In the UK there is a set of Music stations all called “24-7 something”. The “something” determines the type of music e.g. 24-7 Just Rock. There are 21 of these stations and Brian W assures me that they have all been entered into Roon’s Live Radio database. But I cannot see them all.
At the moment I have 3 Roon Endpoints; a Mac Pro, a Mac Mini and an iPhone. Each Endpoint shows me a different subset of the 24-7 stations under Live Radio > Local stations. Changing the “Local stations radius” does help a bit. But I still cannot see all the stations.
Even if I go via Live Radio > Music > Categories > Music > Stations > More, I cannot see them all.
Trying Live Radio > Local stations > More with Local radius set to 100 miles, shows exactly 100 stations; only 7 of which are 24-7 stations. And none of then are 24-7 Just Rock that I was listening too earlier today.
I’ve found the Live Radio help page
Reading through this, I get the feeling that Roon is being too clever by half. It says things like “The most popular stations are shown first, and you can more stations in the category by clicking More:” (sic). But More only gives me a few more. I expect it to show me ALL the Music radio stations, but it clearly does not. It only shows me 250 stations, which is a suspiciously round number. I’ve counted them twice! On the Mac mac mini Endpoint I’m using to write this post, only one of those starts with 24-7. So where are the remaining 20 24-7 stations; all of which are Music?
The help page under “Locations & Languages” also says “It’s possible to find stations from specific regions of the world by using the Locations category. Roon will also automatically show you stations that broadcast near your physical location as you browse the directory – if there are any “local” stations they will appear at the top of the page.”.
That again only shows 7 of the 21 24-7 stations.
So Roon seems to be making decisions about what subset of the known stations that it is going to display. And even if I know the exact name of a station, there is not way I can find for any search to bring it up.I just tried it with 24-7 Just Rock. Somehow I managed to start playing that earlier today, but now it has vanished from the displayed list.
I’m struggling to see how this behaviour can be desirable or planned. Its got to be some sort go bug! Or is it out of control AI?
These stations appear when I perform a search for 24-7 within Roon. The search results appear at the bottom of the Search Results page in the main window, and I must click the More button to the far right of the Live Radio heading to see all of the 24-7 stations.
Another way to find these stations is to click Live Radio on the sidebar and then scroll down to Categories in the main window and click the Locations icon. Next, scroll down and click on United Kingdom, and then click Nottinghamshire.
Because Roon will never load more than 100 stations for the local category, any more filtering will not find missing stations if they are not in that 100 list.
It does, sort of, once you realise that looking under ‘live radio’ doesn’t find what you want. But it still took me an embarrassingly long time to find bbc radio 2 a few days ago…
Try searching ‘bbc radio 2’. It might work for you. I seem to get differently odd results every time I look for something, but that’s so infrequent that I assume some underlying change in the meantime.
Thanks Geoff. Consistent with what I see today… either I was just unlucky the other day, or more confused than usual. I don’t think I was aware of the 100 result limit either, so that will be clouding my judgment!
What I am finding is that as I continue searching for the 24-7 stations, more are starting to appear. However, its inconsistent. Here is a carefully staged screen shot showing simultaneously in real time, the Roon Local stations display for 2 of my Endpoints and the Roon Core. They are similar but not the same. And none of them show all of the 24-7 stations.
“Local stations” only shows 100 of the possible local stations. “More” should show ALL of the stations meeting the search criteria e.g. 100 miles radius
It is not clear what algorithm is being used to determine which 100 stations get displayed. It is clearly not the 1st 100 alphabetically or numerically.
It is not clear what reference point Roon is using for the centre of it’s “Local station radius”. I’ve searched and not found anything that explains that.
These issues mean that exploring internet radio stations is frustrating. Its clear from the above responses that it is possible to listen to any station that Roon knows about - but only if you already know that it exists. Which rather defeats one of the purposes of Roon - helping you explore new stuff.
So, changes I want to see;
Make it so that clicking on “More”, at any level of the Live Radio menus, shows all the stations that meet the search criteria.
Make it so that the reference point for “Local station radius” is obvious and changeable. That will make searching for stations by geographical location much easier.
How weird. That’s a fairly random location in North East London. It’s about 81 miles from my house and 134 miles from Mansfield where the 34-7 stations are based. So unless you live in Walthamstow, any filtering using the “Local stations radius” will give pretty confusing results.
I thought Roon might be geolocating using my IP address. That doesn’t always give a good result either, the Apple Store website thinks I’m in Newport, Wales. Only 92 miles out!
IP based geolocation services can only provide anapproximate measureof geolocation accuracy. With these services, you can obtain:
95 percent to 99 percent accuracy of a user’s country.
55 percent to 80 percent accuracy for a user’s region or state
50 percent to 75 percent accuracy for a user’s city.
In practice, the actual accuracy may vary from provider to provider and depending on the location of the device. For instance, IP based geolocation services typically work better in big cities and work less well in smaller ones.
Ok, this is just agreeing that IP based geolocation is not very reliable. But Roon doesn’t even try and use IP geolocation. It seems to assume that everone in England, or possibly the whole of the UK, is located in North East London. Hence a Local Radio station radius based on a point in NE London does not work very well for anyone living outside London. Especially as Roon does not make it obvious where is its reference point.
Hence I’m asking for it to be explicit and changeable. That would enable world wide local searches - which would be most illuminating
But you can choose the location that you want to browse; click the Locations category, then choose the country and the area that you are interested in…
Roon search has been “stupid” for long and still is.
Looking for “BBC Radio 2” should show BBC Radio 2 (exact match) first.
Finding “City Radio” proves to be impossible with the magnifying glass, as other stations with either “city” or “radio” in name or description show first.
[quote=“Geoff_Coupe, post:17, topic:264854”]
But you can choose the location that you want to browse; click the Locations category, then choose the country and the area that you are interested in…
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Yes you can, sort of. If you want to search for a particular town then you have to work out which county it is in. Then click on the country, then the county. Then Roon shows you all the radio stations in that county - possibly, as I guess the 100 station limit still applies?
Or is it out of control AI? 
