It’s clear Roon is never going to implement browse by folder functionality. Accepting that as a given, and considering the arguments proponents have mounted in favour of having browse by folder functionality it would be useful for users to be able to write metadata to a tagname (that Roon publishes) in their underlying files, which when read by Roon is interpereted as defining Roon Tags (i.e. the custom tags we can add and browse via Roon itself). The rationale being users could then navigate their folder structure outside Roon, load subsections of their folder tree into a tagger and write metadata along the lines of the following:
ROONTAGS=“Best Summer Ever;John, Andy & I in Hawaii 2009”
On encountering these tags during import or refresh Roon automagically creates two Roon Tags viz. “Best Summer Ever” and “John, Andy & I in Hawaii 2009”
When the user then selects the Tags option within Roon both those tags appear just as they would if the user had done the same within Roon on an album by album basis.
End result, users can find stuff easily using Tags and getting the tags into Roon is a pretty simple process that can manage entire folder trees in a fell swoop.
Yes. I can see a lot of uses for that. When straightening out a box set, I usually add the path to the genre as a reference point as the file info page is so busy. Makes it a little easier with a lot of tools and windows open on the desktop. A tag would be better. Like this:
I seem to remember that Tags were going to be revisited at some point.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
6
The alternative to writing Roon Tags from the above process would be to simply allow Focus to sort based on these embedded values. The ROONTAGS field would simply be a column in Focus, sortable by the value in the field, which would then allow Roon Tags, or Bookmarks, or whatever, be applied to the selected items.
The one thing I’m not sure of with this version is whether Roon Tags could be applied to artist, album, or only track at this level. Preferably any of those, but there would need to be some method of specifying or sorting to make that possible. Even if it just wrote the tags directly as Evan suggested, Roon would need to know whether to apply the tag to the track, the album, the artist, the composer, etc.
One related point: when Focusing on Roon Tags, Roon needs the ability to apply Roon Tags reductively rather than additively only. Not sure if the terms are right, but the basic point is that if I have a Tag called “Hits” and another Tag called “80s Metal” then, depending on my objective, I may need to find the INTERSECTION rather than the SUM of those two tags. In other words, I want to listen to all 80s Metal songs that are Hits. I don’t want to listen to all Hits and all 80s Metal songs, which is how tags currently works. There may be a way to use the minus-tag process to reach something similar (i.e. 80s Metal tag combined with a not-hits Tag set to negative) but that is a bit counter-intuitive.
EDIT: the last paragraph above is basically the same suggestion as in the Boolean Logic thread.
Refining the suggestion I’d also suggest the following behaviour within Roon:
If ALL tracks within an album are tagged with the published ROONTAG then the contents of the ROONTAG is applied to the album. If only selected tracks within an album are tagged with the published ROONTAG then the contents of the ROONTAG is applied only to those tracks.
Although adding support to a thread doesn’t necessarily sway the Devs, I wanted to resurrect this request in order to bring it to the attention of users who may not have seen it.
Having Roon recognise a ROONTAG syntax in FLAC file tags and create/add that Album/Track to a Roon Tag strikes me as a great idea that would enable a lot of groomers to more easily import their preferred structures. I understand it may not be feasible for all file formats, but just FLAC alone would be a real advance.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
13
Double bump. Roon is great in many ways, but in terms of inter-operability so that library organizational efforts are preserved from application to application, Roon is a silo.
One thing which would add quite some flexibility on the import side of things would be - to quote myself from the 1.6 (or 2.0?) wish list thread - if it would be possible to add Roon tags externally on album and track level:
That would - for instance - enable a user to move it’s grouping and mood tags or even track level genre assignments over to Roon.
I have to wonder how ROONRADIOBAN sees the light of day to cover inane corner cases of never play this track yet something useful that would enable people to add Roon Tags en mass and explore their libraries in ways that are meaningful to them doesn’t as much as garner a second thought?
Yeh, but it’d be far more efficient to be able to create them in a tagger and have Roon recognise them on importing. They could just as easily have told you to manualy roll through your entire library and add a radioban tag from within Roon.
