I think this is now the 4th time I’m trying roon. My library is meticulously well tagged (all files have Discogs tags + proper covers), I’m accessing my library from Swinsian (MacOS), Navidrom and Jellyfin with no issue whatsoever.
I’m running the core on Synology, I tried both the SPK and Docker with the same result:
Only 395 of my 612 albums get imported, see images for the weirdness happening.
Again: Other players can access the exact same files just fine - what is it roon needs differently???
Roon works very differently from other players. It is not uncommon for those migrating from other players where they have heavily tagged their library to find that the conventions they were using do not work as they expect with roon. There are probably multiple problems with your library but a couple of things jump out with the Bryan Adams “Reckless” album that will probably fix other problems as well.
(1) With a double album (or any other multi-disk box-set) you must label the subfolders simply:
Reckless
CD1
CD2
Do not label them similar to:
Reckless
CD1 - Studio
CD2 - Live
In addition I would generally tag the ID3 disk number as 1/2, 2/2 etc.
This will make sure that roon knows to keep the multiple disks of your album together as a single album instead of splitting them into multiple albums which seems to have happened in your case.
(2) It is difficult to see from your cut-off screen shot but in general you should not be “meticulously” packing all the additional identifiers such as “deluxe” and release date of “2014” (vs. original release of 1984), and catalogue number “378 305-4” into the album title. This just confuses the roon album auto-identification process. This information should be going separately into each relevant ID3 tags.
(3) In settings you have a lot of control over how roon imports your library. For example you may prefer roon to use your own artwork rather than roon’s artwork.
(4) Some roon collectors have thousands of albums. In those cases it is a major commitment to re-tag their albums so that roon’s auto-identification process is more accurate. In your case you have a few hundred problem albums so the decision may be easier. But before going down that path you can try roon “manual” album identification which may work with minimal re-tagging. For example, that album Reckless has had literally countless pressings and re-issues. Discogs has 247 versions. On the other hand, as far as I can see roon has only 6 but you may be able to “manually” identify your “30th Anniversary” version without extensive re-tagging (although following roon multi-disk conventions in point (1) above is usually a prerequisite). If you click:
album → three dots → edit → identify album
then you should come to a screen similar to this and then you can choose the match that is closest to your album.
It shouldn’t happen in this particular case with your version of Reckless (roon should make a 100% match) but it is not uncommon that track times may differ. That usually doesn’t matter as long as track titles match up. But with an album like Reckless where there have been so many re-issues it is also possible that track ordering or even bonus tracks do not match roon’s metadata so some further editing in roon may be required.
thank you for taking the time to provide a detailed and insightful answer.
My file structure is flat, which works well because I prefix files with albumnumber_tracknumber.
Yes, I do indeed pack release date, sample rate, catalog number and more into the album name, which allows me to identify the edition I’m looking for.
I could, actually, easily change all that, because file & album naming as well as directory structure is done based on the discogs tags with a program I wrote, but I’d much prefer if roon stopped trying to be intelligent and just displayed the data as-is, like, for example, the COMPLETELY FREE Jellyfin does it:
As you have been consistent in applying your tagging conventions then you could probably use something like mp3tag to batch edit something more roon compatible. There is a lot of information on the roon knowledge base about how it expects a library to be structured and tagged.
There is a section on multi-disk sets. Some of the alternatives it recognises may be a closer fit to your own library so that you can minimise any changes:
Have you tried just setting the album as Unidentified? In that state, Roon can only use your tags and titles. Granted, since Roon doesn’t know what the album is, it won’t use it for all the other things it can do, radio, song suggestions, the extra metadata, etc.
As I said, I have code (Python) that can process my complete library and do this based on tags.
According to the FAQ having all files of an album in a single folder should work. It’s easy enough for me to stick to the standard tags, which should help roon identify albums.
So far I’ve used the album title as the folder name - now I have two albums called “Reckless” - any suggestion how to name the folder?
How do you handle multiple versions of the same album?
Roon supports a concept of “versions”. You will see the details in the knowledge base. But basically you can use brackets of different types in the folder names to distinguish them. These version descriptors then show up on the roon album pages.
Packing the title tag with all sorts of non-title related information will lead to a lot of identification failures as you have found. But as with a lot of things roon there are no hard and fast rules. You may get an identification with something simple like Reckless (Delux) in the title tag, or you may not. It’s a bit hit and miss. If you have the label and label numbers, catalogue numbers and barcodes in the title string and you can move them to the relevant ID3 tags with your python scripts that helps the identification process a lot.
I usually append the source or catalog number in “[ ]” brackets on the album folder, which I have set Roon to automatically treat as Version information. Like: Houses Of The Holy [CD, Atlantic – SD 7255] Houses Of The Holy [24/96 FLAC, HDTracks] Houses Of The Holy [Vinyl, 256 DSD, Atlantic – SD 7255]
If you have been making a lot of edits to an album outside roon with a third party tagger it is usually necessary to:
Remove the album from the roon library
“Clean up Library”
Make the edits with a third party tagger
Re-import the album into roon
But you have edited your entire library so at this stage it is probably easier to re-install roon and re-import your new library unless @support has another suggestion. Re-importing a library of 600 or so albums shouldn’t take very long.
However it is not clear exactly what it is about your tagging habits that roon doesn’t like. You say this is your 4th attempt with roon so it is not obvious. It is just a suggestion but what I would do is I would re-install roon so I have a blank library and then just import one album (folder) at a time to find out what is causing the problem.
Thats the thing - I have re-installed the core (Docker on Synology) and started with an empty library.
Names are clean from special characters, files have proper album name, artist, album artist, year, label, catalog number tags. No skipped files. If the tags say “Track 1 of 10” and roon only shows two, there should at least be an indicator that something is wrong?
I don’t even have an easy way to see what’s missing, I’m not going to check every single album.
These files should import with no issues whatsoever. I guess I’m sticking with Navidrome, this is way too much hassle for what it should be.
