More options in Focus?

Roon Software Discussion
1

Happy Holidays Roon community,

Wondering if anyone knows of a way to manipulate physical tags in files (through an external tagging program – I use JRiver as a tag editor) so as to get some more choices in the main album browser’s “Focus” screen. Specifically, additional choices under “Album Types” or “Other”. I want to be able to categorize albums as “HIP” (Historically Informed Performance) yes or no, i.e. classical music performed on period or modern instruments. I’d like to easily filter my collection by that parameter if possible.

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Any ideas?

MR

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While you can set the album type externally your choices are limited to the types known by Roon:
Main, Single, Other, Unknown, Extended Play, Soundtrack - see: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Metadata_Model – that knowledge base article also gives a good idea which metadata fields can be addressed outside of Roon.

What you could do inside Roon is applying a tag “HIP” to the respective albums. Then you’d be able to use the Tag Focus feature. See: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Tags

1 Like
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Thanks for the insights and links to documentation, u_gee. I’m more inclined to use file tags rather than Roon’s internal, to ensure that the cataloging always stays with my music. I’m assuming that the design of the Focus screen is static, correct? So my only choice really would be to use the Album Type and re-signify one of the values Roon understands (maybe “other”) as HIP.

Do you know what file tag Roon looks at to determine the Album Type? In looking at my files, none have that “Main Release” value embedded in any tags, even though Roon claims that 620 albums do…

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Instead of “messing” with album types you might consider assigning an additional Genre tag to the albums in question.

Roon also allows for rearranging the Genre hierarchy, so you could declare “Historically Informed Performance” to be a sub-genre of “Classical”.

As for Album type: I’m not sure what the corresponding metadata field would have to be.

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Thanks for the suggestion, u_gee, I’ll look into the Genre taxonomy.

@support - could you comment on what file tag is the one that maps to Roon’s Album Type field that shows up in the Focus dialog?

Happy New Year!
MR

6

This KB page and this thread may help.

I was thinking Version might answer the issue, but I can’t see a way to Focus on Version. I believe @anon47919701’s suggestion of a Genre would work. You would have to turn on “Use Genres from File Tags” in Import settings. You can then setup a Bookmark to Focus on that Genre. The Bookmark is dynamic and will pick up changes in or out of the Genre Focus.