As per title, nothing to add.
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Use Search and scroll to tracks? Then click view all tracks if necessary?
This is a question Iāve been wanting to ask and wondered whether I have missed someone asking it earlier. Perhaps not.
It would be nice to be able to search for a song title in Roon and have it deliver meaningful results. I search fruitlessly on a regular basis and end up going to the Tidal app or AllMusic.com.
Just a wishā¦
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Hey @dbtom2 and @Jim_Austin --can you give us some examples of what youāre searching for, what youāre expecting, and what youāre actually getting?
I have some of my own frustrations with our current search, but Iād like to confirm that my frustrations are the same as yours 
Sorry, this is going to be a bit long.
Iām moderately satisfied with the solution offered above by @Ludwig, although it could use some refinement, as youāll see.
Quick aside, which Iāll come back to: This appears to be partly about integration of Roon with Tidal. More on this later.
The search that provoked the post was for āLet It Be.ā No quotation marks. The āTop Resultā was the album of that name by The Replacements. The Beatles album by that title should be in there, but itās not showing up in my library, so I wonāt blame Roon for that; maybe I screwed up the rip/import last winter (another boxed-set import issue). Iāll have to dig that back out of the box and try again.
Below that top result, Iāve got a list of library albums, starting with The Replacements, followed by Marvin Gaye (āLetās ā¦ā; close enough I guess), some CC Coletti (the Led Zep covers; whatās the connection?), two Tchaikovsky ballet albums (no idea), ā¦ finally, oddly, the White Albumāwhich, youāll note, does not contain the song āLet It Be.ā
Below this I get āGenres/Balletā.
Finally we get to Library Tracks: Top result is the Beatles track, the version from the album ā1ā; So fine, there it is, the top track. Hard to do any better if I donāt have the āLet It Beā album in my library. I just had to wade through a lot of dreck to get here.
Now letās look on the Tidal side. Tidal has made a very big deal about streaming The Beatles. They have all the major albums and a bunch of other stuff. But I donāt see any of the good stuff on my search for Let It Be. Hereās the first row of Tidal albums turned up by my āLet It Beā search:
If I click on āView Allā I see it: The Beatles album (2015 remaster) is the 15th album listed.
So now letās look at Tidal tracks:
Clicking on āView All,ā The Beatles track āLet It Beā comes in 11th place.
OK, done with that. One quick note about The Beatles and Tidal integration. Now Iām searching on āBeatlesā then clicking on Artist: The Beatles. Letās look at Tidal albums: Hereās what I see:
Eleven albums. Whereās Abbey Road? The White Album? Let it Be? Sargent Pepper? Hard Days Night? For Sale? Magical Mystery Tour? Please Please Me? Revolver? Help!
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I think what @Jim_Austin and @Ludwig wrote pretty well sums it up.
It would be beneficial for me to have the Search function itself expanded. When Iām looking for a song, I know Iām looking for a song, not an album or an artist so a way to restrict Roon from searching anything but song titles would be helpful. I realize that it is possible to refine search using Focus but sometimes I donāt know or canāt be certain if what I think is the title to the song is the actual title in Roon. Sometimes the same song has a slightly different spelling depending upon the artist.
So it would be nice to have the Search function have a few options for refinement, such as searching Tidal and fuzzy spelling. A search where the results are not first reported by album but by a simple track listing.
Many times when I search for a song in Roon Iām not listening to Roon. Perhaps Iāve got a podcast going (thatās another topic) on iTunes and a commentator mentions a song. Or a hear a song in the bumper music. Or a TV or Film soundtrack has a cover of a song and I canāt resist the impulse to figure out what artist did it first. Or I heard the instrumental version in the supermarket and the first thing I do when I get home is search for the name of the song while the ice cream melts on the kitchen counter.
Seriously though, I donāt expect Roon to come up with a Shazam feature. Just provide an interface that allows me to mine the depths of Tidalās library as well as my own.
Thanks for asking.
T.
āIs there a way to search for song titles effectively?ā
Click on the Hamburger menu in the top left of the Roon screenā¦select āTracksā from the list of options
Click on Focus [or just the / key]
Enter the name of the Track you wantā¦and watch in the background as your Track Listing automatically shrinks to meet the criteria you entered
Itās worth doing it slowly a few times, just to the manner in which Roon āfiltersā the list of tracks to meet you criteriaā¦e.g. just enter āLetā and see how the track list shrinksā¦or enter āBeā to see how it shrinks the list
If looking for a Track Name, then the above steps are the quickest way to find an individual trackā¦even though clicking on the Global Search [top right of Roon]ā¦and then going to āTracksā [as mentioned above] is another way to do it
Try it a few times with different named tracks and you will see that you should be able to find an inficaidual track in 3-5 seconds or less
@Ronnie, hereās what that approach got me. I left the Focus box up so you can see the criteria. The song āLet it be,ā which perfectly matches the search criteria, isnāt visible; itās fifth on the list, screened by the focus box.
First of all, youāve managed to choose a track name which contains very short words, which can also easily make up part of an artistās name etcā¦all of which makes your particular search a āworst caseā scenario
e.g. try entering the words āLong Windingā or āMaggieāā¦and you will see a much shorter and more specific list
For your example above, you have the sort option set to āArtistā [notice the blue arrow next to that column headerāā¦and Roon is matching āletā; āitā and ābeā with ANY part of the Track, Artist or Album nameā¦and then sorting the resulting list by your chosen Artist nameā¦i.e. Patricia Barber
Try changing the Sort to Album nameā¦and this will likely get you closer to what you want
Just as with a Google search on the webā¦entering relatively specific words like āMaggieā and āWindingā above, will always produce more specific results
WhateverāIām convinced (not for the first time but I keep forgetting) that with Roon Focus (not search) is the way to go. Your approach may not have worked perfectly for me, but it was basically what I was looking for. The only way it could be better is if a simple search was smart enough to know what I want and return it, but that would be pretty sophisticated. It would be cool though if search could reflect some of the precision of Focus: Just enter in search terms with certain keystrokes to do a smart, focus-focused search. (Yeah, I know, Roon isnāt into keyboards. I still like them. If you havenāt used a laptop for your remote, you havenāt lived! ;-))
Anyway, thanks for the tip. Itās good enough.