I have just ripped my entire RCA Living Stereo Vol. 2 (available in Roon according to @steveoat87) , but my Roon can’t identify the individual discs, so obviously I am dong something wrong here. Can someone please advise on how this should be done?
Hi Christian,
This issue deserves its own thread.
When you say Roon does not identify the individual discs, do you mean that each disc is appearing separately and unidentified in your library and you want Roon to merge them and identify the box set as a single multi-disc album ?
If so then you can prompt Roon to identify the set by either:
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ensuring that the filetags for each ripped disk have a common Album title and sequential disc numbers. That is done outside Roon either when ripping (I use dbAmp) or in a filetag program (I use mp3tag);
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working within Roon, using Edit Album/Fix Track Grouping to give each disc a sequential disc number and then Edit Album/Merge Albums to make a multi-disc set.
If, however, you want Roon to separately identify each disc of a multi-disc box set, I don’t believe Roon can do that unless each disc is also a stand alone Album with it’s own metadata.
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Hi Andrew,
Here’s the deal. I’m fully aware of the current limitations in Roon when it comes to handle multi-disc box-sets and metadata quality for classical music, so I’m just trying to survive and find some kind of best practice until a better solution arrives in the future.
For me, it doesn’t make sense to handle a 50+ disc box-set like RCA Living Stereo or Mercury Living Presence as one album with 50 unidentified discs (cd1, cd2, … etc.), so I try to rip and manage them as individual albums. This worked out pretty well for Mercury Living Presence Vol. 2, but when I start to import RCA Living Stereo after ripping and doing basic metadata management on the file level outside of Roon (title, disc#, track#, composer, ensemble, conductor etc) and individual scans of front and back cover art, I find no match in the Roon library for the individual albums (I haven’t tried all yet, only the first five Arthur Rubinstein Beethoven concerts), but I don’t want to continue until I’m sure if I’m doing something wrong since I realised that RCA LS2 as a matter of fact should be available in the database. So, what do I have to do to get my albums identified?
They’ll only be identifiable as separate albums if they were released as separate albums. If there is no metadata to be found because a disc wasn’t separately released then the album remains unidentified.
Users can split sets into separate albums and provide their own metadata and artwork for such unreleased discs, but they will remain unidentified.
If an album has an AllMusic entry then Roon should identify it.
Ok, understood! I guess most of the albums in Mercury Living Presence Vol. 2 are released separately while at least the first few in RCA Living Stereo Vol. 2 aren’t.
I guess the best solution would be to have these boxes presented as one “album”, but with the possibility to drill down into the individual discs with their own album art etc. In those instances where a box is a re-release of individual albums, it would be nice if you could decide wether the individual albums should show up as individual albums in the album view or not, but I guess all of this has already been debated a billion times before - sorry for coming in late…
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rip and curate music in iTunes and link itunes to Roon.
Sorry, but what is the point/benefit in using iTunes? I’m currently using Mp3Tag for metadata management and I think that works perfectly, but I’m open to suggestions if there are specific procedures you could go through in iTunes to improve it further.
Also… iTunes is out of the question for ripping. I’m using XLD since my preferred format is flac for regular CDs.
I think the main advantage of using iTunes is that it’s relatiely simple and familiar to many users, especially Mac-based ones. Your approach of using Mp3tag and XLD is absolutely fine. Myself, I use Yate and XLD. It’s just a matter of personal preference and meeting whatever specialized needs a particular user may have. We can argue the fine points of taggers and rippers until the cows come home, and it’s likely that we will. 
No problem, I just thought I was missing something!