These are preferences, meaning they tell Roon what you would prefer when multiple choices are available – they do not “block” content.
They go as far as:
Let’s say you’re toggled on Prefer edited versions (“Clean”) because there’s little ears in house. If Snoop Dogg ‘don’t play that, homie’ you’ll see, and hear, the explicit version.
This is absurd. Setting hard yes/no’s on whether you want to hear the explicit versions of songs is one of the basic functions of any music streamer out there. Spotify would never let a song marked “Explicit” be played if you set yourself as not wanting to hear it, and vice versa.
I can’t have an immersive workout playlist when the lyrics are halting and disappear every few words. I can’t play hip hop songs on Roon in my car with friends, because Roon will always throw me the clean version, and I don’t particularly want to get ■■■■ from my friends over it because “Roon has filter layers and Tidal on iOS doesn’t scrobble to last.fm”.
At the very least, Roon should add a dropdown in their settings similar to the audio quality one, e.g.
Never play clean versions when an explicit one is available
Play explicit versions when they are higher quality than clean versions
No preference
Play clean versions when they are higher quality than explicit versions
Never play explicit tracks
This has impacted my listening experience enough that I can’t listen to certain music genres without getting annoyed, and I’m considering dropping my subscription over it.
I should add that, between the preference feature, the ability to add the songs of your choice to your library, and the “Filter explicit content in Roon Radio” control in the Queue, most people seem to be able to achieve what you seem to be asking. If you could give a more specific example of what you don’t seem to be able to achieve, the community members around here (I’m merely one of them) might be able to offer greater assistance.
I think that @Andy_Szoke is most unhappy about the fact that the preference seems to only have an effect when both explicit and edited versions are available.
Let’s say you’re toggled on Prefer edited versions (“Clean”) because there’s little ears in house. If Snoop Dogg ‘don’t play that, homie’ you’ll see, and hear, the explicit version.
I.e., if only an explicit version is available, then it may get played. I suppose Andy would like this track to be skipped entirely in this case.
And as a side note, this cute line about Snoop is quite incomprehensible.
OK, but…if @Andy_Szoke chose to add this song to his library, it is a choice, and he can thereafter control its unanticipated (i.e., Radio) playback with the Queue toggle. If, on the other hand, he’s specifically referring to non-Library content, then wouldn’t the Queue control still provide the safety net he is looking for?
In his initial post, though, it feels to me as if his use cases seem more focused on ensuring playback of explicit content, not non-explicit content, wherein little or none of this functionality seems to come into play. So I am still confused. However, @Suedkiez, I will easily bow to your knowledge and experience, as I don’t use streaming services, and might admittedly be missing a nuance.
It’s probably best to let Andy explain, it was confusing to me, too. Maybe this feedback helps to clarify for the future benefit of the feature request.
Though I do use streaming, I would never, under any circumstances, flip the switch to „clean“, so I’m unfamiliar with its intricacies
Seems to me, the OP wants better/more control over the explicit vs clean versions of what gets played. If he chooses clean, he doesn’t want explicit sneaking in, but he also doesn’t want explicit playing with muted content. If there is not a clean version, skip the track.
If he chooses explicit, that’s what he wants if it’s available. He also wants to be able to choose highest resolution without regard to explicit or clean. His second and forth choices are not properly stated, though. What happens when both explicit and clean are the same resolution?
Is should say, play the explicit version unless there is a higher resolution clean version. Play the clean version unless there is a higher resolution explicit version.
Sorry for the confusion. Let me explain a bit more.
I have added some albums to my library manually, but for the most part I use Roon as a service that sits between Tidal and my ears. I get the most use out of the daily playlist and song/artist radio features, which are of course also available on Tidal, but I rather like the added features from Roon (TV display, filter layers, etc). I get a lot of use out of Roon ARC in my day-to-day (commuting, background listening, etc).
However, I realize that my use case is the minority one, and most people use it as a library aggregation source. To explain my workout example a bit more, I like to start a song radio based on whatever base song I’m feeling that day and let that radio run during my workout. However, this leaves me at the mercy of whatever version of the song the radio decides to use (or daily playlist, etc. Any playlist that Roon generates for me, really). And that means that when A Milli from Lil Wayne comes on, I get the version that blanks out every third word, making for an annoying experience.
What gets me is that the explicit version is available on Tidal, and is indeed the default version when you search for it. I have the “prefer explicit tracks” setting set on Roon, and yet Roon chooses to fetch the clean version of the song every time. This is just annoying for me, but I can also imagine the inverse problem bring worse – as in the “Snoop Dogg around little ears” example, if I was a parent, this would render Roon unusable for me if I really wanted to prevent kids from hearing explicit cuts on songs.
I have seen Roon making strides for the playlist listeners like me lately – it is a much better and smoother experience on Roon and ARC than it was a few months ago. I applaud the devs, PMs, and everyone involved for their work and I’m sorry that my original post was overly aggressive. But, as I mentioned, this problem affects my everyday listening experience with Roon, and is enough of an annoyance to make me consider dropping the monthly subscription.
@DDPS The menu option clearly says that the setting will not be honored under some arbitrary conditions. By that description, the feature is working perfectly. My complaint is that that is a poor system.
I see the problem As Radios less than stellar algorithms for choosing versions and combined with the fact Roon offers up multiple versions of an album at all times so it always sees the explicit and clean versions as a choice and is making a bad choice. This may be down to the broken filter but it’s more likely just the algorithm. Users have complained for years on Radios poor choices and it getting stuck on playing same content over and over. This feels like another symptom of it or Valence in general.
Tidal doesn’t work that way it offers up its default version and no others. It looks to be the unedited tracks as it should be. The user has to choose the clean option in app and then Tidal will only ever choose clean.
