applying the ROONALBUMTAG = “Box Set Name” produces a Tag set looking very similar . The main issue there is sorting , ideally the images should sort by Disc # to look like a Box. There is probably no need to sort in any other way
6.10. Mapping to Custom Tags is the key as I see it. This depends on how the individual user has named his Cusom Tags if he has used them. That said renaming the tag is not too complex.
6.11. All this really depends on a lot of user manual tagging presumably external to Roon. The data required to segregate individual disc is unlikely to be available through Roon sources
6.12. One alterntive is to create and allow editing of a [Disc Name] tag in Roon, again first prize would be mapping to file data
6.12.1. The [Disc Name] is purely user derived unless it’s a previous release (in which case the Album Name can be used) , even then the Tag is not standard so unlikely to be findable from AllMusic etc So unless there is some magic this must be mapped into a Roon Tag from the file data
6.12.2. The same goes for [Disc Volume], [Disc Volume #]
6.12.3. Disc # is normally in the metadata but mapping to the file tag first would be first prize as it can often be missing.

How I would like to see it (??)
7.1. On the main Menu an entry for Box Sets
7.1.1. Alternatively dynamically detect a Box Set where the [Box Set] tag is not empty and open the Box Set screen accordingly
7.2. This should show the Overall Box Artwork (If unavailable the a FanFold of folder. An edit facility should be provided to allow entry of the overall image as per folder in an album.
7.3. Click to get to an Album View or Tag View
7.4. This should
7.4.1. Sort on CD#
7.4.2. Show an artwork associated with the Disc not the Box
7.4.3. Any text associated with the release should be shown here not on an individual album as much of it could be meaningless at a single CD level.
7.4.4. Allow a link to “Show as Album” that will open a standard Album View of the Box. (A nicety but it will allow another way to play a continuous set of CDs in a row)
7.5. Click on this should show a normal “album screen” as if it were a separate album.
7.5.1. The normal album text can remain but may well not be available for download or could be meaningless. I would leave it out personally or make it a user editable field just in case.
7.6 The Current Disc # dropdown in the full album view should be modified to show [Disc #] - [Disc Name] for quick selection – NB this could be applied a a quick fix while developing the rest but would need the Tag mapping logic.
7.7. From there on play the music.
7.8. One quirk , sometimes a work is over several CD’s eg Opera’s so at the end of a disc provide some means (checkbox ?) of playing the next disc rather than falling through into Roon Radio (if configured). Or a link to an Album View focused at the selected track to start as normal :“Play from Here”
7.9. Finally the Box is still an album so should continue to appear as such . On selection instead of opening the Album screen Roon should open the Box set screen as if selected

Arindal · April 28, 2026, 1:47pm

These are great ideas, and I would love to see boxsets being properly treated in roon. I have tried implementing my boxes (mainly rock deluxe editions, anthologies and classical boxsets) years ago into roon, and eventually given up on that topic.

Unfortunately, metadata for these sets is usually a mess. The nicest ideas how to display these sets in roon, bear an inherent risk of failure due to flawed metadata. Particularly “Artist” and “Album Artist” are in many many cases not correctly assigned. Not everyone is willing to edit every tag manually, just to have it neatly displayed.

I personally have split away full albums, which are available as an alternative release, from the boxset, using the “Edit > Fix Group tracking” option. Which oftentimes leaves one “rest of the rest” folder per boxset. Example by the Pineapple Thief:

This is all one 7-CD anthology set, with the bonus tracks and alternate versions being left in the boxset release (left), as they have no corresponding album release.

With classical boxsets, I admittingly failed. Complete Verdi, Complete Mozart, Bach 333, Alfred Brendel´s big box, Karajan complete, It is all a mess. Had to throw them all out, and interestingly, I don´t miss a thing, as all the recordings are seemingly available in separate releases, and I prefer browsing artists´ discographies, composition lists and recording lists per composition. I understand, this is not a useful advice, if one uses roon as a curation tool for the complete library.

Mike_O_Neill · April 28, 2026, 2:12pm

For completeness in this discussion.

The approach you describe is pretty much what I do , if a box splits and doesn’t throw out too many Not ID’ed I leave the split .When it doesn’t I remove the box much as you describe.

I try to minimize not ID’ed as this seems to have been implicated in performance issues.

I also have a complete and current DNLA library in JRiver. For those who don’t know JRiver it allows for custom tags and custom menu views which allows me to manage boxes as I would like. The images in the write up are from there

My navigation method normally starts at Artist and the Discography anyway, so whether an album is local or Tidal is irrelevant. Tidal (don’t have Qobuz in SA) nearly always covers what I need . On the rare occasion I can revert to JRiver which has the full library.

Mark_McClusky1 · April 28, 2026, 2:23pm

Yes, metadata is/will be a big issue here. But looking at Music Brainz, and sticking with my example of the Beatles in Mono Box, there are per disc names and per disc art:

https://musicbrainz.org/release/5cd103c6-07e3-32b1-8cea-7e53eb994829

But then you have something like a Grateful Dead box set of shows, say the “Get Shown the Light” box of May 1977 shows. It’s 11 “discs”, but only 4 releases, as the shows span multiple discs. Ideally, this would be displayed as 4 releases contained in a single box set, I think.

And thank you for posting more thoughts, obviously the classical world is probably the most complex.

Arindal · April 28, 2026, 3:55pm

In the best of all possible worlds - yes! I see the problem, that adding another sorting/navigation layer, basically breaks the hierarchy how roon is treating releases. As singles and EPs are treated like albums by roon, I assume they opted for a single-layer hierarchy.

From own experience with metadata, I wholeheartedly agree. Some record labels in the past have issued different versions of boxsets with zillions of conductors, orchestras and soloists, some only for regional release. Underlying metadata is a mess, if any exists at all. And the structure of releases is pretty heterogeneous, so you basically have to define rules for every subset of boxsets.

If you include unofficial boxset releases of music which is public domain in some regions of the world (such as pre-1962 classical performances or early jazz recordings), not even streaming service like Qobuz or Tidal could handle, what gets uploaded to their platforms.

Don´t get me wrong - I would love to see a solution, and I fully support @Mike_O_Neill s Initiative that something has to be done to handle sets better. I am just pessimistic that it can be done the easy way.

Mark_McClusky1 · April 28, 2026, 4:05pm

Tracks > Discs > Release (could be a single disc, or multiple. Sometimes, we call these albums) > Collection (another name for a box set).

Or maybe something like that? I know that “Works” are a concept on the classical side, but not sure how that’s implemented.

Roon understands a release/album that is composed of multiple discs. What we need is a collection/box set that can be composed of multiple releases.

That’s kind of the approach that @Mike_O_Neill ends up with in his tagging suggestion elsewhere – kind of a landing page for the set. But what’s unsatisfying for me about that is the lack of metadata/information at that top collection/box set level.

Mikael_Ollars · April 28, 2026, 5:36pm

Im leaning towards that Roon should first and foremost try and solve the conundrum of Various Artists, Compilations, Samplers and Anthologies. I have been told that this is no easy nut to crack, as the metadata providers don’t distinguish nor define these.

I think most box sets from the classical sphere will require a strategy for handling both composers and artists when were talking about “Decca: The Analogue Years” as an example.

To be a bit provoking, nearly all classical and many jazz albums could be considered “Cover albums”, and this will have consequences in a big library…

Brian_Resch · April 28, 2026, 6:31pm

I’ve had a lot of success organizing box sets in Roon, though there are 2 caveats there:

I treat the box sets as individual releases themselves, and do no split out “albums” even if the box is a collection of distinct releases
I make heavy utilization of the work, section, part tags outlined here: https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/file-tag-best-practice#Achieving_Great_Results_From_File_Tagging

@Mark_McClusky1 I have the May 1977 GD box set you mentioned above, and using work and part tags i can organize it this way in Roon:

etc.

I also have the Complete Brendel on Philips boxset that @Mike_O_Neill mentioned above, and I leave that set organized by work. It’s clear that users want to be able to organize a box like that showing both the box as a distinct release along with the constituent albums as their own entries. I do wonder how feasible that is given how many box sets don’t honor old album organization. I can think of several classical sets that break apart earlier albums to organize the works by either composer or by recording date (The Sviatoslav Richter Complete Philips, Decca, and DG box set is a great example of this). Even popular boxes can throw curveballs in, as was mentioned by @Arindal with the Pineapple Thief box he demonstrated.

This just seems like a problem that cannot be solved due to metadata given the state of provided metadata. I admittedly invest a lot of time on my tagging, which I am sure a lot of users have no interest in.

Arindal · April 28, 2026, 6:54pm

If I am not mistaken, an aspect that was frequently criticized, is the difficulties arising when you browse a big box displayed on a single album page, i.e. all tracks are just one extensive list, and you can´t focus properly on compositions, performers, composers or whatever. I found this annoying to a level I have thrown out the Complete Verdi, complete Mozart, Bach 333 and other classical anthologies. And, to be honest, I don´t know a viable solution to this.

When I took the screenshot, I noticed that this case is even worse. It is a boxset, ´How did we find our way´, released in 2023, containing

5 regular releases, i.e. albums
2 bonus albums, assigned to 2 of the aforementioned albums, with no separate release
8 single bonus tracks assigned to 3 of the aforementioned albums
2 bonus tracks not assigned to any album

Trying to integrate the bonus tracks, is a mess. To make things even worse, roon is not capable of showing one of the 2 bonus albums as a separate release from the album they were packaged with. In the end of the day I left the 2 bonus albums unidentified, and decided to leave the box, minus all albums, as a ´rest of the rest´ release:

Like you @Brian_Resch I am willing to invest some time into manual tagging, but only to a point that is necessary to find tracks later. That was the case with maybe 7 or 8 boxsets so far (the two Pineapple Thief anthologies causing the maximum of headache so far).

If there is an easier way to find things (with the help of Qobuz), I leave thing untouched, remove the boxset, and let the composition > recording list of roon do its magic. So I rather keep composer and composition metadata up to date. Admittingly, I would not invest time into tagging so roon is the tool to completely oversee and structure all music I have. For me, this is not worth it, other people might want roon exactly for that purpose.

Mark_McClusky1 · April 28, 2026, 7:02pm

@Brian_Resch If I could then add “work art,” and see it displayed like my sketch above, that would pretty much do what I’d hope to do.

Brian_Resch · April 28, 2026, 7:13pm

Navigating tracks in big boxes is certainly an issue. I have completely abandoned searching for tracks in classical boxes, and either focus on composer in the album page or navigate to the composition page itself then filter on recordings in my collection. For my purposes that method works, but certainly understand the frustration others might feel at that.

My compulsion with tagging comes from an obsession with data management (a field I am lucky enough to be employed in). I am probably an extreme outlier in that I am willing to do a large amount of tagging and grooming to organize all my music as I like. Given the number of threads that pop up on this forum that point toward imperfect tagging, that is just clearly not a level of effort users are willing to make. The cost there is you are left to the metadata provided to Roon through its various sources, which in some cases (as you note) is good enough but in many others is simply not.

Brian_Resch · April 28, 2026, 7:14pm

I leave all the album art in the main folder so that it at least will scroll through on the now playing page. A little thumbnail like in your sketch next to each work or section with that disc’s actual album art would be great.

Mike_O_Neill · April 28, 2026, 7:26pm

Roon are not metadata collators they are metadata copiers . If it isn’t anywhere to be API accessed (a la MusicBranz) then Roon struggle. They are not going to set up a database of Box Set metadata that doesn’t exist !!

Mark_McClusky1 · April 28, 2026, 8:47pm

@Mike_O_Neill Sorry, I didn’t state that clearly – I would like to be able to display that metadata/information. It does exist, to some extent, on MusicBrainz as I was posting about above.

Serge_Tse · April 29, 2026, 10:17am

I really like this idea.

I might be missing something, but here’s how I see it:

The box set issue seems to only affect local collections (CD rips) and doesn’t really apply to streaming services. If that’s the case, grouping albums into box sets will likely have to be a somewhat manual process. It’s a lot of work, but there’s probably no other way around it. Doing it automatically would be extremely difficult, so Roon could simply provide the tools to help. Even basic functionality would be a start.

Users would need to reorganize their file structure like this:

\\Box set 1\
- \1 - Album 1 (CD 1)
- \2 - Album 1 (CD 2)
- \3 - Album 2 (CD 1)
- \4 - Album 2 (CD 2)
- \5 - Album 2 (CD 3)
- \6 - Album 3 (CD 1)
…
- \XX - Album X (CD XX)

\\Box set 2\
- \1 - Album 1 (CD 1)
- \2 - Album 2 (CD 2)
- \3 - Album 3 (CD 3)
…
- \XX - Album X (CD XX)

or something.

Feature Suggestions:

Settings: Add a toggle in the settings menu to “Enable/Disable Box Set functionality.” Also, add a specific “Box Set” icon in the album display settings.

Different versions of albums should still appear under the “Versions” tab as usual, even if they belong to a box set. You could identify them by their file path. These should still be editable via the standard “Edit” menu, including the ability to manually add tracks to an album within a box set.

When selecting album versions that belong to a box set, a “Add album to Box Set” option should appear in the menu. This should also be available in the main Albums section.

After selecting the option, you’d either name a new box set or pick an existing one. A search bar would be necessary here for those with large collections.

Box Set Editor: We need a dedicated editor to:

Edit the box set cover art (with an option to upload or automatically use folder.jpg or cover.jpg from the root folder).
Add/remove albums from the box set.

Navigation: Add a “Focus > Album Type > Box Sets” filter for easier browsing.

Display Options: It would be great to have a setting to choose whether to show albums from box sets individually or only within the box set itself.

One potential challenge is the sorting order of albums within a box set.

Perhaps Roon could implement an import setting that recognizes box sets based on the folder name ("Collection of... (Box-set)"), automatically including everything inside that folder into the set.

I think users will have to ensure that the metadata is correct by themselves.

Mike_O_Neill · April 29, 2026, 1:47pm

Any way around is a lot of manual effort

It would require a very flexible editor within Roon

Neither are very Roon, automatic metadata is all, and it’s mostly unavailable or of poor completeness or quality. MusicBrainz may have the complete box and tracks, but no disc subtitles or individual artwork

Mike_O_Neill · April 29, 2026, 3:44pm

Your Grateful Dead link actually has Disc Subtitles , without being rude , I’ll find the other 99 that don’t

I think it’s the first time I can recall seeing it, Dead fans are obviously more meticulous than classical contributors

Stan_Jones · April 30, 2026, 11:14am

There are so many box sets that don’t have the structure you seem to think is universal.

Sonny Rollins The Freelance Years has 5 cds but includes 8 original albums so some original albums have tracks on 2 different cds. His The Prestige Years (5 cds) includes tracks that are part of other artists releases, but only those tracks that Rollins plays on so not all of the original album is included.

Miles Davis Chronicle has 8 cds with the tracks in recording date order which doesn’t in any way correspond to original albums.

Bud Powell on Verve is 5 cds with the tracks in recorded order including alternate, unreleased tracks (most Mosaic box sets. - almost 300 of them - are like this).

I have not done an exhaustiuve search of all my box sets, but I would guess that the number that fit your model are far outwreighed by the number that don;t.

The one feature I would like for box sets in roon would be the ability to attach the original cover to tracks in box sets. It is possible to display different lyrics for each tracks (even in a non -box set) and my idea is that the cover would work the same. Even better would be ability to display both the box set cover and the original cover together.

Serge_Tse · April 30, 2026, 11:46am

Yes, I said earlier that I might be missing something
But I think it’d be better treating the CDs from the box set as separate albums from the start. And then everything come into its place.
It doesn’t matter that tracks from these CDs may be listed on the other specific studio albums. Tracks from the CD from the boxset remain inside the boxset. Tracks from the albums remain on the album. 2 or more maybe identical, but actually different.
I think most of these CDs will be unidentified. This will be even better than when Roon automatically redistributes tracks from these CDs between “classic” albums.
I apologize if I explained my thoughts confusingly or didn’t fully understand yours