I have several CD mixes (with multiple artists) given me by my children, and I now wish to rip those CDs, import them into Roon, and (this part is important) visually treat each ripped CD (15-20 tracks each) as a single compilation album. I tried doing this for one such CD. But, Roon separated the tracks and created 15 or so “one-track albums”. Not what I wanted.
So, what tags do I need to add to the tracks, and what file and/or folder names do I have to use, to achieve my own personalized compilation “albums”?
The example used in the KB assumed the merger of two partial albums that are from the same source. My example has as many as 15 sources/albums. But I will try that with a small subset of the cuts to see how it works. Thx.
The simplest way to play these tracks as if a single album would be to make playlists using the tracks as they are currently ripped/imported.
But to answer your question:
This can be done with editing in Roon but will be arduous and these edits are only in Roon’s database not the files themselves so if you ever wanted to play them using different software you’d be back at square one.
I can explain if you ask.
But what I’d recommended is to get a metadata editing program such as
Remove the tracks from your Roon watched folder (be sure you have copies elsewhere) and restart Roon to update its database.
Place the tracks from each CD into its own folder.
Use the metadata editor to edit the album name tag to something such as “Kid’s Compilation 1”
Be sure the tracks have Artist and Track Title tags as well as Track Number tags.
(I can’t currently recall the exact names of these tags but you get the idea)
It would also be a good idea to name the track titles prefaced with the track number.
Such as “ 01 - A Song”
Or if you like “01 - Artist - Title”
Edit - See @Stan_Jones post below.
The Album Artist tag is important here too.
Many thanks @Placebophile . I use Yate, which is a pretty good Mac tagger. And I have always preferred using file tags (as opposed to Roon’s pseudo-tags).
I had not bothered changing whatever Album tags were in the tracks, and sure enough, Roon created a new album icon for each unique tag it found. Messy! But that’s easy enough to fix. Just change the “album” to “John’s Christmas Mix 2022”. Thanks for the tip.
It’s occurred to me you might end up with a different sort of mess as Roon isn’t going to be able to identify your “albums”
They should however play as intended.
And I suspect you’ll have done this already but you might want to add album art to your files in Yate so they display nicer in Roon
Make sure each track has the same album title AND same album artist. Each track can have its own artist but the album artist (a different field than artist) must be the same. In cases where the tracks have different artists a common approach is to use Various Artists as the album artist. This is simpler than more convoluted approaches such as a playlist and is how the ID3 tag was designed.