Corrupt Database? Album Cover Displays Incorrect Album

Richard_Levy · November 8, 2021, 9:17pm

Roon Core Machine 2.07

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Innuos Zenith using Roon Core
NightHawk router (doubt it’s the router as no problem over the last six months)
Innuos PhoenixNET switch

Connected Audio Devices

PhoenixUSB
PS Audio DirectStream
KEF LS50 Wireless II
Sonos Model 5
iMac

USB primary to PSAudio
KEF Wireless II hardwired via ethernet from switch
Sonos Wifi from Nighthawk wireless router

USB Innuos to PSAudio DirectStream Sr. (latest firmware in both)
KEF Wireless II hardwired via ethernet from Innuos PheonixNET
Sonos Wifi from Nighthawk wireless router

Number of Tracks in Library

16,000 (have about another 16,000 ready to add but stopped with existing issue)

Description of Issue

Summary: Incorrect Album Covers substituted for Correct Album Cover

Sometime after the first build of 1.8 this problem started to occur. I should point out that initially, when albums were added to library, covers were all correct. However, in the process of adding albums I noticed incorrect covers after adding about half of my existing library to the new Innuos server. I was in the process of adding the albums for the first time to this new sever so that I didn’t get to make a clean backup before noticing the problem (which is to say that I don’t have a database backup that I can say is free of any problems).

Note also that the rest of the metadata for each album is correct, tracks and album title and credits, genres (those picked by Roon). Only the covers are wrong and can be wildly disassociated with the album in question. I have jazz albums substituted for classical albums, and completely different artists and album titles substituted. The wrong covers are picked from other albums I have added to the library. Usually, it doesn’t pick the same incorrect album for a bunch of albums, but it has happened that I have two or three wrong substitions using the same cover. But there doesn’t appear to be any predictable rhyme or reason for the wrong display.

I have re-edited numerous times fixing dozens and dozens of wrong albums at one time. They may stay correct for several days, but eventually I find that album covers start to display incorrectly, both albums I have fixed, and also new albums that didn’t have a problem previously.

I started to notice that albums that had all the correct metadata at the time of adding to library started to randomly show incorrect album covers. The metadata for the album titles and the for the tracks remained correct, and only the wrong album covers were being substituted for the correct covers. I would fix them, sometimes spending an hour or two at a time by re-identifying the album, which would sometimes then show the correct cover on the album’s individual screen, but not on the screen that shows all the albums in the library. I could often get this correct by editing the add artwork screen, and then find (generally) that this fixed the incorrect depiction on both of the screens that depict album covers. It’s an ongoing problem, making it impossible to reliably to do a visual scan of my library using the album covers themselves. I have to read the titles under the covers, which stay correctly associated with each album in my library. ONLY THE COVERS display incorrectly.

I have discussed this issue with Innuos and they do not believe the problem is derived from their Roon Core. I have consistently run the very latest Innuos firmware. And I have updated my iMac and iPhone and iPad Roon software as well, always as soon a new update is announced.

You will have noticed that I was intending to do a backup of the Roon database after installing all my music onto the new server (previously on an SSD drive), but noticed the problem midway through this process, so that I don’t have a backup of the database that I can say is clean, being that I noticed the wrong covers while taking several days to move the music from OS X formated SSD to an ExFAT formatted SSD used to install onto the Innuos server. Therefore, I can’t fix a possible corrupted database with a backup because none exists.

In light of this, I am asking if there is a way Roon can rebuild a new database from the music files already installed on the Innuos server, or do I have delete everything off the drive and start all over again? I ask this because I presume my problem is a corrupted database, and that it needs to either be rebuilt or replaced starting from scratch. Am I incorrect to assume this? Your assistance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Sloop_John_B · November 8, 2021, 9:45pm

Until support comes along for one of the incorrect covers what shows on the editing screen?

Is the “prefer file” showing the correct image?

.sjb

Richard_Levy · November 8, 2021, 11:27pm

First of all, thank you very much for your reply. Very much appreciated as this problem is more than just annoying. It’s making using the library quite a chore.

It doesn’t seem add up, because there are number of different scenarios, which when looked at together as a whole, makes it hard surmise anything in particular. Firstly, the chosen selection under artwork, whether it says prefer Roon or prefer file, or prefer best, none of the selections are the correct album cover. There may be a display of the correct artwork in the choices (but not always), and if is there, as I mentioned, it is not selected.

Sometimes prefer file is selected but is NOT the correct cover.

In the example, (don’t know if it uploaded), a Schumann album displaying but the correct album is “The Brahms Project” and that correct cover (the Brahms Project" is showing up under “Prefer Roon” and under Prefer File, which shows as the one selected, there is Schumann album cover. The Schumann album cover also showing under “prefer best”. I don’t understand how it even picks the Schumann album. When I first imported the album, it didn’t have the choice of the Schumann, and I am sure when I imported the Brahms album that it showed up correctly as The Brahms Project. The whole random picks makes it look like database is somehow corrupted. May not be, but that’s what it looks like. The other thing that makes it look like database corruption is that I can fix albums multiple times, and they may stay correct for awhile, a day, two days, whatever, but eventually they display with the wrong cover. You can only bring yourself to correct an album for a dozen times or so before you want to give up, especially when it happens to quite a few albums. I only have about half of my library loaded. It doesn’t make sense to try to load any more into the Roon library unless this problem can be rooted out.

I have seen other people in the Community say they have had problems with this issue, but I don’t see any instances where people have mentioned that they were able to fix it or knew what caused the problem. I don’t know if they resolved the issue or were told what to try to fix it. I just see listings asking for help with the problem.

I like Roon, actually, and it has quite a lot of benefits for people like me who like to delve into albums associated with people in “Credits”. I find it useful to see who produced and mastered albums, and I have found lots of treasures by delving into the discographies of people listed in great album’s credits. For me, it’s not just an extra bonus feature but a really an important, even vital resource. But I can’t use Roon if I can’t navigate the library and have to re-enter the correct artwork a dozen times a month. And I don’t think anyone would put up with the problem if they were suffering from it. What would be great would be if Roon could create a new database without me having to reinstall everything again, especially when faced with over 2TB of music to install. I am great fan and promoter of Roon, but my patience is being tried with this one.

Sloop_John_B · November 8, 2021, 11:40pm

I’m sure your patience is being tried with this issue but @support will be along to help soon hopefully.

If you navigate to the folder containing the Brahms Project is the correct album cover in this folder and named something like folder.jpg or cover.jpg? If it is Roon should be showing this.

.sjb

Richard_Levy · November 9, 2021, 4:16pm

Thanks John. I have always been helped by the folks in Support so I don’t doubt they will contact me.

To answer your latest question, no, most of the files of the cover artwork are not named either folder or cover. Is it actually required to do so? That would be a surprise to me, mainly because I have always had at least 1TB of music, and so a lot of albums, and never experienced this problem until recently, right around the time that I moved to version 1.8. So that would be two years at least without a problem, even though the covers were not named “folder.jpg” or “cover.jpg”.

Gest Regards,
Richard.

Sloop_John_B · November 9, 2021, 7:07pm

In the example I showed above (Arcady) this is what my folder looks like. Not having an image file appropriately names may be part of the issue.

Or not!

best of luck with the issue.

.sjb

ged_hickman1 · November 9, 2021, 9:20pm

I had the wrong album art against albums a couple of years ago. Roon put a fix into the product to correct it.
Support might need to look at your roon database.

Richard_Levy · November 10, 2021, 8:00am

Thanks for your reply. Hoping they will soon. I have quite a bit more music that I haven’t added to my library as I was in the process of adding it to a new server (and therefore new core, when this problem started to multiply. It’s a very dependable problem now! I can count on some new additions to the number of wrong covers every day.

Anyhow, appreciate that you took the time to reply. Thanks.

kevin · November 16, 2021, 10:04pm

Hey @Richard_Levy, I think John is on the right track here – can you share a similar screenshot of your folder structure and how you name the cover image? We’d expect to see something like this:

Music/
├─ Artist/
│  ├─ Album/
│  │  ├─ track 1.flac
│  │  ├─ track 2.flac
│  │  ├─ ...
│  │  ├─ cover.jpg

Some other questions that may help us figure out what’s going wrong:

How many albums does this happen with?
Can you share any examples of the “Prefer Roon” image being wrong?

Richard_Levy · November 17, 2021, 8:06pm

Currently there 329 wrong covers. What I plan to do is to add the same image but call it folder.jpg or cover.jpg (is there a preference?) and then delete the current jpg which is usually in the format of album-name.jpg and see if that elevates that problem and let you know. There seems to be no sense in having you do any extra work at your end until I have used your preferred format.

I will get back to and let you know if that fixed everything. Thanks very much to you and the others who have replied.

and “prefer file is showing the wrong cover.” as well

Richard_Levy · November 18, 2021, 12:54pm

Okay, so I started a process whereby I would delete the graphic file, install another with the name cover.jpg. I noticed that I would have to exist Roon and restart for the correct graphic to appear under the choice “Prefer File”. Sometimes it was already checked, and sometimes not, but then I would select “Prefer File” after restarting and save with the correct album cover and the choice as “Prefer File”

But here’s the problem, as i started to fix others (with over 300 titles with the wrong cover), ALBUMS that I already fixed a few minutes prior would show up with an incorrect album cover and the wrong choice would be listed under “prefer file” which I had just minutes ago saved under “prefer file” with the correct cover.

So hey, if this is happening, the process is going to be endless. It doesn’t seem that it’s because I’ve not named it “cover.jpg” because I just changed it to be that. So what this means, if this keeps happening, is that I back to square one because when I fix one album another one which I have fixed shows up with the wrong cover. Sometimes, I can restart Roon will display them as correct, and sometimes not. It happens with ripped files using my Innuos ripper and it also happens with downloaded FLAC files or DSD files that I have added to by dragging the downloaded files to my hard drive. And if I fix them only to have them go incorrect again, it’s a problem that is not going to fixed by renaming all album jpegs to “cover.jpg” At least, that’s my current experience.

So now what? Maybe the notion that this is caused by the cover not being called "folder.jpg is a not a correct assumption. I say that because the ones that are going bad after being fixed are called “folder.jpg” sort of blowing a hole in that theory.

Anyone have any thoughts? I don’t really have the time to keep fixing them and having them go wrong again. It’s going to take a full day or two fix it even if they were to stay correct which they are not. Perhaps it’s the database actually being corrupt? I don’t have a backup because I was trying to install the albums on the new music server when the problem started and I had only installed about 1TB of the albums of the 2.2TB that I currently own. I’ve stopped installing the rest of my library, therefore, until the problem can be addressed.

Innuos tells me there is nothing different about their Roon Core, and so they suggesting that the problem is not with the Innuos server. Personally, I don’t know what to think, but I am not finding the current suggestion to simply change the album cover name to be solving anything.

Richard_Levy · November 20, 2021, 2:06pm

Kevin,

So i installed a Roon Remote on one of my other computers (a MacBook Pro) and was surprised to see that covers issue was not present when viewing the Roon Core located on my Innuos server. I then decided to remove the Roon install from my iMac which what I was using when I kept encountering the wrong covers. After removing the Roon package from the iMac, I downloaded Roon and installed it and the so far the covers are correct.

I am quite surprised at this, and would be interested in your comments on this finding. I should note that in scanning the library where I had previously had 329 (at last count) wrongly displayed covers, a hefty number of the ones that now seem to display correctly do not use the naming convention that you suggested I must use, ie, folder.jog or cover.jpg. Instead, many of the covers use the same naming convention that I have always used in the past which is album-name.jpg. Might it be, therefore, that the album cover jpegs do not require using “cover.jpg” or “folder.jpt”?

Are you surprised at this? I certainly am. What would explain the fact that the software controlling the Roon Core (from a remote computer on the network) could cause the symptom of displaying the wrong covers?

Susan_Tyler · March 1, 2022, 10:09pm

I am having the same trouble with the wrong covers on my Nucleus. Any help appreciated.

Richard_Levy · March 1, 2022, 11:31pm

Dear Susan,

Lots of people, mostly end-users, were kind enough to try to help me, and I am grateful that these fellow users reached out to me. Their suggestion was primarily to change the name of the cover art jpg so that all of them were called “cover.jpg”. I hoped this would work, but discovered it didn’t work in the long wrong. The problem persisted. Sometimes rebooting the remote control software (my iMac) temporarily fixes the problem. And right now, the albums are correctly displaying), but eventually they corrupt and are wrong. So I don’t really know what to tell you, as I don’t know the cure.

I don’t think the problem is with the database being corrupt because I don’t have the other problem with all of the Roon Remote software because I have some devices, like my iPad Pro where it has always displayed the correct album covers even when my iMac is completely screwed up. They are remote controls for the database on my Innuos Zenith. There is something on the iMac that can’t identify the right cover even when displayed correctly on my iPad Pro. Go figure. I only know that II have changed quite a lot of the album art work in my 2.3 TB database to “cover.jpg” and that doesn’t fix the issue. I wish I could help you, but it’s probably going to take someone who understands Roon a lot better than I do to help you. If you turn out to solve the issue, please let me know. Perhaps your solution will work for me. Wish I could help you, but so far,. I am stumped. Good luck. Hope you solve it.

Susan_Tyler · March 3, 2022, 4:03am

I ended up going to edit the album, finding the cover in images on google, moving it to my desktop, and then dropping it into the “edit cover art” box, then choosing that for the cover art to display. It worked. Fortunately there were not too many. Of course, I don’t know if it is stable, and it makes me nervous about my editing metadata, which I have to do. I have around 1000 albums (30,000 tracks, but I don’t think in tracks). Perhaps it is too many?

DaveN · March 3, 2022, 6:03pm

I don’t know the average size of a Roon library, but there are plenty of users who have libraries way in excess of 1000 albums, so this shouldn’t be a factor. Hopefully your solution is a permanent one.

Richard_Levy · March 3, 2022, 8:58pm

in my case, I thought I had fixed it and the problem returned shortly thereafter. I had already had the correct cover art, and had also tried renaming the album cover art file to “cover.jpg” and “folder.jpg”. That didn’t work as advertised. It didn’t seem to mater. I found that “prefer file” even when it was right didn’t stop the cover from being wrong. It didn’t seem to matter either way whether prefer best, prefer roon, or “prefer file” was selected. The so called fixed cover (showing the right cover) would eventually be replaced with a wrong cover from something else in my database.

Susan_Tyler · March 3, 2022, 10:08pm

Yes, I imagine it might unfix itself. It is a weird problem. Just, so far it is okay. It worries me a fair bit since I had thought the database was reliable. Audirvana’s was. It did change the file info, which I actually preferred.

Michael_Grant · March 21, 2022, 5:51pm

Having a new issue related to this problem. In my case the album thumbnail is incorrect but when I click into the album the art is the right one. See below for two Cream albums that are not S. Crow nor Elton John. How does one fix this? Tried selecting different metadata for album art and no change. Rebooted Roon Core and rescanned albums but no change. Thanks. cc @Kevin

Richard_Levy · March 21, 2022, 10:18pm

Wish I could help, but in my case, I was unable to fix my library. The problem only seemed to affect my iMac and not my MacBook Pro, iPad or phone, as those remotes were displaying correctly and never had a problem. I tried everything suggested with my iMac, but as I mentioned, nothing worked to fix it. Then, one day, more than two months later, when I happened to access Roon with the problem iMac, the covers were all showing up correctly. No idea what the actual issue was. Hope you solve your issue. It’s almost impossible to use Roon when one has many items displaying the wrong covers. In my case, there were at least one hundred that would show up wrong at any one time, and the number of albums with wrong covers just seemed to keep growing. In my case fixing them would be temporary. Then they would start displaying incorrectly again soon afterwards.