What I have an issue with is that searching, most of the time, brings you to 16/44 by default. Sometimes the version tab will show you hi-def options, but sometimes it does not.
I’ve been using Roon for several months now, and on several occasions, I have accidentally discovered a hi-def version of a song I already had in a playlist. Settings should have a “Highest Quality Available” selection.
I will say that I have also discovered that the mix/master is the ultimate long pole in sound quality. I’ve heard 16/44 tracks that were stellar and 24/192 tracks that were meh. To me, that means a recording-quality rating system would be great.
Once you get past 24/48, it becomes very unlikely that you will hear a difference on anything but a near-perfect system anyway. Getting me to those 24-bit versions when they exist is what I’m looking for.
For everything else, it should already default to the highest resolution/rate as primary version, at the point when you add an album to the library.
It’s true that there is no way to later switch the primary version automatically, but then, as you said yourself resolution/rate is not a reliable indicator.
Have you tried using the sample rate and bit depth filters in focus? The recordings must be in your library but they don’t necessarily have to be identified:
I don’t think this should be happening. It would be helpful it you gave us examples for what you search for that finds only CD versions although HD versions exist, and where adding the album to the library (e.g. from search) makes the CD version the primary version instead of the HD version.
If HD versions exist, the Version tab should show them. If it doesn’t something is off. Also tell us some examples where you think there should be HD versions but you don’t see them.
I seem to be able to reproduce most of what you are experiencing as interaction effects between playlists, identified and unidentified albums, local and streaming partner content. So for example, I might have a high rez item from Qobuz in a playlist but also a different local, identified, CD quality version. At a track level I must have 10’s of thousands, if not 100’s of thousands of such cases. Roon will prioritise the lower rez local item in a search. If the local album is identified then the version tab will show the higher rez streaming partner options (Qobuz in my case) but if it is unidentified it will not.
There are also endless circular scenarios with the playlist improver as well I have just noticed. I have numerous playlists with unavailable Qobuz tracks so I was trying to tidy the mess up. But I also have numerous locally ripped CD quality albums as well as the high rez Qobuz account. So improver seems to first upgrade the local quality to a higher quality Qobuz version. Then, immediately it downgrades the Qobuz quality to the initial local quality version it started with. Does anyone know if it endlessly rinses and repeats? I gave up.
It is, as you note here yourself, it’s not always the “highest resolution” that “sounds best”. A terrifically engineered 16/44.1kHz recording can sound excellent, while the transfer of a 1949 mono 78RPM isn’t going to sound stellar just because it’s released in 24/192kHz.
Worse, and that’s why there is obviously not an “easy to please” type of thing: there is no Universal agreement on which mastering sounds best, it’s often a type of personal preferences.
When you see certain albums re-mastered (or even remixed), you will often find in various forums people cheering and jeering the new (and old) master/mixes releases. So while some people would probably greet a playlist that continually updates albums and tracks based on newer (and/or higher) masterings, others will most certainly object to such an automatism, because they may have selected certain versions/masters for a reason.
