Focus Missing Many Multichannel Albums

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

RoonServer 1.8 build 783 running on Windows Server 2019 with Audiophile Optimizer and i9-10900K processor

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Ethernet, optical and wifi, depending on Roon endpoint

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

For MCH, USB to Okto dac8pro; HDMI to Marantz pre-pros

Description Of Issue

My library reports 35,594 total albums on the home page. However, when selecting My Albums, Roon reports only 12,653 albums. We can start by wondering why there is such a big difference.

This plays out when doing a Focus for multichannel albums. Under Channel Layout in Focus, Roon reports seeing 5 – Quad albums, 158 – 5.0 albums, 452 – 5.1 albums, 2 – 6.1 albums and 1 – 7.1 album, for a total of 618 albums. When saving that Focus set to a bookmark, and then clearing all Focus and selecting the same bookmark, I get 617 albums. We can further wonder what happened to the 1 missing album.

But, 1 album is not the issue. When I do a search of my music library on my NAS, searching just for DSF Multi albums, I get 706 albums – and that’s not counting quad or FLAC 5.1 albums. Adding those in, my NAS reports 1,161 total multichannel albums.

As an example, Focus finds three Elton John DSF multichannel albums, but doesn’t see the additional six Elton John DSF multichannel albums on my NAS. Nevertheless, I can find the additional six albums in Roon by selecting Elton John as artist, going to the album in question and picking the multichannel version from there. Billy Joel is another good example. Focus sees no DSF multichannel Billy Joel albums. Yet, my NAS has all three of the Billy Joel multichannel albums, which I can find in Roon by searching for Billy Joel as the artist, picking the album of choice and selecting the DSF multichannel version.

Thinking the bookmark might be corrupt, I removed it and re-saved it. Same outcome.

This has been an issue the entire time I’ve been a Roon subscriber (several years and a good number of Roon versions and builds). I think it’s time to resolve this!

Thanks for the assistance, Team Roon. Cheers. JCR

@support, bumping this back up for your consideration. Thanks. JCR

Hi @Jeffrey_Robbins

Can you share some screenshots of some examples of what you’re seeing? Thanks!

Hi @dylan. But, of course.

Attached is a look at the bookmark for DSF MCH files, specifically in the row where Billy Joel should appear alphabetically after Billy Cobham and before Blood, Sweat & Tears. There is no entry for him, as you can see. (He doesn’t appear under “J” for “Joel,” either.) Then, I separately did a search for artist Billy Joel and you can see the screenshots of the MCH versions of three of his albums that should appear in the bookmark, but do not do so.

I can repeat for you with other artists, but I think this shows the issue clearly for you.

To close all loops, 10 Billy Joel albums, including those that have DSF MCH versions, do show up when using the DSF bookmark, to wit:

However, no Billy Joel albums show up if the bookmark is all MCH, DSF or FLAC, to wit:

MCH 2

Thanks for taking a look at this. JCR

@dylan and @support, just bumping this one up for your consideration. Thanks. JCR

Same as in:

OK, @BlackJack, thanks for your input. I went through the tedious process of changing the primary version of each album that has a MCH version to the MCH version thereof. Yes, this works. I can now identify 819 MCH albums, including the missing Billy Joel and Elton John albums noted above.

The only ones that are not found are the 4 channel Chicago albums, dubbed “quadro” 24-48. Although I have 4 channel albums selecting in my MCH bookmark, those albums do not appear even though the 4 channel version is selected as the primary. I can only find them by an artist search and then select the album from there. Any idea why this is so? Thanks. JCR

What do you mean by “dubbed”? I’m pretty sure that for Roon to recognize 4-channel recordings as such, the file must contain 4 distinct channels. So what file format are those? What encoding is used?

That’s all the ideas I have about this. I hope this helps.

They are 24/48 discrete 4-channel files and Roon recognizes them as such. See screenshot below. JCR

Is that one different from the one you wrote before?

Because the 4-channel example is FLAC not DSF. If the Focus is all about multi-channel files regardless of format, then not showing the 4-channel ones is what I would consider a bug, looking at the wording of the filter in your screenshots which contains “Quad”, and it’s upon support to comment on this.

My bad nomenclature, @BlackJack. Same MCH bookmark with both DSF and FLAC files, to wit:

Alphabetically in the MCH bookmark, the only Chicago album that appears is DSF5.1.

Yet, I have multiple 4 channel Chicago albums.

Note that Roon tags each of the 4 channel albums as “other” and not as quad.

And indeed, these albums do play out as discrete 4 channel versions:

@noris and @support, we may indeed have a bug here. Thoughts? JCR

1 Like

@noris and @support, further proving up that this is a Roon bug, I have found a workaround. Using the very robust Music Media Helper tools, I can select Remix Channel Layout.

This enables adding a silent center channel to a 4-channel file, converting it to a 5.0 file recognized by Roon as a MCH file.

As a result, all of the Chicago Quadro albums now appear in the Bookmark.

And as you can see, they are recognized as 5.0 files.

Of course, I should not need to do this, but at least, there is a way to make it all work. JCR