Win 10 64bit, HP Workstation acting as my music server running Roon 1.8
Network Details
LAN via Ethernet - very stable
Audio Devices
T+A PDP 3000 HV via USB
Library Size
23,244 Tracks (in folder containing my “primary versions”)
Description of Issue
Upon first migrating to version 1.8 several months ago, the album display settings were changed so that my DSD album versions were not displayed. I received help from the community to find the “toggles” necessary to reset in order to “find” my DSD albums in Album view following my update to version 1.8.
Now, I’m having a similar issue when attempting to locate my various album versions by Artist. Following is an example - I search for Peter Gabriel and then click to display “All album search results for “Peter Gabriel””. Under these search results, my DSD version of the album “Us” is missing entirely - only the 16/44 FLAC versions are displayed (I have two of these FLAC versions, the original release and the limited edition remaster issued several years later). Ditto if I search by “Tracks”. I don’t find ANY of my DSD albums, including this “Us” album UNLESS I exit this view by Artist (or “Tracks”) and search by Albums, which is apparently the only search path I can use to find the DSD albums. And this is only the case because I happened to receive that earlier help from “Speed_Racer” on March 22 to clue me into the Settings/General/Customize album display “toggles”.
Limiting the access to my DSD albums to search by “Album” is problematic as I’m often searching out music to play by Artist and I believe that all of the albums should be displayed when I’ve selected “All album search results for [artist name]”. Ditto if I happen to know the track title, then all of the track versions (including my DSD album versions) should display, just as they do under “Album” when I select the DSD album version.
Related to this, I prefer to have my highest resolution album versions as “preferred” to any lower resolution versions I have (principally for archival in my library). How do I set Roon to display my highest resolution albums as the default or preferred album for playback? I don’t want to have to search out my highest resolution FLAC or DSD version (as applicable) each time I want to play that particular album.
Can I also add incidentally that Roon is much more sluggish now in version 1.8 than I experienced in the previous version (albeit 1.8 seems more stable than the previous version), even though my library has not grown significantly since the update. Search functionality is still quite a problem (no or low powered boolean search evidenced)…
Make sure your DSD albums are identified properly, if not get them identified.
Then they will definently show under respective artist, maybe not as the primary version of a given album though. There are several circumstances that make an album be identified as different versions of the same album. I see this a lot, as ihave a pretty good collection of DSD albums in my library.
Hi Mikael,
Thank you for your response. Specifically what do you mean by “identified properly”? What are the steps involved and how are they accomplished?
All of my albums in my music library have fairly uniform meta-data concerning title, artist, year of issuance, version, as styled via Discogs or the label (i.e. original issue, reissue, remaster, limited edition), format and resolution, etc. So, I’m really relying on the Roon engine to take the library and reference it through the application for playback. The playback is fine, but the referencing is not…
Hi Lon,
i mean, have a look at one or a few of the albums that seem to be difficult to find under their respective artist. If their information screen says “Unidentified” they have not been connected to the correct artist and contributors.
You can also chose Albums, and them focus on “Identified”, then reverse the condition, by clicking on the “badge” again, to turn it red(ish)
Thanks for taking the time to share in detail the issue you’ve ran into. Sorry about that!
When @Mikael_Ollars said you should make sure your albums are identified properly or get them identified he meant:
Also, I wanted to ask, if we take the example you’ve shared, Peter Gabriel and you select the album “Us”, do you see a versions tab? If so, clicking on it would allow you to make primary the version you prefer (i.e. the higher quality one).
Hi Rebeka,
Thank you for your reply. The albums are identified and are listed in the Albums path in Roon. But, they are not cross-indexed (or however you want to express it) so that they also show up under the alternative paths as I described them. I took care of the “identification” matters you described for each album when I first added the album to my library, i.e., my practice is to add the album (or single as the case may be) into my music server, making sure that correct meta-data is present there and that it is properly located in the correct artist folder. Then, I open Roon and review what the Roon engine has done with the addition (very seldom have I had to “identify” the addition as you say, but that is done as necessary); then I choose the “primary version”, since my music server contains a RAID copy by default. In the case of looking up an album in Roon by “Artist”, my DSD album issue is that it does not show up AT ALL under that path (and therefore isn’t even available as a “version” to make “primary”).
I’m not a database wizard, but I think that this is a cross-indexing issue within Roon, since the DSD album appears in the “Album” path, but not via the “Artist” path as I described initially in this post.
Thanks Mikael. That’s not the issue as the albums are identified and actually show up in the artist alphabetical order in the “Albums” path (that’s the way I browse through that path. So, Roon identifies the DSD albums along with the artist in the Albums path, but not in the Artist or Tracks path. As I mentioned to “rebeka”, I believe there is a database indexing problem in Roon that is causing this, rather than some missing meta-data or setting individual to the albums. Incidentally, they displayed correctly prior to version 1.8.
If i chose the Artist Peter Gabriel and scroll down a bit i get this (The thumbnails are differently sized for some obscure reason, so i cant fit all 32 albums on screen)
I’m now traveling on holiday and will not have access to the system until after July 8th. But, imagine what you sent me with the following differences - I perform a search for “Peter Gabriel”, which yields a sampling of the albums I have and an item on the page that indicates something like “See all albums”. I don’t remember the specific terminology, but it should yield all of the Peter Gabriel albums I have in my library. But it didn’t. When I clicked to see all of the albums under my “Peter Gabriel” search, missing were the several DSD albums I have and instead only the FLAC files were shown. At the time, I thought somehow that Roon had dropped those. Only later did I try to view music via the Albums path and then I saw that the DSD albums were actually still present and recognized in Roon. In this case, I had not filtered on “Peter Gabriel” in Albums; instead, I just scrolled down through my Albums (which are sorted by artist name) and, behold, all of my Peter Gabriel albums (including the DSD albums) were present. So, they were viewable/selectable under the Albums path, but not under the Artist path in the main menu on the left side of the Roon page. That seems incorrect and mighty peculiar indexing within Roon.
Thank you Lon!,
If you are using the “spy glass” to search for Peter Gabriel you will get a sampling of content that (ocassionally) matches your search terms.
If you rather click on the Artist search result “Peter Gabriel” you will arrive at the artist view, like i showed above.
I might still be understanding and if so, please elaborate on the “Perform a search”-part of your statement!
As you said, “spy glass” search for Peter Gabriel returned the sampling, but to the right one can see “all” as I attempted to describe. It is this path that yields results where the DSD albums are missing. That is the path in which I am describing the "Artist’ search path (i.e., using the spy glass to input the artist name (in the case we’ve been discussing, “Peter Gabriel”). I hope this is sufficient clarification.
You are probably using the wrong tool for the job. “Search” is for when one wants to find something but doesn’t remember exactly its title/name. There are also (still?) limits to the results of “Search” AFAIK. If you know what you’re looking for and want to inspect the contents of your library then, as @Mikael_Ollars pointed out, you should go to the respective browser and use filter and/or focus to limit the view to what you want to see. See also this older but (still?) relevant discussion and it’s linked threads:
That is exactly my user case. I can’t remember an album or track title, but I remember the artist. So, I look up the artist. I don’t believe the issue is the limitation of the spy glass search. Rather, I’m concerned that Roon’s database indexing is not comprehensive across the applications various search parameters (i.e., by Artist, by Album, by Track). Results should not be omitted regardless of which provided track is being utilized. That’s my take…
