i have been using the comments filed for years now to store my track ratings (1-5). since every few years i seem to move from player to player and platform (linux, mac etc) this has proven the safety bet to make these rating transferable
I’ve never encountered a player who completely ignored the comment field until i switched to roon a few weeks ago
so i need help from the Gurus…what would be the best approach to import my comments into roon and use them as “ratings”?
I thought initially to use them in focus but i cant see the comment field available there. also thought to create tags 3star, 4star etc but again how would i know which files to tag if i cant see the comments field?
Load your entire library into an external tag editor, then add a tag called ROONTRACKTAG to all your files that take the form:
ROONTRACKTAG=★
Where★ represents the number of stars you want to assign to the track. The simplest way would be to sort the files by comment field and then tag unless you’re able to write a function to translate your comments into number of stars.
Then goto Tags and you will see tags likes this:
★★★★★
★★★★
★★★
★★
★
Of course the above can be set to whatever you like e.g.:
ROONTRACKTAG:
5★ tracks
4★ tracks
3★ tracks
2★ tracks
1★ tracks
ROONALBUMTAG:
5★ albums
4★ albums
3★ albums
2★ albums
1★ albums
By using distinct Tag names you can avoid blending albums and tracks that share the same ★ rating.
Quite a pathetic workaround for what should be basic capability, but given Roon doesn’t support track ratings or importing album ratings you are left with no other viable alternative.
just to be clear before i go over my 50,000 tracks and retag :):
will roon will read this tag ROONTRACKTAG (ie it will appear in roon in focus or be available to tag based upon it)?
and if so could it also in theory read the comment tag? or there are only these ROON specific tag it reads?
ROONTRACKTAG AND ROONALBUMTAG are both tags that Roon will import (AND expose) within Roon under Tags. If I’m not mistaken COMMENTS is in fact imported, just ignored:
– choose View file info… | File Tags to see what tags Roon has actually ingested from scanning your library.
They will definitely appear under tags. I you have your tagger set to preserve file mod date and time you’ll need to select all albums and rescan within Roon for Roon to ingest these new tags (this is definitely the way I’d do it).
They should also appear as Tag entries under the Tags list:
Amazing! that works flawlessly…i cant thank you enough for your detailed guide @evand !
last Q, will this work the other way round? that is if i tag files over the years in Roon with the ★★★ track tags, will i be able to export that and view that in my external tagger?
Tagging tracks and albums individually within Roon is currently pretty cumbersome so for your existing collection definitely do it using a tagger.
I just exported an album I tagged as 5* within Roon and confirmed the tag is written out to the newly exported album. Of course this would mean creating a second copy of your library because exporting it effectively makes a copy to a chosen destination:
I wonder why then if roon reads the comment field as a tag cant we focus by that (or any other tag it reads for that matter).
is that a technical limitation or just a usability decision?
seems weird to me not to let the user (power user) the ability to decide
best
– choose View file info… | File Tags to see what tags Roon has actually ingested from scanning your library.
