Duplicate albums appear inexplicably

I am exploring roon now with more attention to the nuts and bolts of useability than just clicking on an album, play all and sitting back to listen. Last night, I added a new album, a redbook CD ripped by XLD to AIFF, which added to roon flawlessly. Later, I decided to play the entire album. At some point during the tracks playing, I clicked on the soundtrack’s composer to learn about him. After returning to the album display page with the track listing etc., I noticed that under each track in red “duplicate” appeared. I did not understand how that happened having done nothing I was aware of to trigger duplication. While sorting the matter out, and returning to display all view, the most recent added album to roon was, in fact, duplicated and the duplicated album appeared with the “new” banner in blue. I highlighted the duplicate and clicked on hide album, but the duplicate remained. Eventually I returned to setting, noticed show hidden albums was still checked having turned that on in response to roon support’s help the other night when a problem arose and activating show hidden albums was one of the steps to take to cure the problem, which ultimately cured itself. In other words, six new albums added to my music library did not appear after launching roon subsequent to adding to my music library which never happened before. I have since concluded that roon was adding the albums and it took time for the additions. While attempting to address the problem, apparently sufficient time to add the albums result in the spontaneous display of the six albums. I noticed that other albums were also duplicated without any action of my part. But those albums after highlighting them and clicking on hide albums were removed leaving the single album displayed.

Best,
Richard

I’m not sure if my response was your actual issue, it might just be related though. When you add a new album to Roon it goes through an examination process, ie musical analysis. I find that it is best if you wait until that process is complete before trying to Play, Edit, or anything else. Now how long to wait is the “it depends”. It depends on the album just loaded (resolution, format, size), it depends on the computational horsepower of the Roon Core, it depends on the whether the music resides on the Core or on another network source.

For example, I added Mike Oldfield Crises 24/96. The first track was a 20 minute opus and I just went and started playing it. At that time, the one track showed up as duplicate. After a couple of days, it cleared itself. There is a “clean up” function that you can use to trim deadwood so to speak. I’m guessing Roon does this automatically in the background every so often. A dev might speak to this more specifically.

Hello Daniel,

I believe you are correct. I actually came to the same conclusion that my expectation was premature and roon required what you describe to accomplish the additions. I was concerned about the clean up so if in fact roon does this automatically, which would be a good process, I will look for this after awhile. Thank you for your thoughts.

With appreciation,
Richard

Dear Daniel,

You are correct. I just tested your explanation by re-ripping DSD/DSF64 files that were converted to M4a Hybrid PCM 352.8 using BitPerfect’s DSDMaster. I discovered a number of files were truncated and ended abruptly. After the re-ripping and adding them to my iTunes Library/Music Library, roon, indeed, automatically added the correctly ripped tracks into the album. I would not have realized this had you not helped me to become aware of this function. Thank you very much. And roon, truly marvelous action to remedy without even having to rescan the album. I am appreciating roon more and more. And obviously, I am learning more about roon from what goes wrong than what goes right. In this case, my source was the issue not roon. All’s roon that ends roon.

Best,
Richarrd

Glad to hear that everything is working. Roon currently is an evolving software. To me, I it’s developmental process is a lot like online multi player games in that a base product is released, users subscribe and additional functionality is added monthly.

Personally, I have been using online game products for many many years, I am aware of how this iterative process works and sometimes how much patience is needed as an end user. This experience is not the same as buying a boxed product.

Now in evaluating an online game to invest one’s time and money; the first things that gamers will discuss is what are the devs like, how responsive are the devs, are they hearing us, responding in a timely manner, taking our requests and disagreements seriously? It is this that led me to a lifetime purchase since Roon has had the most interactive and engaging dev team I’ve ever seen. So I"m not worried if a couple of snags hits during a build as I know they will listen and take care of it and it will get patched soon enough.

Dear Daniel,

I concur with your assessment and insights about roon and its developers. I hardily agree with your perspectives and analysis. And what provides the “iron” for those insights is the actual experience. I correct something on my end, and roon corrects it on their end. There is a learning curve both in how to respond to present peccadillos and in exercising a degree of patience while simultaneously making roon developers aware so they can respond. And they do admirably. I feel right at home with a product and the developers who walk the walk. And they do so expeditiously by comparison. Timing is everything. Good will is essential. Too many times that is not the case.

Now that I have discovered how to correct what I pass on to roon from my end that I receive from third parties who are hardly as accountable as roon labs, I am much more relaxed when encountering problems. A lot of stuff gets passed on to us and then we look to roon to be accountable. I get there’s a synergy that favors a win/win/win. And that is priceless.

Enjoy the music,
Richard