Hi, everybody. These days I’m considering whether to subscribe to Roon or not.
Day after day, new concerns arise. The last concerns the management of multi-disc albums.
I would like to present you with an exemplary case.
I imported the album “Glenn Gould, A State Of Wonder, The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981”.
It consists of two discs. The metadata I used came from MusicBrainz and the .m4a files (ALAC) were written with Yate.
In the folder on the audio server, all the tracks are in perfect order. Roon also sees them in the order defined by MusicBrainz and Yate. But when Roon shows me the contents of the album, he mixes the two records, alternating tracks of one with tracks of the other.
Things don’t get any better when I ask Roon to identify the album: since Roon doesn’t follow the correct order of the tracks, he leaves it to me to order the tracks!
I’m probably doing something wrong.
How do I make Roon observe the order of the tracks stored on the server? The same order Roon shows he knows well when I ask him to show me the contents of the folder corresponding to the album?
Secondly, the correct way to tag them in Yate is as follows:
A State Of Wonder (or whatever you choose)
CD1
01 Aria.alac
02 Variation 1.alac
…
…
etc
CD2
01 Aria.alac
02 Variation 1.alac
…
…
etc
No spaces between ‘CD’ and ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ etc!
Do not try and separate (such a) box set into two separate and separately-named albums like this (which is wrong and will not work properly):
A State Of Wonder CD 1 (or whatever you choose)
01 Aria.alac
02 Variation 1.alac
…
…
etc
A State Of Wonder CD 2 (or whatever you choose)
01 Aria.alac
02 Variation 1.alac
…
…
etc
So in Yate, the three CDs (assuming you want to import the third, bonus, CD) will all have the same string for/in Yate’s ‘Album’ field. You’ll distinguish the two (or three) CDs in Yate’s ‘Disc’ field.
Please say if this is not clear. Happy to help further…
Thank you very much for your response.
In fact, I have to say that out of almost 9,000 imported albums, only a few Roons have failed to identify. MusicBrainz + Yate are working wonders!
In Gould’s case, I realized I’d imported the album a couple of times, putting Roon in a position to get confused.
I re-imported the metadata from a different version of the album, removed the old copies on the audio server, and everything was fine.
As you can see from the pictures, when I save tracks with Yate I use the Track2-Title option, which seems to be good for Roon.
having realized that for the proper management of boxes with many discs it is important to have a strict naming, I created in Yate a simple naming scheme for audio tracks. (Barry provided some templates that inspired me: Resources | 2ManyRobots)
I’m trying to use the “Fix track grouping” command but it’s not clear at all because you don’t know which album gives up the track and which album gets it.
What do you think is the best procedure?
Do I need to use the “Fix track grouping” command in the album that yields the track or do I need to use the command in the album that receives the track?
If a select the track in the right column (I activated the command “Fix track grouping” in the album Roon created with the lost track), and then give the command “Move to disc” nothing happens.
I used to Merge (as Tony suggests); but in the end found it better (and I think closer to Roon’s advice on best practice) to:
create or follow the overall/top level directory name as you get it from the supplier; it would be named something like Bruckner 9 Symphonien Jochum in this second case which you describe
separately name each Album (which might well be the same as each Bruckner symphony… ‘1 in C minor’, ‘1 in C minor’, ‘3 in D minor’ etc) as ‘CD1’, ‘CD2’, ‘CD3’ (no spaces) etc
then import the entire box set into Yate by dragging only that top level directory (‘Bruckner 9 Symphonien Jochum’) onto Yate’s main window; that will bring in all the sub-directories (‘CD1’, ‘CD2’, ‘CD3’); Yate will respect the corresponding works’ titles
this is going to show different names in Yate’s Album field - because you have a different folder (within the Bruckner 9 Symphonien Jochum top level folder)… ‘Bruckner Symphonien Jochum 1’, ‘Bruckner Symphonien Jochum 2’, ‘Bruckner Symphonien Jochum 3’ etc
only after you have then corrected or amended - in line with the conventions which you follow - the other fields (Genre, Disc, Track etc) - all the other fields (you may have to add Label, Seller, Period etc) you should change all Album titles to just ‘Bruckner 9 Symphonien Jochum’; in other words combine the individual albums of the box set in Yate to one entity/product.
Roon will then import them all as the same entity (Jochum’s Bruckner cycle box set) and also respect the division into symphonies - because of your naming at step 2 above .
Once you have this working you might want to experiment with the Yate Action which separates Title into Work and Part; this will ensure that Roon displays movements, songs, acts and numbers etc properly.
Please say if any of this isn’t clear. It may take some time getting used to. But it’s worth it Good luck!
Your suggestions are invaluable and have helped me solve all the problems.
In Bruckner’s case, there was only one orphaned audio track. I learned to put things right by watching this video:
Fortunately, the sequence of actions you describe can be easily executed by Yate, starting from a set of quality matadata.
Basically, the problem I had was the naming of the tracks.
Following the instructions you can read here:
I’ve compiled a script for Yate that can name the tracks according to the Roon standard.
Today Barry compiled a better version of the script. It’s called “Roon Naming.” You can find it here, among the templates. https://2manyrobots.com/resources/
I’ve been testing Barry’s script over the last few hours on very complex cases, and it works very well.
If I may, as a Roon user for five years or so, I’ve learnt to steer clear of renaming actual files.
The main reason for keeping the tracks’ names as ‘supplied’ is probably that - if you ever stop using Roon (I’m a lifer so, won’t ) - you’ll still have the original files.
Also that everything (?) you want to achieve in matching and having Roon import properly can - and should - be achieved by changing the metatags.
Also “as a Roon user for five years or so”, I am aware that others here probably know better and more than I, so I’d welcome their comment!
