Library Subset defined by User / Tag combinations

Feedback Feature Suggestions
1

I have a large library (over 7,000 CDs with most on local storage and others from Tidal and would like to be able to set up subsets for different users. My library is stored using Genre / Artist / Album folder structure. This has been discussed in some other topics with suggestions made to use tags, playlists, of bookmarks / focus settings.

I have tried all of these and, unless I am missing something, none of these provide a usable solution - they all can list a subset of albums or tracks but as soon as you try to search for anything the results returned are from the whole library and not from the subset.

What I would like is the ability for a user to be able to use all of the features of Roon but with searches, focus etc. looking only at a subset of albums. At the moment I can think of only one way to get anywhere near achieving this:

  1. Reorganise local storage into 3 file locations - shared, me, my partner.
  2. Use Settings … Storage to switch on or off each of the 3 file locations.

I’ve tried it using some test file locations and it does, in principle, work but (a) it is clunky in that you have to go into settings … storage to change it and you have to be careful select disable and not remove and (b) Tidal albums can’t be divided by user.

In an ideal world it would be possible to tag albums, assign the tags to different users and then Roon does the rest i.e. after tagging I would just assign ‘Shared and Me’ tags to myself.

Before I think about reorganising local storage into different file locations - not a trivial task - I thought that I would put up this post to ask:

(a) Can anyone think of a better solution?
(b) Can Roon (@support @danny @brian @joel ) give any indication as to whether the facility to use tag / user combinations to restrict the library is on the roadmap? I am not asking for a timescale - but I wouldn’t want to do the work involved in reorganising a large library and then find that Roon offers a better solution.

1 Like
2

I’d like to see the capacity to define a default Focus for a profile. You could then use Tags to achieve what you describe.

3

Not sure if that would achieve what I would like to see - currently if you select a subset using Focus and then use Search then the search looks at the whole library. I suspect (haven’t tried it) that the same would be true for Radio - that Radio would search across the whole library rather than the subset in Focus - but I might be wrong on that?

4

Did a little testing. Looks like Radio looks across whole library if either Focus or Tag used to select subset of albums.

However, using Focus … Inspector… Storage Locations and then saving as a bookmark works and is much easier (and safer) than switching storage locations on and off in settings.

Unfortunately, Radio seems to still look across whole library even when Focus … Inspector used to select subset - so maybe a partial solution which might(?) be easier to implement would be to restrict Radio to whatever set is selected in Focus?

5

Browsing and playing are currently independent operations. I can understand limiting Radio by a defined Focus. If Search is to be limited I’d like a quick way to override the limitation when I wanted.