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.
Is it really that difficult to add a file or folder link to Roon? I’m really finding it frustrating that I cannot find the music I know I have by folder. My library is organized but ROON doesn’t make it easy to find that music. I have compilations, etc I have organized by folder and want to play, but have to keep going back to finder or my synology file station to find them.
Major downside and one reason I only purchased a year instead of lifetime. The UI isn’t great and is inconsistent. Many little things are adding up to make Roon less than it could be.
It’s a different way of doing things. I just use the search funnel. Never needed anything else.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
230
It is different, but doesn’t work for everyone. The Roon team has identified a number of complications for this implementation that I agree, in a perfect world, would be resolved. However, as a starting point, I think just path browser that uses the file paths from the core/server would be sufficient. Yes, definitely would be cool to have a local path from a control point, but that certainly does complicate things. At least start with a basic way to browse to a file and play it by folder structure. And in this case then media files don’t need to be indexed in the library, which to me is a huge plus just in terms of basic functionality.
I have many compilations too. Is the issue that you don’t know what you called them or something else?
If I want to play “ncpl’s fave compliation” there are a number of very quick ways I can get to that which don’t require a view of the folder that the album is in. None of them involve data grooming, tags, editing etc.
e.g. filter on “ncpl” and in 3 or 4 key strokes it is likely to be on the screen…press play
e.g. sort by album title and scroll to “nc…” and I will be on a page showing that album…press play
Both of these methods are likely to be less clicks that opening up a folder hierarchy and drilling down.
If you cannot recall what the compilation is called and want to do the equivalent of staring at the rack of CD’s until you spot it then again I would probably just sort by comps or various artist until I spotted it.
I think the key to successfully influencing the Roon devs into adding this to a dev list is to find the killer scenario that just cannot be done in a manner that is already supported.
I think there are already quite some Roon users asking for some kind of “folder” or name it whatever browsing.
There is no “killer” necessary, just a bit of listening to many users.
I don’t think I’ve encountered a single instance yet that’s not covered by Roon’s search capability, unless you’re choosing on the basis of folder 23, subfolder 21, play.
OK…so I am not sure why you have chosen to post in this thread then.
For other readers who might want to ask for the feature to be considered for development perhaps take a moment to explain a significant use case that is not support another way. That might help.
To be able to live without something does not mean that I dont wish to have at least an additional seach feature as described above in that thread.
Writing 1000 times the same and getting no feed back is something like communicating with an audistic environment.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
239
I’ll volunteer a use case: friend brings over a USB stick with recordings of his band on it, in FLAC format. There’s no usable metadata and Roon wouldn’t have heard of this band. We want to listen through Roon because the quality is the best (and also because my now headless playback computer, converted to Roonbridge, doesn’t have a monitor so that I can play it locally from Foobar or VLC),
Presently, if I drag from Windows Explorer into Roon, it adds it to the library. If I want to then play the tracks back in a given order or just listen to some of the tracks, I have to sift through the stuff to see what’s what. It’s clunky, a terrible user experience, especially compared to so many pieces of software that can just do this straight-up.
Then, when we are done, I have to delete the media from the library. This can also result in deleting the media from my friend’s USB drive. That’s not good.
Not saying it’s impossible, but all of that is unnecessarily clunky.
If your friend used id3 tags then ROON would pick up all the basic data you need. Any Band should do this if they are promoting their material.
I get files we record at LRB like this all the time and Roon finds basic data. I do polish it in ID3 though if I’m keeping it.
That is a use case though but fairly small.
Thoughts Chris
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
241
It’s not as small as you might think. I was just trying to make it a user-friendly example by keeping it to a single narrative. This same use case scenario applies in:
—getting live concert recordings or bootlegs
—audio media that is not music
—other media that friends offer or bring over that you just want to hear for a minute without any big effort in order to determine if it’s worth grooming and adding to the permanent collection
It’s not really about whether there are ID3 tags - nor can one control what is in a media file until one grooms it - it is about the clunky process for something EVERY other media play does well, and which seems like an easy add to Roon if the team is willing not to have it be particularly fancy (like platform independent and works from any control point - that does make it more challenging!).
Anyway, I actually agree it is not the first thing that needs to be built now. But I do think a complete offering includes some sort of path/folder style browsing.
There are some issues with playing temporary media, but not those.
Drag and drop. No tag editing, no Roon editing or grooming, no nothing.
Album browser sorted by Date Added: the new content is in the upper left, one or more albums based on what Roon recognized.
Play
Select the added album(s), through right click/long press, Edit button, scroll to the bottom of the dialog, Delete, confirm.
The only concern I see is if what you import is a new version of an album you already have, you have to be careful so you don’t delete the wrong one. But in no case would it delete from your friend’s media.
It is obviously up to the Roon team if they want to do this.
But there are lots of interesting edge cases that compete for attention.
I recently asked for searching by Artist Role: I don’t remember who played, but show albums with accordion, a very real case: Saluzzi, Piazzola, Matinier, Ziegler…
We have discussed various ways of traversing the graph: “what’s the Album with that guy who played with the other guy whatsisname who performed in that movie, whatsitcalled, with that pretty boy who did Drive?” (La La Land…)
And I made a joking suggestion that is actually meaningful when I thought about it: search by the color of the cover. Browsing album covers is not useful beyond a few dozen, but if I want an album that is predominantly yellow, no darker yellow – such a search would reduce to a more reasonable number.
Somwhat fanciful, sure, but…
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
244
That’s not as off-the-wall as you might have thought. There are many times I’ve tried to describe an album to someone and all I can come up with is the predominant color on the cover!
There are software programs that animate the album art so that it is kind of like shuffling through a physical record collection. Perhaps the Roon team might come up with something that feels like that. It’s definitely not a priority of mine, but it might be kind of a fun add-on when all the core stuff is done. (Which I know is never…there is always something…)
Allow me to provide a user scenario that benefits from having a folder structure. I have lots of albums in Chinese. Take for example a famous Chinese Erhu Player: Min, Hui-Fen. Her name can be in the following forms:
Huifen Min
Hui-Fen Min
Hui Fen Min
Min, Huifen
Min, Hui-fen
Min, Hui Fen
閔慧芬
闵慧芬
In total, 8 formats. If it’s a modern pop singer, they may even have a western name (such as Leslie, etc.) Having folder structure makes my life “slightly” easier.