Is there a way to sort by composer. I know I can search but not like artist, name, etc. For us classical music listeners composer is THE most important data item for music.
Hum… If I go to the search icon, type (part of) any composer name in the search box, and click on the the appropriate result, I get to a page that lists albums, tracks, compositions for that composer:
You can also use the Focus icon and select all the albums containing music by a given composer quickly (it would be nice to be able to select compositions that way too, faster than using the search method I showed earlier)
The left hand manue has a “composer” selection option. Inside the composers’ view you can select various sort criteria (including “classical composers only” option) by using the top right drop down
Wird hochgeladen…
The Main drawback of the Composer view is it presents a list of all that composers works in your library, in my case say Bach I get over 1000 options not really helpful (same for Beethoven, Mozart etc)
I find Focus the most effective for getting a view of Albums as Fernando has commented above
There is a feature request for Composer showing Albums directly then a filter by Genre but don’t hold your breath 
As an interim solution - until something better is available - I’ve checked that my classical albums are titled like this:
Composer Last Name { , Composer First Name }** : Album title (or works)
** … optional
So using the Album Browser I can focus on “Classical” and then use “Sorted by Album Title”.
Note: albums not dedicated to a single composer keep their original album title and appear in between - which is ok for me.
Of course this path may not look too promising if a lot of your albums would need their title changed; my collection didn’t need much work.
Most of mine follow the same patter, fortunately this format is what the main labels use eg DG, Decca etc
But Roon often applies its own name but luckily this pattern
There are ways around it for sure but a more software approach would help
I have 900 ripped CDs. All ripped by dbamp. They are all titled
[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][]/[album]/[track] [artist] - [title]
First let me emphasize that I have no idea what this string’s parsing means.
So unless there is a way to mass change the order (I can add composure to above) that means I have to re rip all those CDs just to change the meta data. Is there a way to reorder the meta data or title in Roon?
Thanks for your message.
The string is only taking care of the folder and file names - it doesn’t take care of the Album Title value. And don’t worry, you will not have to re-rip your CDs to change metadata values like the Album Title.
For mass changing the metadata of your ripped files outside of the Roon application you’d need one of the so-called “Tagging” apps - which one depends on what Operating System you use and also on budget.
For example https://kid3.sourceforge.io is available for Windows, macOS and Linux and: it’s free. If it’s feature set will satisfy your need I’m not sure but I think for changing the Album Title it might work - but some help file reading and trial & error work will probably be involved.
A few points to check as well:
- How many of your classical albums are already titled “
Composer last name: ...” - if only a few albums need adjustment, you could consider doing this directly inside Roon (via Edit) - Let Roon (try) to identify your albums first before changing album titles - it may become more difficult for Roon to do so after the album titles change to something other than the “original” value.
- Maybe you’ve already got an application with tagging capabilities (jRiver, for instance) would work or some Renaming tool with metadata support?
- If dbPowerAmp didn’t add “Sort Composer” values things might become tricky because some logic would be needed to rearrange the composer name so it can get prepended to the album title to achieve the sorting you are looking for.
- In the - distant or not, who knows - future Roon might support sorting the album view by composer; instead of fiddling around with stuff and spending time with the computer (instead of listening to music) you could just wait for this future becoming the present …
Don’t worry if Roon churns away
If you make mass tag changes Roon will reanalyse them, for audiolevel etc which should be unnecessary as the values should exist
Bit annoying but worrying if you don’t realize it’s doing it