I have a large database of music captured over the last 20 years and am not smart enough to figure out why Roon recognizes some of it, but not others. I have also downloaded recent music purchases which Roon does not recognize. I can navigate to everything through the “folders” option, which is really great, but I can’t quite figure out why Roon recognizes say Vol.1 of something, but does not see Vol. 2, with the exact same tags, and meta-data. My suggestion for a feature upgrade is to have Roon ask me when I search, and play something via the “folders” option, whether I want this added to my Roon catalog, and if so, what information I need to add to do so. Thank-you.
What you’re asking is not relevant.
Anything like music files in your storage locations WILL be added to the library, whether Roon can identify it or not.
And as you likely know, Roon will try to match your “albums” with online references (music brains/tivo), but if that fails it will sort your music into it’s database based on it’s metadata.
So, if you have “captured” music i suppose that will be like live performances etc? It really doesn’t matter, if there is no official release of the album it likely will not be recognized, and then dependant on your tagging.
Start here, to better see through whats happening:
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I’ve moved this thread from Feedback > Feature Suggestions because folders are already part of the Roon library.
Community can offer assistance and tips for identifying unidentified releases.
Mjw, I still think Roon could aid the user in adding missing meta data, manually at the point of play, in music accessed via folders that is not recognized by Roon in any other way. This is the feature I am suggesting, although I realize that I could go through my whole music collection manually to make it more Roon friendly. . Although the ability to use “folders” is part of the Roon library, the main reason I use this feature is to access things that do not show up in other parts of Roon, like artists, genres, etc. For expample, when I search for an artist like Nina Simone, many of her albums come up in the Roon frontend - but many do not, and I have to use the “folders” feature to find and play them manually. That works great but is not ideal. What I am suggesting is that Roon offer me a way, when I do find one I like, to add these manually to the albums/artists that the Roon front end does see, so that I do not have to use “folders” to find them every time. I do not know why they come up perfectly in Roon, with correct artist, artwork, etc. when I click on them manually via “folders” but do not come up in any of the other Roon front end offerings, or are not added to the Roon front end after I play them. I think Roon should add a feature at this stage of user interface to allow the user to add whatever is missing to complete the identification of the meta-data to a Roon friendly format. Thank-you!
…I’d add most of the time to that.
If the actual name of a folder or a file has strange characters (á ś ë ì ø æ ù) it may cause them to not be recognized/displayed in the library.
I’m not sure if this is Roon, OS or storage dependent. But I believe it may be more OS and storage related than roon as I had issues going between Mac and Linux using the same NAS storage. I had to “sanitize” a bunch of files and folders.
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Mikael, I think you are exactly right, but it would benefit me greatly if Roon would offer an “autofix” type of option when I pulled up a folder from my “folders” tab and suggest changes that would make things more friendly. The main problem is I do not know what files I have that Roon doesn’t see, but when I want to listen to something that Roon is not finding, I pull it up via the folders tab and can listen to it fine. At this point it would be great if I had the option to fix it, but would like some help from Roon on identifying exactly what the problem is. That would be a very helpful feature for me. Thanks for your thoughts.
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How can Roon add additional metadata if the album is unidentified? The fallback position is to use the file tags, and if these are lacking, neither Roon nor other music players will know what is playing.
Perhaps you could provide some real examples?
Bearing in mind that anything in your folder view is already in your library, you can manually edit the artist name, title, etc. Simply click on the ellipsis, and select Edit.
You can also list all unidentified albums using Focus, filter on an artist folder, and batch edit.
However, if many unidentified albums are official releases, investing in some time (and money) tagging them is probably the best route. I have my own workflow, which uses MusicBrainz and Discogs. Anything missing I add to MusicBrainz, so Roon will identify the release. Some software, for example, SongKong, will attempt to automatically identify and tag a large number of release in batch.
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Thanks everybody for all the help. I think I have enough information to keep me busy for a bit, exploring all the different suggestions. It seems like a problem that even AI cannot help me with. I have a large number of albums (35,000) collected over 20 years, all with completely different systems of tags and meta-data, depending on what year I was encoding them and which companies were in business then. I am now 70 years old and don’t want to spend the rest of my life updating and unifying it all instead of listening to it. I think what makes the most sense is when I have to go to the folders to find something not recognized under the Roon search for artist/genre/name, or under home as added recently, etc. for me to use the edit function (as suggested by mjw) to try to sort things out manually and to bring the album under the Roon cataloging system - as pointed out, it is in the system somewhere, under something. I realize my limitations in not quite understanding what metatdata to point Roon towards but can work on understanding that better. I now do think that what I was asking is what the “edit” function allows you to do, I just need to figure out how to decide which data to point it to for each field. Thanks again for the patience you all have in directing me the right direction. I will definitely look into SongKong.
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Some tagging software (maybe SongKong too, for instance) can also extract artists, album names, track names, and other stuff from file paths and file names, so if you have some order in your folders this may also be a way to tag at least these fields.
In a way it can also be an enjoyable hobby, to unify and correct metadata while listening to music. 
I totally understand if thats not your cuppa’ though, and then you have SongKong et al to handle bulk operations.
Do not engage in metadata editing without a backup plan though! If things go south, you’ll be pleased to have an option to restart operations from a known situation.
And, enjoy your tunes!
Edit: Oh, you have mentioned “suggestions from Roon” when it finds metadata/identification dubious. I disagree with that wish, as it is not in the playback softwares interest to arrange and sort the media files. I actually think there are too many editing functions in Roon as it is!
I think this is the significant observation - and if you could post a specific case where something has gone awol, someone smarter than me might be able to work out why, which may then suggest a strategy…
Yes SongKong can make use of this information, although it is very much the last resort when there is no metadata within the files.
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Hi Richard, regarding SongKong you can try out the Fix Songs task in Preview mode against your whole collection if you like without a license and can see what exactly results it would give without needing a license, the only difference is the changes are not actually made.
If you have any questions I’m happy to help.
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