Cover Art Issue

Library stored on Qnap NAS

Sorry for my lack of technical wording. I am a brand new user (less than 24hrs) & I’ve tried to resolve this issue myself via FAQ and forum, but cannot find an appropriate answer.

Description Of Issue

I have a library of some 4800 albums. Roughly 20% of the albums are greyed out on my main gallery page. However, when I click on a greyed out album, the album art is most definitely there.

I tag all the albums myself meticulously. I have not had album art not visible via other streaming methods. Further, I would say that literally no album plays on any music player I have tried without cover art showing. I have literally spent years ensuring all of my metadata is included with my music files. There are however a few albums that do not have covers (live recordings etc), so that is well understood. What I don’t understand is that ‘properly’ tagged albums often only show album art when I click on the greyed out box.

My albums on my NAS drive are stored alphabetically & I have folders for some genres, which I find makes finding much easier than having a massive list. Also some artists (not many), I simply have a folder with artist name & their albums stored within. Again, this was done to avoid a massive list of folders being even bigger!

Your help is appreciated - thank you. :slight_smile:

***Please note I don’t see a ‘preview post’ here, I wanted to check on the formatting. If things look a bit weird it’s because I’m posting as is. Thank you for your understanding!

Hi @Nostro,

Welcome to Roon! I have a few questions starting off:

  • Can you please share a screenshot of what you’re seeing, before clicking on the album and after clicking on it?

  • What kind of Core are you using, can you let me know the operating system and specifications for it?

  • Is this behavior the same with any other Roon Remotes in your setup? Remotes such as iOS/Android/other PCs or does this behavior only occur on the Core itself?

Hello Noris,

Thank you for your welcome & reply. :smile:

Operating system is:
Intel Core i7 (7th gen)
8gb ram
500gb SSD
Windows 10 Home OS build 1836,719 (latest build)

My files are stored on a Qnap NAS drive and I’m running minim server.

I see exactly the same via the Roon android app/remote. So, it’s an issue not just with the core! By contrast, if I use any other app such as Cambridge connect or Bubble UPnP I see every cover.

Screenshots

I am not super tech-savvy (computers), on the other hand I’m not totally inept either. What I do pay careful attention to is my tagging & it has taken me some time (years?) to get it where it is now. As early on, I never foresaw I’d have so much digital music & I guess the overall format didn’t seem so important. Those days are long gone & I essentially check all my music manually.

Hoping you can help me get to the bottom of this anomaly. Also, I did notice one other user with a similar issue in a support thread. He had issues with his bootleg albums (grey-out exactly like mine, but covers available after clicking the greyed out icon). I could not fathom whether he got his issue sorted, but it did not seem to apply to me.

Cheers. :sunglasses:

Hi @Nostro,

A thorough and understandable description of the issue you’re facing would be of great help to accomplish that.

While you initially were complaining about missing album covers, you later on just showing the artist library. In your example we can clearly see the entry for Anouar Brahem (7 Albums) that has a picture and the following pictures detailing this entry, showing all the 7 associated albums – all with cover art.

You might have to elaborate about how that is related to your problem as Roon, on its default settings, isn’t showing your metadata. If there is metadata present in your audio files it just gets used to identify the album. If you have changed the default import settings you should provide screenshots of your changed settings as it will help others to understand what you are seeing and might be related to your issue too.

Maybe Roon is not like any other music player you have used before. The documentation for Roon can be found here and is good starting point for new users.

While this is a nice story, Roon is generally not interested in a users folder structure and please don’t ask for folder based browsing – it just won’t happen.

As you were complaining about missing pictures (album covers) and showing us the artists browser, should you have placed artist pictures in your folders and expect Roon to show them – that’s not the case. You have to import missing artist pictures manually (3-dots menu > Edit > Add Image). See also this article about editing in Roon.

Should this post already have answered your question please tell so. If not, please try to give a more detailed and/or less misleading description of your issue.

Greetings from another Roon user.

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The issue that I can see is that Astrakan Cafe is attributed to both Anouar Brahem and Anouar Brahem Trio as main artists. This is okay, but as you can see from your first Artist Page pic, the Anouar Brahem Trio does not have an artist picture. What you are looking at in the other screen shots is the page for Anouar Brahem, which is a different artist.

You can add a photo to the Anouar Brahem Trio artist. Like I did.
snip1

Greetings to you BlackJack & thank you for taking the time to provide a detailed response.

I would like to say that as per my initial post I’m only a user of less than 48 hours I believe it is now. So, on that basis, whilst I may not have all the correct Roon terminology, I did try to explain the issue as best as I could. No doubt in the future, when I have a better grasp of Roon & its functionality I’ll be able to provide better technical explanations.

Blockquote BlackJack A thorough and understandable description of the issue you’re facing would be of great help to accomplish that.

As per above I did my best - thanks.

Blockquote BlackJack While you initially were complaining about missing album covers, you later on just showing the artist library. In your example we can clearly see the entry for Anouar Brahem (7 Albums) that has a picture and the following pictures detailing this entry, showing all the 7 associated albums – all with cover art.

Firstly, I was not complaining, I was raising an issue & looking for some assistance with solving the problem. Secondly, as I stated ‘roughly’ 20% (and it seems more when I scroll through are greyed out, yet when I click on the greyed-out album all the album art is there. So yes, as I stated you can see the pictures detailing the entry.

If I’m using the incorrect terminology, I do apologise, but the screenshots do show what I was trying to explain.

Blockquote BlackJack Maybe Roon is not like any other music player you have used before. The documentation for Roon can be found here and is good starting point for new users.

Great - thanks. Yes, I have read the documentation. Notwithstanding, as a new user, some of it is rather difficult to understand. I am not a computer expert.

Blockquote BlackJack
While this is a nice story, Roon is generally not interested in a users folder structure and please don’t ask for folder based browsing – it just won’t happen.

I have no idea what would lead you to such a conclusion. Why would I ask the developers here for anything? I was not telling a story, I was trying to the best of my ability to explain things. Who knows perhaps the way I stored my files may have created some sort of issues for Roon. Hence, I provided a detailed description - there were no stories.

Blockquote BlackJack As you were complaining about missing pictures (album covers) and showing us the artists browser, should you have placed artist pictures in your folders and expect Roon to show them – that’s not the case. You have to import missing artist pictures manually ( 3-dots menu > Edit > Add Image ). See also this article about editing in Roon.

‘Complaining’ - there’s that word again. Complaining is typically about expressing dissatisfaction and nowhere through this thread have I expressed dissatisfaction. As for the ‘artist browser’ it’s the same if I’d have shown you the album browser - so many grey-out. However, given I’m not an expert or experienced user I did not and still do not understand what would be the difference.

I will try as per your suggestion to import pictures manually. However, I’m still uncertain why some show & others do not.

Blockquote BlackJack Should this post already have answered your question please tell so. If not, please try to give a more detailed and/or less misleading description of your issue.

I do not know at the time of this response if you’ve answered my question (not complaints). I did try to give a detailed description - you’ve literally torn it to shreds and claim it to be misleading. I’m still none the wiser why you’d say that. I was not trying to be misleading in any way.

Again, I appreciate the time you’ve spent here Blackjack. Unfortunately, as you can see from my response, I’m not overly sure if you were trying to make fun of me for being a new user & not describing things to your way of thinking or Roon understanding.

Perhaps English is not your first language and I have misunderstood your good intent.
If that is the case, I sincerely apologise to you. :smile:

Thank you!

Hi Daniel - thank you. :smile:

That does make sense in this example, however I have too many grey out ‘boxes’ where it’s just a single artist. Some of those single artists may have multiple albums, others just a solitary album.

I’m only just back from work. I will just relax for a bit & then come back to this. Perhaps Blackjack may have found a solution by manually uploading covers (via edit), although it doesn’t overly explain why some are visible and others are not.

Maybe because I’m so new I’m not understanding how Roon actually works. Really all I’ve done is directed Roon to my music folder on my NAS drive and it’s created that database. Many there is more to be done, maybe not - that’s how little time I’ve had to look deeper into this.

The weekend is nigh & I’ll have much more time.

Cheers. :sunglasses: :sunglasses: :sunglasses:

*** (I’ve just checked again) It seems the ‘album browser’ shows the vast majority of albums properly; it’s just the artist browser I’m having issues. Perhaps your suggestion may solve issues such as the above example. I will do as you suggest. :smiley: :smiley: Yet, it does not explain (at least to me), why this would be so where there aren’t ‘conflicting’ entries.

I don’t think @BlackJack was making fun , he is a regular contributor and in my opinion one of the most helpful and frequent members of this forum when it comes to troubleshooting.

Clear descriptions of the issue do help but I agree Roon Nomenclature does confuse especially at the start

May I suggest you post a screenshot of the Album view and we can start from there . The Artist view has gaps and that is not uncommon but you can equally import you own images if Roon doesn’t provide one or if you prefer a different one, the same with Album art

Roon does a shoddy job filling in artist pictures (40% of the performers in my library have no artist image, and I’ve added plenty on my own), whereas it generally does a good job filling in album covers for albums it’s identified. If you’ve just ingested your library things may improve over a week or two, but after that you’re best off hitting Google to add artist images, or living with the grey boxes. It’s been like this forever.

Yes that is true and in my native language there may be no equivalence for the fine details you’re trying to point me at (and which I still don’t get). Sorry if my answer may have upset you. Sadly you spent a lot of time to defend the already questionable parts of your post instead of providing more/better information about your issue(s) or trying to read and understand the information I already have given to you.

It’s not about why some are visible and some are not. If there is a picture for a given artist or album in Roon’s metadata cloud, that’s filled up with content from third party metadata/content providers, then it is shown. If there is no picture available then there is nothing to show. It’s not that there are pictures available but not shown to the user (made invisible) just for fun. As I already made you aware of …

The difference is that Roon doesn’t import artist pictures from your library while it should import album cover art – at least if none can be found in the cloud.

Hey Evand,

I’m getting the hang of this now - thank you for your reply. Things make sense now - it’s Roon filling in the artists pictures & has nothing to do with album art and my tagging.
(Sorry to all for my misunderstanding :cry:).

Yup, I would say that I’m way closer to 40% than what I first thought looked like about 20%. Some pages virtually fully grey.

The library is virtually brand new & I’ll give Roon some time to pick up the slack. Otherwise, I’ll manually add as needed or live with grey (not ideal) as you do. :slight_smile:

***I don’t know if mods can lock this thread, but I think I understand now what the issue has been. I appreciate all of those who have taken the time to respond.

Thank you. :smiley:

Hi BlackJack,

Thank you once again for your efforts. I think the issue here is largely due to this fact:

Blockquote BlackJack The difference is that Roon doesn’t import artist pictures from your library while it should import album cover art – at least if none can be found in the cloud.

I simply did not understand this aspect. This is why I mentioned tagging and so on in my original post.

Now I totally get it - thanks. :sunglasses:

The bane of being new. It’s not that I can’t or don’t read first, it’s a matter that I did not understand how Roon operates.

Problem understood thanks to your efforts and others. Perhaps next time I’ll be able to assist you with some issue or another new user. :+1:

***I am happy for the mods to close this thread now if that is the standard protocol here.

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Just mark one of the posts above as the solution. The thread will then auto-close after some grace period.

Okay - will do - thanks. That’s a very easy solution! :+1:

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If you want to add photo to an Artist, go to the Artist page, Click on the 3 dot menu, choose Edit, scroll down to Image/Photo choose browse to pic a picture on your local hard drive or you can enter the URL for a picture on the web. That is how I added the Artist Photo for the Trio in my previous response.

Thank you Daniel - yup understood, I added some photos last night, without an issue. :sunglasses:

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