I thought that this was all sorted out with Roon but apparently not.
I have my settings to NOT show Roon genres and TO show genres from file tags.
I only see my genres when I choose the genres view in Roon.
However, when I play the jazz genre (for example) in shuffle mode, Roon includes many tracks that are in my library but not in my jazz genre.
I have reviewed the entire database and there are no style tags at all and only one genre tag per track.
I do not have a Tidal subscription so the only music available to me is from my library with the tags managed by me.
So, what is going on and how can I force Roon to submit to only using my genre tags and no other?
Thank you for your assistance.
Hi Peter. Going to Genre and selecting Play All should just play the albums in that genre Try going to Albums, then Focus, click on Genre, click the Jazz genre, and then hit play all. It should just play the albums that are in that focus. Does that work or does it add stuff in?
Also, make sure that you are choosing Play or Play All and not Radio. And try having your radio function turned off (by going to the queue screen and clicking NO) before starting playback.
Interesting Daniel.
Going to Albums then Focus on Jazz seems to play only from the Jazz Genre.
Going to Genre and selecting Jazz and then choosing Play Genre (the prominent action choice) followed by Play Now (no Radio) is as likely to pull up a non Jazz track as it is to play a Jazz track. The queue is empty but it shows “Shuffle starts in n:nn” and an image of the next track.
So thank you for your good advice but this behaviour makes no sense to me: selecting a Genre, choosing Play Genre and Play Now seems unambiguous and I see no indication that some setting is getting in the way.
I am also disappointed that when playing random selection the track detail screen does not update for each new track. It seems to me that the user has not selected the track so is likely to want to see what is playing without having to click on the track in the progress bar and then the album in the main display. Show the rich metadata of Roon so the user can listen to another track on the same album, read about the album. I thought that was the killer advantage of Roon!
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I’m looking into this, Peter. The shuffle behavior and file tag genre handling systems were built independently months apart from each other, and it’s possible that when you press Play Genre, Roon is still using the rich hierarchical genre data we get from our metadata providers (which is of course editorial, and ripe for criticism).
Can you explain a little more what you mean by “track detail screen” here? Are you talking about the album details screen? Credits popup?
Mike
I do not know the correct terminology for Roon screen design.
There is a section at the bottom of the screen which seems to display the currently playing track with back/play/forward etc. This section updates when the random (shuffle?) play selects a new track. I referred to this as the progress bar since the primary information is the progress in playback of the track.
Above this section is a large area which has various content that can be displayed. If I select a Genre and press Play genre, a random track is selected and is displayed with the progress bar. When a new track is selected, the progress bar and track details change, but the display area above is static. In this case it continues to show the Genre Artist and Album Highlights.
One major part of Roon’s appeal is the album details screen, as you call it. To see this I have to select the track from the progress bar, which displays some information including album art and name and then select album in order to see the album information and see what other tracks are available from that album and other albums by this artist.
When playing random (unselected) tracks, I would most like to see the album details screen displayed, which gives me the most information about the track and the choice of trying another track from that album or album by that artist. Looking only at the static display from which I started random play gives me nothing except the track name and artist in the progress bar.
Hey @PNCD – I was able to reproduce this behavior and it does appear to be a bug. The Play Genre button should respect the Genre settings of the Roon client you’re using (ie only genres from your file tags) so we’ve opened up a bug report to get this resolved. Look for the fix in a future build, and for now feel free to use @Rugby’s workaround above.
With regards to your other question, I think it would be a bit confusing for Roon’s album screen to navigate on it’s own based on what’s playing, but I agree we could be doing more to show you deeper metadata about the currently playing track.
I’m going to think about this a little more, but feel free to post more in Feature Requests about what you’re looking for here. Thanks!
Hi @mike,
sorry to reactivate this old thread but I am experiencing the same issues as described by PNCD back in 2016. I am currently running 1.4 (build 310). I also use only genre tags stored in my files (instead of the third party metadata).
Yesterday I used the “Genres” Menu, selected the “Blues” genre and selected “Shuffle”. A few Blues tracks have been played, followed by a piece tagged with “Classical”. Then a piece tagged with “Blues” followed by two tracks tagged with “Rock”. Two “Blues”, one “Classical” and so on…
I would like to know if this bug is still there or if this is intended behaviour.
For me its cool to work with the Inspector and select my genres there but for my kids and wife it is much easier to work with the method mentioned above.
Hi, @papa.jay, thanks for the report! Could you please take a screenshot of the album details page, from which this “wrong” pick comes? Also what happens if you focus on Blues genre in Albums Browser for example?
Thanks!
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Ivan
Hi @ivan,
I shuffled the “Blues” genre again using the “Genre” menu and pressing the button below:
The first two songs in the list below have the genre tag “Blues”
Song 3-5 in the list have different genre tags
I will try the other route via “albums browser” right now and post the results later on…
So… I tried to shuffle “Blues” with the album browser and the “Focus” button
The first results in the playlist have no genre tag “Blues”
but I think I found out what might be the problem. Up to now all wrong tracks are part of a compilation. All of those compilations contain one or more tracks where the genre tag is “Blues”.
I tried the route via the “Genres” page again but tried the “Start Radio” option instead of shuffle.
I only get tracks with the genre tag “Blues” (which is cool) but so far the radio function has not brought up blues tracks which are part of a (multi-genre) compilation (in other words: only tracks get played which are part of an album where every track is tagged with “Blues”).
Hey @papa.jay – I don’t think Ivan is looking for screenshots of the file tags popup or queue.
The file tags may or may not showing up properly on the album page – if they’re not showing up as you expect there, we’ll have a much clearer picture of what the issue is here.
With the screenshots Ivan requested, I think we’ll be able to figure this out. Thanks!
hi @mike,
sorry… I think I got Ivan wrong and posted the file details instead of album details… here you go… I hope these are the screenshots you requested…
That is correct, I bet if you browsed all the albums under the blues Genre, you would see those soundtrack/compilations listed.
As I understand it, the genre tags used are at the album level. So, if there is a blues tag, all tracks are potentially picked. If I have a compilation that is truly diverse, I remove all tags except, soundtrack, compilation, etc. That way country will not be picked if I play Rock or Pop. Also, if there are tracks which you never want picked, you can ban them, like movie dialogue.
Hi, @papa.jay, @Rugby is right here. All these albums, which are on your screenshots, has Blues genre on their details page alongside many others., that’s why tracks from them come up when you shuffle Blues. That’s just how Roon work, we have Genre for on an Album level not on the Track level. They are a bit different from Roon’s perspective.
By the way, which Library setting for Genres do you use, I mean Roon data, file tag data or both? As far as I can see from screenshots it’s Roon. Just want to confirm.
Thanks!
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Ivan
Thanks for the feedback and the explanation @Rugby and @ivan. At least I now understand what’s going on.
But Rock and Pop will not be played either, right ? If you do it that way no track of a compilation will ever be played in shuffle or radio mode. Is this correct, or am I still not getting something ?
I built a very simplified genre tree on my own and use only genres from file tags.
You understood correctly. However, I only do that, as I mentioned, for soundtracks where the music is too diverse, like if it had both Heavy Metal and Jazz as genres, where if I played Jazz I would not want Judas Priest showing up or visa versa. For a soundtrack like Guardians of the Galaxy where it is all rock / pop or close enough, I don’t do anything except add my own Soundtrack tag, so, in this case it would be picked up in a shuffle.