Roon server on new dedicated Mac Mini/10c w/ 16GB RAM connected via Cat6 1gb ethernet to Arris BGE210 modem/router
I am trying to understand how Roon is counting library content. I have my music library that is contained in on two separate drives in a total of three folders. As seen in the screenshot, the folder labeled “music” has 19,098 items in it while “music2c” has 114,918 and “music2m” has 104,866. Yet if you look to the right, it shows that the volume RoonMusic has 182,538 tracks imported (nearly ten times the number of items on the drive) while RoonMusic2/music2c shows having 77,670 tracks imported when it has 114,918 items in the folder, and RoonMusic2/music2m shows having 90,082 tracks imported when the folder has 114,918. And to make matters more confusing, the Roon home screen shows 3809 artists, 25585 albums, 356727 tracks, and 265 composers. How can a total of 238,882 items in the three folders end up showing a total of 350,290 tracks imported on the Setup-Storage screen and 356,727 tracks on the home screen. I hope someone can help me make sense of how these numbers add up. Thank you!
Thank you for the additional insight—you’re absolutely right to question how Roon could be reporting more tracks than the number of items in your folder. That certainly deserves a closer look.
Here are a few possibilities that could explain why Roon might appear to overcount:
Multi-Track Container Files or CUE Sheets
Some audio files (such as large FLACs with embedded or separate .cue files) can be interpreted by Roon as multiple individual tracks. So a single file could generate 10–15 track entries or more in the database.
Symbolic Links or Folder Aliases
If your storage setup includes symlinks or shortcuts to other folders, Roon might follow those paths and index the same files more than once without it being visually obvious in the file system.
To dig deeper, I recommend checking the following:
In Settings → Library → Clean Up Library, see if there's a large number of deleted or missing tracks that can be removed.
In Settings → Library → Skipped Files, check if any files are being skipped due to format or corruption.
Thank you ALL for your insights. Based on what you provided, here’s what I’ve been able to identify.
I did find a limited number (31) of .cue sheets. But when looking at the individual files I found they were all small (~2k) files and the .flac files in the same folder were described by the text content of the .cue files. When looking at an album with a .cue sheet in Roon, I see two versions of the album with a phantom directory inserted (see the second version between “music” and “music2c.” While these aren’t accounting for the large disparity in the counts, can they be deleted?
Symbolic Links or Folder Aliases - I didn’t find any of these myself but did run the Settings->Library->Clean Up Library twice. The first time there was nothing present. The second time I checked it had found 3 deleted files. When viewing skilled files, Roon was able to identify 410 files that were either a non-supported file type (2 wav files), corrupt files (383), failed to extract tags (23), i/o failure (1), and unable to load image (1).
I also ran a full “find /Volumes/…” on each of the three and output the results to a text file. I then had ChatGPT provide counts of each file type. What I found provided some additional insights and questions.
100% of the .mp3 files in my library (144,613 files) are duplicated by a file with an .mp3~ extension. Could these be causing the increased counts? Can they all be deleted?
There are 4,990 .db files. Are these created by Roon or are they most likely artifacts from my days of using JRiver Media Center on a PC?
There are 3,948 .m3u files. As I’m already not importing them and have no intention of using them, is there any reason why these can’t be deleted?
There are 1,956 .ini files. Can these be deleted?
There are 818 zip files, 301 url files, and 113 .nfo sidecar files. Is there any reason I can’t delete these?
Thank you for the detailed analysis — your effort here has been extremely helpful in narrowing things down.
Based on the information you’ve shared, here are some thoughts and recommendations:
.cue Files
Yes, if you are seeing duplicate albums in Roon caused by .cue sheets referencing the same FLAC files, you can delete the .cue files as long as you don’t need them for other playback software. Roon doesn’t rely on .cue files if it can read metadata directly from the FLACs.
*.mp3~ Files
These are almost certainly backup or temporary versions (often created by editing software). If each .mp3 is duplicated with a .mp3~, that could definitely inflate your file count. You can safely delete all *.mp3~ files if you have no need for these backup copies.
.db Files
Roon does not use or create .db files in your media folders. These are likely remnants from JRiver or other legacy systems. You can safely delete them if you’re no longer using the software that created them. It is important to note that they are not affecting the library duplications.
.m3u Files
Since you’re not importing or using playlists and don’t intend to, you can safely delete all .m3u files.
.ini Files
These are typically configuration files from Windows-based systems or media managers. Roon doesn’t use them. You can safely remove them if you’re not using other software that depends on them. It is important to note that they are not affecting the library duplications.
.zip, .url, .nfo Files
These are typically sidecar or miscellaneous files:
.zip: May contain backups, liner notes, or album art. Review before deletion.
.url: Often just shortcuts. Generally safe to remove.
.nfo: Sometimes used by Kodi/other media centers. If you’re not using such software, they’re safe to delete.
Summary
You’re safe to delete:
.cue (if causing duplication)
.mp3~
.db
.m3u
.ini
.url, .nfo, and .zip (after brief review)
Removing these could significantly reduce library clutter and may help Roon’s performance and album identification behavior.
Let us know if you’d like help with scripting or batch-deleting any of these file types safely.
Thank you so very much for your thoughtful and detailed response. Following the analysis the resulted in my previous post, I looked further into what I could do to identify the issues. Ultimately, with the help of ChatGPT, I was able to determine that there was corruption in primary “music” folder that would have just been too difficult to rebuild. Fortunately, I had backup(s) that I could restore from and did that overnight. As a result of that restore, the counts shown by Roon on the homepage are much more in line with the sum of the three folders of music.
If it’s of help to anyone else to understand the steps that I took to identify the corruption, I’m listing them below.
Identify the music files by running " sudo find /Volumes/YourRAIDFolderPath -type f ( -iname “.mp3" -o -iname ".flac” -o -iname “.m4a" -o -iname ".wav” ) | wc -l". This identified 178,116 music files in the three folders.
I ran “sudo find /Volumes/YourRAIDFolderPath -type l” and identified no issues with the volumes.
I ran “sudo /sbin/fsck_hfs -fyl /dev/disk6” and confirmed the filesystem was okay.
I then installed ffmpeg and ran “find /Volumes/YourRAIDFolderPath -name “*.mp3” -exec sudo ffmpeg -v error -i “{}” -f null - ; 2>> ~/Desktop/errors_mp3.txt”
After this had run for over an hour, I broke out of it and saw a HUGE number of corrupted files, all in the “music” folder. At that point, I stopped further troubleshooting of that folder, removed it from the Folders, performed a library cleanup, recreated a new music1 folder, restored from a backup overnight, and re-added the folder. And, as I mentioned at the beginning, this morning the counts are much more in line with the number of files in the folders. Later today I will take the time to do a full cleanup of the folders with the information you provided about files I can get rid of and will then take another backup of everything!
In process! I’m hoping to have everything scanned and integrity checks done and moved to the staging environment tomorrow. Then will come the deduping, updating metadata, and building the new library. I’ll create a new post to let people know the process that I went through and the outcome. Thanks again!
We wanted to reach back out since some time has passed. Were the metadata curation steps you described in your last post a success? We’re here to support you, but this thread may close without a response from the OP after a few days. Thanks!
