Jazz meets the Classics with technical mastery to great Roon database

[Uwe_Albrecht]

There is no question that there is still potential for further improvement at Roon. Those who want to achieve great things also suffer setbacks and not everything grandiose always works out at the first attempt.This picture symbolises one of today’s start-up problems.

Some might slam shut the Roon book afterwards and say I don’t need that kind of thing, I’m on the common path of improvement. Gaining experience never hurt a big thing.

So far, this is how I have searched and selected:

In this way, you always hear what the Spotify majority hears; the quality of a production is less in focus than the market success of a song. Paquito D’Rivera captivates around 80,000 Spotify users every month. 2 pieces of music are heard millions of times others are never discovered without Roon. They may not even be available everywhere.

Fantasia Impromptu by Paquito D'Rivera

Try the TIDAL Web Player

https://play.qobuz.com/album/0016728455527

For us at Roon, Tidal and Qobuz links are important, but do we want to search for everything by hand without context?

Why it is better to have a large Roon database and how it works well or sometimes causes problems, I will show in the further course. First of all, enjoy the music.

[Uwe_Albrecht]

Which path led to this album? First, as described above, I had a failed launch attempt. Even if I find faults not only in the start of Roon, it remains a great experience. The failure sometimes occurs under Linux-Manjaro when the GUI (graphical user interface) is called directly on the server via PlayOnLinux.

PlayOnLinux uses Wine to bring the full Windows version to the start as a remote control also under Linux. The recommendation, however, is not to do everything on the device where the core is running as a server at rest.

Nevertheless, it works on the second try and shows what Roon has read in from seven external hard disks in the last few weeks. On any device that is only used as a remote control, I could not detect these failed attempts, and here, too, all is quickly well again.

We see here the launch of a database of more than 2.6 million titles across 7 USB hard drives. The work of the processors, the RAM and the network traffic are always under observation and help the technology to further improve the programme. I start at 9 o’clock in the morning. I realise that the RoonServer first wants to bring the huge amount of data into the main memory.

For the IT technicians, perhaps the bursts over 100% in the first 3 minutes are interesting.

After that, one core is always alternately used really fully and the others are barely busy.

The memory requirement initially grows almost constantly with the size of the database - only two small optimisations are noticeable in the start-up phase.

Network traffic increases after the database is loaded. Now the drives are scanned with more CPU load.

In this difficult load phase, many a system may be physically overtaxed. The CPU load in this phase should be examined in more detail by IT specialists. How does over 100% work on one core?

Overjoyed, I receive my data in a great Roon format in the second attempt. Of course, I also have some “coconuts” from Mallorca in the database, which Roon identified very late, but how do I find my way around there?

[Uwe_Albrecht]

Since I have received so many great tips from the jazz and classical community here, I would like to point out right there how such good recommendations can come about.

These are more about quality, focus and less derived from algorithms or playing statistics.

From the large genre selection, I only select jazz and get these differentiated images.

The genre jazz is broadly subdivided and I choose my sub-genre or another sub-group of it. However, many artists occupy several groups, but even there or with albums can be further divided very finely. The focus is thus placed very specifically on the things that are very close to the wishes.

Those who like to listen to the saxophone can now rejoice. There are hundreds of artist suggestions here.

I had chosen the Cuban, who made a connection between jazz and classical music.

It’s amazing the depth of information I get about the artist. There are enough suggestions for many weeks.

Compared to the competition, this puts the player crown on Roon. But there is still a lot to do.

[Uwe_Albrecht]

The technical aspects will continue to be observed with good music in the afternoon. The start phase was a little longer this time, but successful.

I would like to give a few impressions. The first picture shows no CPU values greater than 100%, but the RoonServer still has to almost restart after a few minutes and read the database again. This delays the start by 5 to 7 minutes.

After that the RAM goes continuously up again.

The network is only active with small KB values.

That the Roon.exe (GUI) is already opened before the database is completely loaded, we encounter the Roon wait symbol.

A little later the 7 USB hard disks are already scanned and Roon logs on and the recognized devices.

There are again performance peaks above 100% on one core and the network shows increasing activity.

This is also good, because it continues without interruption exactly at the point where it ended before noon.

Great performance Roon!

We see that 3 to 4 MB/s have been fetched in the short term.

Minutes later it is also up to 1 MB/s.

The album is finished playing.

We see that Roon still wants to identify 78 pieces of music. Here the LOG data must be viewed if it does not work.

But we rather get a fresh album from the Roon -database, which fits well to the headline.

Of course the net traffic starts again, but we find the right one and later everything is back on good musical track.

Gladly everyone may post his recommendations here, because I still have a lot to learn.

[Uwe_Albrecht]

Of course, this also extends the focus to Sabine Meyer and I would also like to show you what Roon tells you all about this in the 1st context. In the depth goes again with great information abundance. Who loves this, should not hesitate and instead of going to the restaurant twice, rather have the pleasure of Roon daily for a whole year. Unfortunately, with several hundred thousand satisfied customers, we always have one or two handfuls of customers where there are still unsolved detail problems. I myself have experienced how great the fascination and frustration can become. My start was a year I gave away myself because I hadn’t read enough about how to make it work better.

I thank the team for making it possible for me to go this great way and I hope they solve all the problems that still exist with others. Maybe it would be better if everyone who is not so well versed in the technology to find a helper on site.

[Bill_Janssen (Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)]

Fascinating disquisition, Herr Albrecht. Thanks for sharing it!

[Uwe_Albrecht]

and Roon now leads me on here…

the technical accompanying picture…

[Fernando_Pereira]

My library is much smaller, but here’s a little game: who are they, and have I heard them live? (1/3)

[Fernando_Pereira]

(2/3)

[Fernando_Pereira]

(3/3)

[Uwe_Albrecht]

The unsparing truth is that few artists in our lives we have actually experienced more often and many others (unfortunately) never live. These little-experienced musicians are in our library, but no longer get any attention from us.

There are so many new impressions and ideas coming every day, there is a need for a different system to rediscover the value and quality of music.

We can not possibly take millions of artists in the personal focus. With the help of Roon we have the focus on regional, technical or other aspects.

One of the sub-genres or music styles found with us is always a good pre-selection for further discoveries and concert planning.

[Fernando_Pereira]

Much that I love the recordings in my jazz collection, many are but echos of the live performances I’ve heard with the same musicians. Among those above: Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Dave Douglas, Rudresh Mahanthappa, John Scofield, Dave Holland, Julian Lage, Chick Corea, Christian McBride, Craig Taborn, Christian Scott, Charlie Haden, Thelonious Monk, Eric Harland, Charles Lloyd, Ralph Towner, Miles Davis, Luciana Souza, Brad Mehldau, Vijay Iyer, Ron Carter.

[larry_green]

??..……?
.??
.?.?

[Jazzfan_NJ (Listening to JAZZ since 1972!)]

“Hardening of the categories leads to art disease” Kenneth Snelson

By the way, I use less than a dozen genres in all my file tags:

Jazz, Rock, R&B, Soul, Reggae, Vocal, Classical, World, Soundtrack, Other

Yet Roon insists on assigning all kinds sub genres which, as Mr. Snelson correctly pointed out, leads nowhere because there is always an artist who resists the ability to put them in a predefined box. This is how art and music grows.

[Uwe_Albrecht]

Less is more, also applies to my collection. I definitely have too much, can never listen to everything and still want to discover more and more new music. Crazy!

I used to collect “wildly” and not think much about it. That’s how artists should work, too, and discard every drawer.

How do we listeners cope with that?

Later I tried to bring order into my collection with Foobar2000. This worked very well with flexible tagging, but discovery fell by the wayside.

I maintain multitagging on genre. My music contains a genre for artists, albums and tracks. From rough to fine classification I love everything for the musical journey and accept when artists offer with “unknown”.I then make myself the personally felt classification. Why not prefer an instrument in jazz or classical?

Currently I try to use the community and the algorithms at the same time. Expert knowledge and artificial intelligence are not mutually exclusive.

We humans certainly get along much better with fewer classifications, the algorithms learn better in differentiation. Anyone looking for automatic recommendations should include this in their considerations.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Yes not perfect, but better than all what I can do, or Google made

but let’s never forget the music…it tastes here like hungarian dance plus calm.

[Uwe_Albrecht]

Today I would like to show my love for Roon with a picture and song by Nat King Cole. He is firmly rooted in jazz also vocally and with this recording he builds a wide bridge also to the popular music world. This is the sound we want to hear:

Love is the thing that we should never forget and when we fall in love, we should always remember, there are also difficult hours and tasks. We only keep the love if we want to master them and also let them help us with this love. This is how frustration, hatred and dislike turn into genuine care and affection.

Yes also with me there are again and again moments where I stand before challenges, but my knowledge grows and I place large requirements to my loved solution, which only Roon in the interaction with Foobar2000 or MP3Tag can still fulfill.

In conjunction with Songkong, the results are also better, many say. I guess it, but have not tried it yet, because my tags are mostly very good and no longer need further preparation for the big Roon presentation.

It would be nice if someone could now still explain to me why 36 GB can also suddenly be 24 GB and everything runs fine. It would also be helpful to know why a processor always runs at the limit or there are even picks beyond that.

I share the observation that the Windows GUI can only be started stably when the server has completely read the database and the external drives are completely scanned. But Roon still manages almost 3 million titles or 300,000 albums with over 80,000 artists in 6 rooms under Linux, if the hardware and the network are well tuned. Windows 10 is also well suited for large databases.