All good and thx!
Ah, not correct! I delayed for years before upgrading from a Sonos Connect streamer to something better, simply because the Sonos software was so good - and it included a Folder browse feature - most other apps didn’t at the time.
I then found that the BluOS app did offer Folder browsing, so I bought the NAD M50.2 - brilliant bit of kit.
It’s dead easy to file digitally-stored music exactly as you wish, simply by using standard Windows Cut & Paste (or drag) or Rename, without going anywhere near the much more complicated re-tagging procedure.
Assuming all your music is on a NAS or similar that’s recognised by a Windows PC. Create Main Folders under Music. For example, Classical, Jazz, Rock & Pop, World & Weird. Then just move your music (cut & paste or drag) into Sub Folders by Artist within the appropriate Main Folder.
So, for example, it’s dead easy to move all your Miles Davies into a Miles Davis Folder within your Jazz Sub Folder. You can move in all your "Miles Davis, or Davis Miles, or Miles Davis Trio or whatever into your easy to find single Miles Davis folder.
You think Miles Davis is tricky - consider the utter jumble that Classical music suffers from if you rely on tagging! Beethoven, Ludwig Beethoven, LV Beethoven, Beethoven Ludwig, plus lots found (or rather lost) under conductor or orchestra or soloist. It’s easy to move it all into your Beethoven folder. You can even split albums such as Sibelius and Brahms piano concertos on a single CD.
Then just re-index your library using Roon or BluOS or whichever app you prefer. Then you can browse your Jazz collection just as you would in a CD store ie go to Jazz section and then browse the Miles Davis bin. Also, as in CD stores, you can create a Collections folder within Jazz if 3 or more artists feature on a single ripped disc.
Hope these suggestions may help – they certainly make my browsing so much easier. Peter
It seems I am not clear when I try to explain. I will try one more time.
First, I’m not asking for help, I am giving advice.
Second, I am not speaking in favor of tagging. Tags suffer from many of the same limitations as the file system. I have never edited a tag in my life.
I should add that the issue is not finding a piece of music if you know exactly what to listen to. Any system can do that. My phone can do that. My car can do that. But this is not a sufficient goal. Because the world (including music) is more complicated than a tree, when I want to do some subtle navigation that is not directly reflected in the tree, finding it requires that I have the complex data structure in the head, that you know all the music.
Take my simple example of Bags & Trane by Milt Jackson and John Coltrane. You can choose a name to file it under: “John Coltrane” or “Milt Jackson” or “Coltrane” or “Jackson” or “Bags” or “Bags & Trane”. Any of those work if you know. But if a friend comes in and says, I love vibes, let me see what you have by Milt Jackson, and you look under Milt or under Jackson, you won’t find the album if it was filed under any of those other names. If you know about it, you can find it, but the system doesn’t help you.
And if you want to trace relationships it’s equally bad: if you’re listening to the album Bags’ Groove by Miles Davis, named for the song Bags’ Groove composed by Milt Jackson, and you are impressed by Jackson’s work on the vibes, the file system won’t reflect Jackson’s name, and even if you have information about the contributing artists listing Milt Jackson you wouldn’t find the Bags & Trane album.
- There are many problems that look like separate issues but are caused by the single-patent tree structure.
- You have root folders for Genres, so you have to choose Jazz or Classical or Chamber for albums by Keith Jarrett, and Tarkovsky Quartet, and Anouar Brahem. And if you choose Classical for Tarkovsky and Jazz for Anja Lechner with Dino Saluzzi, you would not find Lechner’s work with Tarkovsky because they are in different root folders.
- Let alone if the root folders are CD and Downloads and MP3.
- There are two guys named Avishai Cohen, one plays trumpet, the other plays bass. If you give them the same folder, you can’t find one or the other. If you give them different names, Avishai Cohen (trumpet) and Avishai Cohen (bass), the links when the bassist plays on a Paolo Fresu album wouldn’t point to the right guy.
- As you say, it’s even worse for classical: who is the single artist who will be honored as the single artist?
And you have to have a different system for streamed content, there are no folders.
I think it is related to the amount of music in which way one organizes the music-files.
I have about 94’000 titles. Organized that way:
ABC
DEF
GHI
…
one step down the Folder are Folder named with Artists Name
ABC/Bob Dylan
next step
ABC/Bob Dylan/Blood on the Tracks
nex
ABC/Bob Dylan/Blood on the Tracks/01 - Tangled up in blue.flac
As long as there are only a few album where Artist is “Bob Dylan and the Band” the will be in the “Bob Dylan” Folder.
“Miles Davis Problem”: Alle albums are stored in the “Miles Davis” Folder. It makes it eaysier to handle.
Most important is: Do it in a way you can eaysily handle, which is fine with your way of thinking. ROON does not care about the Folder-structure, it is you who Need or do not need a strcuture.
I don’t worry about such things. I let my CD ripper put things where it wants to, and so far Roon has had no issues finding and properly displaying everything. The only edits I have had to do in Roon have been to display the proper album cover. I don’t really care about anything else as long as the music is available. To each his own. 
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I’m curious as to Roon’s core value proposition for you?
Core value proposition to me? 1) it’s a far better server solution than Logitech Media Server - faster, more reliable and uses fewer system resources; 2) it is more user friendly and platform independent than LMS; 3) to me on my system Roon server and Roon Ready Endpoints sounds better than LMS and Squeezebox players did; 4) it is music format independent, playing all file formats I can throw at it; 5) I like the fully integrated Qobuz service. Off the top of my head.
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