Thanks for the tip tripleCrotchet. Personally, I don’t see that as a step forward. So now I have to scroll down to a list that has separated out an artist’s best. That is extra effort. I’d rather see at a glance all the artist’s work that includes a rating so I can tell when his best work it. Concise and all in one place works best for me.
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I hear you, a lot of simpler views and 1 -click options seem to have been replaced with something much more complicated and messy, but I am curious. Do you see an in his prime banner for Tony Bennett? I don’t, in fact I don’t see it for many artists but for others I do. I cannot see the pattern.
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Found a solution to ALL of these problems and bugs and disappointment. Uninstalled 1.8 on the desktop. Installed 1.7 from a previous download. NICE. Uninstalled 1.8 from my Android tablet that I have dedicated to Roon. Installed 1.7 using APKPURE. Apkpure has a database not affiliated with Google play store. So I am back to where I was before the disaster. No more disconnects, skips, stops, dropped songs, loss recognition of my DAC. Gone is the headache.
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I don’t see a prime banner for Tony Bennitt. I can find a “Recommend” banner but I don’t know what those recommendations are based on. My past listening habits? Independent reviews? A quick look at the Recommended banner shows me some albums have five star reviews but others have three star reviews. That leaves me guessing why these are the recommended albums.
I cannot see a prime banner for anything anymore either. Very strange.
I’ve no idea how the recommendations work. What I remember in 1.7 there were two of these that seemed to use different algorithms. One popped up recommendations to the right of the playing album. That one worked for me. The other was a separate banner in the old “overviews” page. That one didn’t work for me and I never used it. I don’t know which the new 1.8 recommendations is, or if it is something else again. I haven’t had a chance to use it because of so many other issues.
Ah, I see. I agree, it’s not especially impressive.
I know in 1.7, some tracks of an album would have a check mark next to them which was supposed to mean the best or most popular track from that album. I always found it a bit odd because for a fair number of albums, there would be no check mark next to a track that was one of the biggest hits from that album. Not sure why that never bothered me. I just took it with a grain of salt. But this new 1.8 is making me rethink all the little quirks from the past.
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I see. May just be an oversight. A lot of this weak process I think. Not planned.
The thought here is that a single rating from one reviewer at one point in time isn’t a good representation of quality.
The replacement is showing things according to popularity.
I suppose the underlying assumption is popularity = best. People aren’t buying that, for a number of reasons.
When you buy wine in a store there are ‘shelf talkers’ that give ratings and descriptions. I gotta say I trust those, especially when I know the reviewer. The situation now would be like arranging the wines in order of ‘best to worst’ and assuming people will accept it. I don’t think I’d be good with that.
I’m ambivalent about the star ratings, but I certainly understand why people don’t like losing them.
One’s only response to such picayune screed is, “Buh bye”
Scott, yes I understand your point. As an example, many of the Albums get a review by Stephan Thomas Erlewine and I don’t especially like his view on a lot of music. Some are downright offensive. As for the star ratings. Yes, sometimes they are off. I have come upon albums that get a five star I think are horrible or visa versa but at least it is a starting off point.
Part of the challenge is Roon does a lot of aggregation of outside data. It pulls in info on where an artist will be performing next, it pulls in reviews and ratings. I suppose in an ideal world, Roon would either build this or acquire those companies to have better control. There are huge benefits to this concept both for Roon and for Roon users. Roon would diversify while keeping those diversified business in similar lines of business and have other revenue streams outside of Roon subscriptions. Call it a vertical integration. To the Roon user, there could be improved speed, better consistency in reviews and content, it could potentially link me more to reviewers I agree with. Like Roon raido, there could be a chance for the user to say yes or no to a Roon review. Over time Roon would know my preferences better and serve up reviews that better align with my tastes. Another benefit of a merger is Roon would never be in fear that important external information to Roon goes away because two different companies someday part ways. With this integration, content could be tightly focused to the benefit of the end user. Roon would be in charge of a huge database. It could even evolve to be an equivalent of IMDb of the music world.
I think I’ve digressed enough. But your point is well taken.
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I believe they do know how many - in a separate post, either Brian or Danny said that they do and there are not a lot. Which doesn’t lessen your pain, and their plan is to fix it. But they do have exactly that kind of instrumentation you’re describing.
As of 1.8, Roon is just like any other old component in my system. The UI flat out sucks, and the features that I have requested may never be added. I’ll use it until I find a better one and upgrade.
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I like dark mode quite a bit.
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I’ve been using 1.8 since it was released last week, and I’ve had no issues with performance or stability. Actually, I think the search performance is much better now, and the iOS apps are working fine for me. For far, I am enjoying it. I don’t particularly mind the UI changes, although there are definitely features that need to be reworked/re-enabled, e.g. star ratings, tagging/playlists, and Roon has already said they are listening to the feedback and will make a lot of these changes soon.
I say give them a chance, they are listening to the feedback and 1.8 will only get better.
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Do you know if that is roon user base popularity or some other popularity metric from other sources? Nothing scientific, I just tried a few albums with both roon and Qobuz and got very different recommendations. I was surprised. I don’t know if Qobuz is using expert curators or a machine algorithm like roon.
I agree with both of these and use Playlists a lot. I was just probing on his use of the word “nightmare”.
Your second point is getting fixed.
On the album covers - they appear in a playlist on a laptop or PC, but not in iPhone or iPad. I have a Playlist thread here:
Playlist Feature Requests (post 1.8) - Roon Software / Feature Requests - Roon Labs Community
I don’t know. The assumption, based on some of the top track recommendations, is that it is something done by Valence. Replies from Roon devs imply this is something they can tune:
mikeMike FassRoon Labs: Product
Hey @GoldenSound @Martin_Zupancic – it would be great if you guys could give me some examples of artists where you’re not getting the top tracks you expect. We did some analysis after these initial posts and I definitely agree that there’s room for improvement.
A few examples of where you feel like our lists are coming up short will be helpful as we work on improving these recommendations.
Thank you!