Interesting. Are you saying that the Mozart piece (the rip files) exists in three different locations and is also tagged in three different ways? E.g with the artist listed as Mozart, Fricsay and Anda? I can see why you would have done that, back when we had no better tools. And I assume that the different tags would prevent Roon from recognizing that this is the same piece and put the composer, interpreter and conductor in the right metadata fields.
I can think of some possible workarounds for the second-level storage location search problem, without manual editing of all the albums.
First, can’t you remove the root folder from Roon and add the Composers, Interpreters and Dirigents folders as storage locations? Is there any reason Roon would not accept that? (I understand Roon can’t handle a vast number of storage locations so the approach wouldn’t work for people with lots of locations, but should be ok for you.)
Another approach would tag them, in bulk:
- In the OS, create a Temp directory next to the three Vinyl Rips directories.
- Drag the three Vinyl Rips directories into Temp. (This is of course a fast operation, doesn’t copy any files, only manipulates pointers.)
- In Roon, those Vinyl Rips disappear. But you have other albums. Select all, tag them Other, and filter negatively on the Other tag so the Album browser is empty.
- In the OS, drag the Composers directory back to where it was. Roon recognizes the albums that it has seen before. Takes a little while, for thousands of albums, but it’s all automatic, requires no work by you.
- In Roon, select all, tag them Composers, and then filter negatively on the Composers tag.
- Repeat for Interpreters and Dirigents: drag the directory back, select all, tag, and then filter out.
When you are done, the albums are in Roon and are tagged in accordance with your directory structure. This doesn’t do anything to rationalize the metadata, but at least it allows you easy access.
Did I understand your situation correctly?
It’s interesting, the situations we get into. I had to do some cleanup (twice), but I had a higher hit rate for automatic recognition.
@miklats – @Mike just made another suggestion, much easier: Still missing in Roon