Roon’s process for creating and playing playlists is incomplete. It does not contemplate playing individual tracks, only compositions. So if you wanted to shuffle, say, Grieg’s 25 Norwegian Folksongs so that they are scattered among other works, you would not be able to do it. This is such an obvious omission that IMO it deserves the bug label.
Well, there is one way to make the above happen…sort-of. One could take each of Grieg’s 268 individual piano tracks, and add them to a playlist, one at a time! Right click three dots next to each track, select Add to Playlist, select Choose Playlist, select Okay. That’s 4 X 268 = 1,072 clicks to add one boxset to the playlist.
Most would agree this isn’t a practical workaround. One fix idea: include a “Treat as Composition?” option when adding tracks to a playlist.
Note that this bug only affects those who listen to multi-track works such as Classical listeners. Since they only comprise 5% (or less) of the Roon audience, this bug can be safely ignored.
Let me try again using Grieg’s Norwegian Folksongs. It is treated by Roon (and the world) as a “composition” – one work with 25 parts. In reality it is 25 little songs. Each one is pleasant, but 25 back-to-back is tedious.
I’d like to create a playlist that when shuffled chooses one of these Grieg songs, then a Liszt song, Schumann song, Debussy song, etc.
Roon’s playlist function won’t let you (easily) disaggregate these compositions. As a result, when you add the “Norwegian Folksongs” to a playlist now, Roon will play all 25 PARTS, or songs, in a row.
Maybe a picture of a queue created from a playlist will help:
The Jongen preludes will all play together rather than being spread out in the playlist. “But there are two Romeo and Juliet PARTs in that list that will play separately!” True, but that happened by my adding each PART to the playlist, one at a time. Adding two or three PARTS is no big deal, but a whole boxset of parts entered separately IS a big deal.
Yes I understand now, thanks for that. I think it is acknowledged that the whole classical area is a bit awkward at best. The roon team have said they are working on improving the experience so it is good to tell them what’s not working.
I don’t have any playlists with classical compositions so haven’t noticed this before but I can see how it wouldn’t come out right.
Others may have more experience with classical problems and a workaround but then again maybe not!
I did see this in a different thread but then I guess you lose the composition concatenation so devil or deep blue…
“While in the Album View, click the 3 dots icon and select Edit. Then click on the Edit Album tab. Scroll to the bottom and select Multi-Part Composition Grouping and click Disable.”
It really gets down to having an ability to bulk add tracks to a playlist without any associated groupings or compositions keeping them together during playback.
I’ll admit that for “true” compositions - symphonies, concertos, e.g. - it does make usual sense to keep the PARTS (i.e. movements) together for playback. But for things like Preludes, Etudes, Songs, Dances, etc., these are more like collections than compositions. And they can/should be enjoyed separately.
So could you ungroup the ones you want separate in playlists and keep the others grouped?
Though if you have many compositions that’s a lot of clicking!
For those albums where you would prefer to treat tracks individually, could you not mark the album with the “Disable Multi-Part Compositions on this Album” so that tracks would be viewed individually in Playlists and in Radio?
Or, you could Un-group, as the case may be, upon addition to a playlist. Maybe instead of one “Add to Playlist” menu option, have two: “Add WORK to Playlist”, and “Add PARTS to Playlist”.
Ah, let’s debate that distinction for awhile. When is a bug not a bug? Can a feature also be a bug? Are feature requests and bug fixes two sides of the same coin? What percentage of bugs get fixed? What percentage of feature requests get programmed? Must a bug adversely affect 100% of users to be called a bug? Does a feature have to benefit 100% of users to be called a request? Can the same verbiage be honestly called both a bug and a feature request by different people? Can a supreme court judge express opinions without being labeled partisan? (just threw that one in)
Roon doesn’t deliver what you want. It’s debatable (IMO) as to whether this is as a result of a bug. I happen to think it’s more as a result of the current design. Whatever, raising what you want to achieve as a feature request is the way forward that I would advise. But please, leave it as a bug report if you so wish.
One follow up: a workaround does exist. One first disable multi-part compositions as suggested by @Geoff_Coupe. Then Select All tracks and add to playlist. They are added as individual tracks, not compositions
Once the playlist is set, THEN re-enable multi-part compositions. The playlist stays track-oriented.
Only worrisome part: is a bug that has a workaround still a bug?
