I have a music library with ca. 40k songs and 500ish artists and have just started testing Roon.
Searching for a specific artist is quick and easy, but scrolling through my lists of 500ish artists on my phone takes forever; it’s a first-world problem but it makes Roon close to unusable.
Does Roon (or will it in the near future support:
browsing by folder? My library is organised so that the first level is two letters; eg at the first level you’d go to “ST”, then at the second level you’d choose “Santana”;
“Artist Index”, as Twonky calls it, i.e grouping artist by the first X letters (eg first “STU”, then “Santana”)
an alphabetical index on the right, so that you can click “S” directly? Poweramp Android and many Iphone apps have this
Show artists as a small list, without pictures, so that more artists fit on the screen
Any other way to make it functional to browse through 500+ items?
As it stands, I will not confirm my trial because browsing the library is a pain, and that’s a shame because the software is really cool - however overpriced
John - this feature (and Focus, I now realize) is missing on the Android (and iOS, I think) smartphone UI - which is a real pain. It’s only available on tablets, PCs and Macs (at the moment).
Not enough real estate, IMO. Roon is obsessive about a clean appearance. Functionality at the expense of clutter isn’t perceived as a good tradeoff. Personally, I’m torn. I like appearance and functionality.
You don’t need additional screen real estate to browse by folder, nor to group artists by the first letters of the name. Nor would these changes require weeks of coding, nor a major overhaul of the system (I imagine - but happy to be proven wrong).
What is the use of a clean appearance if browsing my stuff takes so long I just lose the will to use the app? I can’t wait 2 minutes to get to letter “S” - picking up a vinyl would be quicker
I imagine quite a lot of Roon users have large music libraries, so how do they do it? Do they use it only from the PC or tablets?
I’ll use bookmarks and tags, but must confess mostly use my pc for control. Android is a very weak link. I believe they will redesign the whole "android"app. Make take some time.
If I could retract everything I posted here, I would.
I misread the PO: early am, no coffee, etc. etc. My comments were based upon my (usual) MBP and iPad use.
Having now played a bit with the iPhone version (which i seldom do), I would type in a search, or the first few letters of one of their names. But that’s me.
Browse by folder WILL NOT HAPPEN. I’m not a Roon person, but this has been unequivocally stated elsewhere here. Everything about Roon is oriented around the album model, not folders. Since Roon doesn’t care about folder names, except to reference what’s inside, the rewrite would be from virtual scratch. They are not going to do that.
I’m not sure that the phone experience will ever be as good due to real estate. As you have been looking at the forums you will see a lot of people have moved to a tablet. Up to you obviously
You don’t need an awful lot of real estate to browse by folder, group artists by letters, or find a way to show the first letter when browsing (click on S and find Santana more easily). The first two points may be against the philosophy of Roon, fine (again: the ideological opposition…) but the last one is already implemented on PCs and tablets. If the licence were cheap, I’d suck it up and just use a tablet, but I can’t justify such an expensive licence for something that works on a tablet but not on a phone.
If I want to enjoy music on the sofa then, sure, the tablet experience is the way to go, but I also listen to music while cooking, while getting ready, and while doing a number of other things which mean I’m not sitting on the sofa holding a tablet, and the phone is a much better option.
I thought that and had a go but it doesn’t seem to bookmark a position within the artist screen on my android. I wonder if this is another example of phone being different. Not sure what you can bookmark on the artists page. I guess it is showing so you can go to another book mark?
Phones are odd in roon I think.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
16
I’m sorry for not knowing more, but I don’t have an android device to be sure. But my thought was that you could bookmark some views that take you a while to scroll to on the phone and use the bookmark to bring you there instantly. That depends on how you browse, I guess.
I know this much - you can create the bookmarks on a PC/Mac Roon interface, then the only question is whether you can use the bookmarks on Android. You might just play around and see.
I feel your frustration. While I personally don’t have a ton of use for folder view at this point, it would be a helpful patch for those struggling to use Roon with box sets and types of music (classical?) where the embedded metadata is not good, and the users have organized themselves by folder. And I think it is just a weird stance to take only to be different. But it is what it is - their product and to each his own.
That said, Roon is still a fantastic product for whole home management and music discovery. But it is best with more viewable real estate. Different products have different strengths and flaws.
I agree the scrolling on a phone is abysmal. Ive changed the DPI on my android phones (which are 1440 x 2880 res) to higher than 600 to trick Roon into Tablet mode… much better!
Yes you can use Bookmarks that have been created on a PC/Mac/Tablet on an Android phone. You can also create bookmarks on an Android phone, and they will be available on a PC/Mac/Tablet as well.
Geoff, you can use the bookmarks but I can’t bookmark a position in Artists. If I go to Artists with screen set to sort by artist and then scroll down until the Bs start and bookmark it. When I click on the bookmark when I am in Artists or elsewhere it takes me to the top of the Artists list.
That’s true on the phone and on a Windows client.
