Browsing by folder structure yet? Roon also used to mess up my folders... fixed? [no folder browsing, and no more organized folders]

The problem with the requests Ross is that you can only say no, that was a choice we made at the outset so many times. It doesn’t matter to me either way. If I am looking at artists or albums my music is there the same as it would be in a folder but it can’t be denied I have less ‘chance encounters’ with my music. But I do explore more via Tidal. I suppose the problem is who do you please, a silent majority of a vocal minority?

I suppose the problem is who do you please, a silent majority of a vocal minority?

When Tidal goes under and people start cancelling their Roon subscriptions and going back to Jriver, you will probably wish you had pleased that vocal minority. And it won’t upset the “silent majority” (who are mostly indifferent to this issue anyway), and is really not that difficult to do, despite what they say.

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Try harder.

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I tried and i still don’t understand.
I can accept the request to implement folder navigation as a secondary option of Roon (to be activated or deactivated).
I still don’t understand how you can prefer an old management (directory) to a new management (tags and metadata)

I have to disagree. Such a thing is not easy to do without having a monster at the end. Half in the old times, half the modern way.
What you say is: why can’t I steer these weird new automobiles not longer with reins, that worked so long and I know exactly how to use them. You don’t have to remove this steering wheel, but give us both!!!

Welcome to the 21 century. With a database approach you can do EVERTHING you can do with folders and you can do it easier and you can do more. And if your music once goes in the cloud or in mixed sources, like we already had in Roon with the mix of Tidal and local library, you don’t have to worry where your music is located and how you find it. You can simply enjoy your collection.

That is a very dark forecast of a potential future. I am a lifer and happy here. I had Tidal before I came because I used the Moon MiND 180 so it was a natural progression for me. If that changes I am sure Roon will adapt and overcome. Some will leave, others won’t. Until then we are where we are. And my experience was that JRiver was an untidy mess. There are no guarantees that is where the disenchanted and disenfranchised will go!

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Clearly that is not working for a lot us.

The same thing I heard more than 20 years ago from some colleagues as our company brought all our client data in a database. They argued that it is easier for them to find everything in the folders in the shelves behind their desks. They knew exactly where everything is.
Same arguments, but today nobody knows how we could work without access to every data from a meeting room on the other side of the world and without the help of the only guy who knows the content of his folders.

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… except that the only person who needs to know the content of my folders is me. The only person who needs to know the content of your folders is you. We are not a collective and we don’t all need to access everyone’s data, so your analogy does not really work.

The thing is, Roon is already halfway there. Hidden under “Inspector” in Focus at the very end, without even a checkbox, are the words “storage locations”. Click on this and it brings up … a drive letter! Clearly, even including this much caused a lot of angst in the Roon developers, and I bet this caused big arguments. As a concession to those who opposed it, finding “storage locations” is hard; it is deeply hidden and disguised amongst other things. All it now needs is an additional option to allow you to click on folders within that drive, and sub-folders within those folders (and so on). That’s all it would take. You can keep it hidden, so its very existence does not offend the Roon zealots who have drunk deep of the Roon kool-aid and believe that only the Roon way is the right way.

With Tidal likely to fold, I am guessing that the Roon senior management (or Leadership Dudes or whatever cool name they use so they don’t sound too corporate) are meeting regularly to make contingency plans. Some of those will be how to deal with the loss of revenue when 10% - or maybe 30%, who knows? - of Roon subscribers don’t renew their subscriptions when Tidal goes under. They are also thinking about what to do with those (like me) who bought lifetime licences on the promise of Tidal integration and whether they will need to offer some kind of partial refund.

This is not a good time for Roon to be alienating a large chunk of its current and potential subscribers. Folder browsing has been one of the most consistent feature requests. If lots of people on the forum have been asking for it over the years (and they have), that means that a lot more people who aren’t posting want the same thing.

I understand that Roon has taken the view that folder browsing is contrary to its vision. Roon is not trying to be all things to all people, and I respect that. But the change I have suggested above is minor, and mostly invisible, and would satisfy most people who have requested this feature. And with Tidal likely to fold, the Roon leadership needs to decide if it wants to stay true to its vision, or just stay in business.

Ok guys, everyone is entitled to their opinion, on both sides of the issue.

Let’s keep the discussion friendly and avoid picking on other users.

Cheers, Greg

Time will tell @Ross_Blackman. But if that deluge of doom and gloom is genuinely what you think then folder view isn’t going to help us is it? In fact it is a tiny gesture in a huge cesspit of despair! My view is simple. Folder view is not the difference between success or failure. Yes it alienates a few, but most of us adapted when we realised we had to find other ways to do what we wanted. And Tidal isn’t as sick as some have made out. In fact they can finance themselves for at least six months and have owners with healthy cash reserves. Techradar have updated their Tidal review and while the reviewer finds it hard to get past his disdain for its principle owner, when he concentrates on the relevant facts Tidal comes out well. The review was updated 16 days ago and makes no mention of any financial woes. I doubt Techradar would steer its readers towards a product in danger of imminent collapse.

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I would like to see Focus/Inspector/Storage Locations one directory deeper, but otherwise oppose folder browsing in Roon. Not because it concerns me how others interact with their libraries, but because every development decision in Roon defers other possibilities… I would rather see many other things instead, such as a mobile solution.

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I would like to see Focus/Inspector/Storage Locations one directory deeper, but otherwise oppose folder browsing in Roon.

Why just one directory deeper? Why is two or three more difficult than one? Personally, I would need 4 or 5 levels, so adding one more is not all that useful. But if you are opposed to the concept, and don’t want to spend any development time on it, why bother even adding one more directory? That seems like a token gesture that benefits nobody.

One directory deeper would permit easy tagging of the major directory categories. In my library this is Artist, which is pointless because Roon permits sorting by Artist and I can bookmark any Artist view I want. But there are some users who have thematic, gig or other idiosyncratic data structures at the root of their libraries, after that however, the Focus tools usually allow filtering to views that you can bookmark or select/tag.

Rather than a token gesture I think it would make a practical difference in the few cases (eg. completist gig archivists) where the Focus tools can’t replicate an initial large scale classification. These are edge cases.

I don’t know what increasing the depth of Storage Location filtering would require in terms of software development. Certainly limiting to one further level would be simpler than supporting an arbitrary number of levels.

I believe that managing file systems across Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS and Android would require some resources. Not many other programs do that.

If you felt like it I’d be pleased to hear more about your folder structure and why the Focus tools are inadequate to create appropriate bookmarks or tags

In this case, do you think that it is a good idea to indicate to roon as storage the different level 1 directories instead of the only level 0 directory ?

This is pretty much handled transparently in most programming languages these days. A directory tree is a directory tree is a directory tree…

Sorry, I’m not going to do that. As I said earlier, I have seen many others try to explain why they need folder browsing each of the many times this has come up. In each case they were met with derision and condescension, as people patiently and patronisingly explained that what they wanted could already be easily done in Roon without folder browsing. And maybe it could. Of course, it would take lots of work to re-edit their metadata, add tags to several terabytes of music files and build playlists to replicate their folders. But of course that’s what they signed up for … lots of work. *

Really, it’s of no relevance to anyone but me why I would like folder browsing. I buy expensive software because it makes my life easier, not harder. Maybe if folder browsing was an option, I would eventually move over to the Roon system as I got used to it. Maybe not.

I’m not suggesting that Roon change its philosophy or build an alternative browser with flashing lights and an arrow saying “this way to the boring old world of folder browsing and plain lists of music like everyone else”. But if Focus allowed me to zoom in on a particular folder - and at a level that I have selected, not one that Roon generously allows me to look at - it would make life easier and I would be perfectly happy to use Roon exclusively, even if Tidal does disappear - despite the comforting assurances of Techradar.

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In a perfect world with perfectly tagged albums and a 100% hitrate of Roon’s databse a file browser is not needed. Unfortunalty we do not live in a perfect world and Roon ain’t perfect either.

Today I have tried to group 28 tracks into one album. All the tracks are in one directory. and all have the same album name tag but somehow Roon does not recognize it as an album because it is not an official album (happens a lot)

I have recognized in the album browser that Roon did not recognize these tracks as being an album but as 28 albums with the same album title so I wanted to correct that.
Now there is no way to multiple select these “albums” here in the album browser so we have to go somewhere else. Open one of the albums to go to the album page. From there we can rightclick on the single track to select view file info. Then copy the file path to clipboard. Then I have to go to the trackbowser, paste the filepath into the filepath section, manually delete the trackname from it so only the directory name is left. Check if it was done right, check if it has really only selected this directory (many times there are also other directories selcted because it does only a search on keywords) Doublecheck, sometimes even triplecheck (yes, really needed, mistakes are very easy because Roon can not select just the directory content in any way. Then multiselect all the tracks, go to goup tracks into one album. From there things get even more confusing because it is not always clear what’s being asked of me. All this takes a lot of steps. In each step mistakes are possible, you have to manually check everything everytime again and again. It takes about 3 to 10 minutes per album this way. (times hundreds in my case) With a directory viewer it would take me one tenth of this time to do all this, really. I’m not asking for a directory browser. I’m asking for an easy way to edit tracks/albums and viewing directory content is a very important part in that process.

Again, we are not living in a perfect world so tools like this are still very needed. In trying to make things simple Roon might work fine but when things don’t go the Roon way automatically it is about the most complicated, confusing and frustrating pieces of sofware I have ever encountered. Not being able to simply view and select the content of a directory plays a big part in that. Let me view and select the content via the Focus tool please. It is not in the way for anyone who doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it. But it helps a whole lot for those with less then 100% perfect libraries. Like said many times before, we do not need a full fledged directory browser ala J.river etc, please no no no, absolutely not. Is it really that much to ask?

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Agree 100%

In the Album browser, right-click/long-press on one of them, click all the others, click the Edit button in the upper right, the first button is Merge Albums.

Did I understand your situation correctly? Did this work?

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