How I Got Over The Big Classical Box Set Issue

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1

The title says it all

Manyclassical fans suffer from this in that Roon takes a 200 CD Set and provides the poor user with 200 neat little hyperlinks. Unless you have a photographic memory of the contents of each for the box sets (Not me for sure) you have no clue how to find a specific piece. There are admittedly other methods but not easily within the albums ( I actively use Tags & Bookmarks and the Composition Browser)

My answer is simple , don’t even put the Box Sets in Roon

Sounds a bit extreme maybe but it certainly drops my level of frustration

Its not as extreme as it sounds Big Box Sets fall into 2 types

Collections of (Random) Tracks split across many discs eg Mozart 255 with virtually no pre released albums
or
Collections of previously Released Albums

indeed often a mix of the 2 . If we take Alfred Brendel 114 as an example probably 100 of these discs directly identify as Original Albums

So with a lot of work (ably assisted by SongKong and MusiCHI Tagger) I have weeded out those Albums that Roon can ID and simply left the rest in my newly formed Archive

It may sound a bit negative but I have for various reasons to keep a DLNA server running , in my case using JRiver so what I have done is keep the complete boxes in a watched folder and imported only into JRiver and annotated in that library with Custom Tags and the split out albums in a second watched folder imported only into Roon

If the entire Box can be split and ID’ed in Roon I leave it that way so its not all boxes just those that are messy. eg Abbado BPO.

Not an ideal solution but it limits my box sizes to around 10 discs which you can stand a chance of managing and navigating

I have for a long time had great problems mentally deciding between the 2 products , so I solved it KEEP BOTH and use both

If (and WHEN) Roon provides some easier mechanism with big boxes , I will gladly revert to one library structure, but currently the bit of duplication of HDD space doesn’t worry me. Inevitably there is no time scale on this .

Add to that the boxes like The Greatest Pianists contain much stuff which is duplication in major performers, Arrau, Brendel Argerich Ashkenazy etc so it actually good to clear clutter

This way I get to use the good bit of Roon without the pressing frustrations. i may lose the odd track in Roon but I can play it with equal fidelity from elsewhere

Mike

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You are certainly correct. While I like to compare performances to an extent, the GP duplication was over the top.

I assume you considered and rejected the manual tagging option. Don’t blame you, although that’s the road I chose.

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I manually tagged most files but that doesn’t get past the 200 hyperlink issue that’s what bugs me most

Mozart 255 is the best example, Philips took a random sample of their Mozart catalogue. Eg the Piano Sonatas are not one artist say Uchida as in the 1990 set

That doesn’t bother me but how do you find it

5

I apologize, musta gotten up too early. Could you give me the box set title or addtl info, and I’ll see what I may have experienced.

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VSorry bit obscure it’s the Phillips Complete Mozart works released 3- 4 years ago google Mozart 255

Instead of the previous complete works which split the set into logical volumes Piano Sonatas by one artist etc the new one has 3 volumes instrumental, orchestral etc

Each disc is a scatter of works by a whole range of artists

https://www.mozart225.com/