Thinking about it I (seem to) understand that’s no easy thing to do. At first it looks like the simple solution would be to just add another level to the WORK - PART construct. Something that would also fit for opera as in ACT - SCENE - ARIA/.... It would probably be possible to render this within the current UI model - small screens may already struggle though to distinguish three levels. But it wouldn’t be flexible enough - as for The Four Seasons:
Not only are there - as pointed out already - multiple collections (other cases one encounters quite often are different editions which group works this way or that - see J.S. Bach …), there are also multiple catalogs the work is assigned to and it may not be a good thing having to decide what to display and what not. Also, you really need to know a lot about a work. Like ultimately having the entire validated Ryom-Verzeichnis in your data set so you can make really proper assignments. That’s a big big task. And that screenshot is far from complete (like for the “is the basis for” … where’s the link to Max Richter, for example; at MB, it’s at a Max Richter work pointing “backwards” to the Four Seasons - but in roon I’d love to see it on both sides somehow one day ). There’s AI on the way I’ve heard - hope it’s up to this.
Maybe a “composition tags” system helps for the time being? Those tags could get assigned (if known and by roon) in addition to the current WORK-PART model; some tags - like the Il cimento-one in the example could be clickable and provide alternative listings or switch the current grouping; others could be just descriptive. You’d have the flexibility needed when dealing with multiple possible groupings and incomplete (while growing) data sets. And it feels to me quite object model like (but then I’ve only a vague idea what an object model in computer speak really means). A sketch:
It’s easy to miss that when an album is identified there might be several potential sources (CD, SACD, digital, …). Like here (what I actually have is a digital download, but since that was derived from the SACD without change, the SACD metadata fits).
Fabio Bondi and Vivaldi: Il Cimento brings it up as the top hit, but I would have thought that you can just select the This is the metadata that is currently being used for this album and then select another edition. The edition you are looking for is the Erato Digital Download Release from 2nd April 2012. For me, it’s edition 1 of 2.
Philip, asking to satisfy my own curiosity. Does this problem change how the works play or how they display (including search i suppose)? I only have a hundred or so classical albums and haven’t really investigated their metadata as was waiting for the next metadata update but this thread got me very curious,
cheers
Ged
@ged_hickman1. No, whatever happens to the metadata, the music itself is untouched. The worst case scenario is that the music is mis-identified in Roon (ie the display is wrong).
I’m a recent convert to Roon and while there’s clearly work to be done to make it a great platform for classical music, I’ve been pretty impressed by its ability to identify the CDs and downloads I’ve been throwing at it.
Thanks for that Philip I was wondering if one of the parts that was identified incorrectly became detached and so didn’t play in the right order.
I really only listen to rock/pop. When listening to classical pieces either listen to a whole work or highlights so I’m either using roon as a cd player or a mix tape. Hence the question
Ged
I experience everything in your screenshot. It is not just the nesting that is wrong. None of your works have been identified as compositions either and they are standard repertoire.
This is what I do:
You have the composer in the track name. This needs to be stripped out and placed in the composer tag using “first name last name”. Two of the composers are Russian and there can often be a large number of “equivalents”. You have to use an equivalent that roon knows about to get a composition ID. A trick I find that works is always use “Sergey” instead of “Sergei”, “Sergej” etc with Russian composers. But on occasion you will need to re-spell the last name as well. For example, Rachmaninov instead of Rachmaninoff.
You have several delimiters in your track names. Including colon “:” and dash “-”. Roon uses these delimiters to work out where the WORK ends and the PART begins. If you have both colons and dashes or multiple dashes then this will confuse roon when it tries to nest the work. You can try reformatting your TITLE tags to make it clear to roon where the WORK ends and the PART begins but a lot of the time this is impractical or too hard or time consuming and it is just easier and quicker to leave the TITLE as is and split the TITLE tag into WORK/PART tags.
It is not necessary in every case but in order to get a composition ID you may have to replace your WORK name with a work cannonical name. Just look up your works in allmusic and use the cannonical formulation you find there. Often this will depart markedly from the WORK names you have from the artwork or label website. With simpler titles, often just adding an opus and/or catalogue number is sufficient. With more complex titles only the cannonical names will work.
You can try:
Georges Bizet
Symphony in C major (“No. 1”)
Sergey Prokofiev
Symphony No. 1 in D major (“Classical”), Op. 25
If track 6 should be symphony no. 1 - movement 2, then this is easily fixed.
If track 6 is indeed symphony no. 2 - movement 1, then the problem is that Roon finds a common stem immediately after “Prokofiev”. Tony’s suggestions are sensible.
In general, ensuring a good, unambiguous, common stem in the track titles is important. Adding opus and/or recognized catalog numbers is also a good idea.
However, if you don’t have another instance of the composition in your library which has been identified by Roon (i.e. come from Roon metadata), Roon will not, as yet, “identify” a composition (against Roon metadata) from file tag metadata.
@joel. Thank you for spotting the obvious (but not to me!) mistake in track 6. And thank you for your good-natured patience and assistance. The tracks are now nesting correctly. But, as I’m about to point out in my reply to @Tony_Casey, the works are not displaying as works, and that’s mystifying me.
Instead of trying to edit track names to fit Roon’s WORK and PART parsing heuristics, which are good but not infallible, I do 3 things: 1) Find the WORK in Allmusic.com, including making sure it is the correct version of the WORK (taking into account instrumentation, edition, excerpt vs full, …) ; 2) Make sure that COMPOSER is spelled as in Allmusic.com; 3) Add WORK and PART tags to each track matching what 1) found. I use a tag editor (Matadatics) to do this. Result, much success in getting WORKs identified.
Likely that the WORK names inferred by Roon do not fit the names in its database well enough. As I wrote above, the best is to leave track names alone and use WORK and PART tags that agree with Allmusic.com, which is one of the main sources for Roon metadata. Works for me, anyway, with works from Bach to Berio…
This is great, thank you, @Fernando_Pereira. I’m Mac-based and the tag editor I’m using (Meta) doesn’t support WORK and PART tags, unfortunately. Can you recommend a Mac-based tag editor that does? I looked at mp3Tag, which can be run in emulation mode, and found it way too intimidating. Best wishes.
). There’s AI on the way I’ve heard - hope it’s up to this. 
.
