Compilation albums all messed up

Hi, looking for help! Roon’s compilation errors is making it quite un-useable for me, but I do want to use Roon! Thanks.

Summary: Roon shows songs from compilation albums under different album names. I’ve gone thru other similar topics but can’t find a solution. These are compilation albums that I created using songs compiled from other albums. I’ve changed the metadata for songs that go into these compilation albums (see below). How does Roon read the metadata? Can I change my metadata to resolve this issue?

My Setup:
Folder structure = Various Artists/Albums
All tagged using Mp3tag
Album Artist = Various Artists
Artist = respective artist names

Problem 1:
I compiled 50 songs into an album “A” (all re-tagged appropriately under “Album A” and “Various Artists”). Roon’s okay with this. I subsequently re-tagged about half of the songs into a new compilation album “B”. However, Roon was unable to identify album “B”. All songs under album “B” continue to appear under album “A”.

Problem 2:
I compiled various songs from different albums into new albums, e.g. “Live Concert” or “Guitar Acoustics” (all re-tagged appropriately under their new album name and “Various Artists”). However, Roon continues to detect the original album name, rather than the new compilation album name.

Other points:
I use foobar2000 too, and occasionally tag songs using foobar too, in addition to using MP3tag.

Will really appreciate any advice on this. Hoping to make Roon work for me! Many thanks.

Additional info:
I’ve Lennon’s Imagine (1971) album. I copied the “Jealous Guy” to another folder together with some songs from other albums. I re-tagged these duplicated songs, giving them a new (compilation) album name (say Album AA) and “Various Artists” as the album artist. This album showed up in Roon but under a wrong album name (say Album BB).

I then deleted these duplicate songs. Guess what? The duplicated songs still appear under Album BB! When I checked the “Jealous Guy” song file shown under Album BB, I saw that Roon is pointing to “Jealous Guy” filed under the original Imagine folder… even though Roon is displaying it under Album BB.
That’s why the song is still showing in Album BB even though I deleted the duplicated song file.

This is confusing. Is there a way I can better control how Roon reads the files and metadata for compilation albums?

Not sure why you would want to create your own compilation albums. Roon is organized around albums, and the whole point of Roon is to be able to identify the albums in your library to be able to organize them based on the rich metadata that they link in. So that for John Lennon’s Imagine, you can see the reviews, the credits, etc. If you create your own albums, Roon will not bring in this metadata and you loose the whole experience. Or if what you are doing is duplicating certain tracks to create compilation albums, there are better ways to organize, e.g playlists and tags.

For example, if you want to create groups of certain tracks by various artists, as you mention “guitar acoustics” or “live concerts”, etc. you could create playlists for them. This way you retain all the original album information, and you have the ability to add/remove track from your playlists directly in Roon, instead of editing the metadata in the files and moving things around in a folder structure. In addition, playlists allow you to add a single track to multiple playlists without duplicating it, e.g. one track could be in both “live concerts”, as well as “guitar acoustics” and remain in the original album without copying it to different places. Using your technique of creating compilation albums, you would have to make multiple copies of the file and you lose Roon’s metadata links.

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Hi there, thanks for your message! Appreciate your taking time for the comments. You’re right about playlists being more efficient (no duplicated files). My compilation albums were pre-Roon but they do have some useful purposes even now:

(1) My car’s SD card is only 128 Gb, hardly enough to take all my music collection.
(2) Likewise my digital players has limited storage.

Both benefit from compilation albums vs. playlists, where I can compile just the songs I like for my car and portable player, e.g. a collection of unplugged songs.
(In order to make playlists work away from my music server, I’ve to select all those songs anyway; but when I view by Albums or Artists from my car/digital player, they appear odd… e.g. just one song would appear on the Album.)

My primary view = Album view, so the Compilation albums help. Besides, it is also fun to create album covers… e.g. a compilation album of songs you played during a memorable vacation in 1990 could also have a nice photo from that trip as the cover. Or songs played during and a cover made from your BFF’s wedding. Try that… it’s fun! :slight_smile:

I’ve partially resolved some of the issues… There were hidden metadata in my files under “Album Sort”, “Artist Sort” and “Album Artist Sort”. I’ve cleaned up all my 24,000+ songs and -re-loaded my Music directory in Roon.

While that helped somewhat, there are still errors. Roon can’t even sort the albums/artists properly. Songs from the same album appear under two albums of the same name, even though they share the exact same names for Album and Album Artists. Album covers incorrect shown, even after I manually chose “Prefer File”.

Aaargh! What a mess. This is annoying. Wish this Ferrari of music organizer can fix it! Sold as an emblem of performance, but the wheels rattle and the speedometer shows the wrong velocity!