There are loads of examples eg DG 111 that are collections of single albums
Roon is really Album based so why not treat each disc as the original album and forget the big box
But be warned , sometimes Roon misses identifying these repeat releases. I have just finished my initial load clean up , I can assure you it’s not that automatic
Mike
I’ve already endorsed this in another thread. This is taking way too long. Both JRiver and Bluesound are able to do this!!
I too have been requesting better box set handling, or more significantly, some ability to “group” albums (e.g. a series) in Roon, for some time 
I have been a JRiver user for many years , I handle boxes by 2 custom tags Box Set for the name, Disc Name for the individual disc
That way you can select the box and then any dis+ within
Can Roon be made to recognize these external tags , if so we could set up boxes externally and import
It’s certainly a weak area of Roon
I’m all for this feature: I have loads of huge box sets and I really want them as BOTH box sets and viewable as individual albums. I think the Roon team understands the request and I imagine it’s on a list.
As many of those DG boxes have discs released for the first time ever on CD, you can’t blame Roon for not identifying them as separate albums. They have literally never existed as separate albums in the years since metadata has been created.
Concrete example: this Varga Bartók is a first release on CD, from a DG box. I wanted it listed separately so I forced Roon to identify it as one disc of the box, then edited album artist/name, and found the original LP cover on the internet. There is no way Roon could have done this identification like this automatically because the metadata only exists for the box, as it has only ever been released so.
Hi Ludwig
No blame or criticism intended …
I had similar issues when splitting the big Brendel set, eventually I got my initiallibrary load of 4500 albums to 75 unidentified. I had to massage a fair number but I am now happy
Mike
This is going to be a problem for many boxes: it’s fine to re-identify the albums separately, but what about the extras? The first-time releases as mentioned above? What about boxes that include a couple of remasters?
At some point, I want to be able to remember that I own THAT specific release, and that means keeping my boxes as, well, boxes.
By the way, I noted a big discrepancy in my collection: somehow, the Ladies and Gentlemen BB King boxset show as 10 separate albums, with separate covers. It is the only one to do so, I have absolutely no idea why.
One of the main reasons for splitting is the Roon Disc 1 hyperlink situation on big boxes eg Brendel 113 cds
Take Mozart Complete Edition 255, it’s 202 anonymous hyperlinks. This set is a genuine collation and not a collection of albums like some sets so navigation is a nightmare
The only way seems to be a separate doc, pdf of the disc names.
I agree that often the cd in sets look like original releases but aren’t so Roon fails to identify
Not sure how to beat that
It all goes to my other post on ClassicalNavigation
Mike
Well, I tried to follow some of the recommendations above and tried to split the albums in one of my boxes - Serebrier’s Glazunov 8 CD cycle. It was easy enough, and each album got recognised individually. I then exported them (they would still have the tags from the boxset otherwise), and put them back into my collection. Roon immediately - and automatically - reassembled them into one box, and I can’t seem to find any way to easily split them again…
It’s mind numbing. At least, I still have the separate folders for when I will transfer the files to my Walkman, but I’m back to one disc with 93 tracks. I’m just glad I did not try this on a larger box. If anyone knows a way to stop Roon from collating discs in this way, I’d be happy to hear it.
Could be your file tags affecting identification?
This (the cases where the box is a genuine mixed collection, not a bunch of pre-existing albums) would be solved by a view like you get in box set booklets, by composer-work-recording date. This has been requested many times but has not appeared.
I’m 20 cd’s into the Decca Sound - same issue. Frustrating.
Make your frustration known to Roon. Its shocking, 3 years into Roon, this is still an issue.
Doing this manually is insane and an incredible waste of time.
Roon really needs to address this.
Would be nice to hear what roon thinks about this. Is it even possible and/or considered? @mike or @danny perhaps?
The Roonies are aware of the issue (and have been for a while). I suspect that changes will come as part of a major overhaul of the UI, which they are apparently working on. As usual, they won’t be drawn on timelines or details until it’s ready…
That’s great, Geoff, but your suspicions don’t really take the place of a definitive statement from the devs or support folks at Roon.
I’d be grateful for any solid info at this point:
“It’s on our radar, we’d like to do it, but we don’t have any plans to fix this in the near future.”
“This fix will come as part of the next major version release.”
“This kind of metadata display isn’t really what Roon is all about, so don’t expect to see this implemented.”
“Hang loose, guys. This should be rolled out any day now.”
Something like that would be nice. The absolute silence from the “Roonies” at this point (three years in) is really unacceptable.
As I say, the Roonies don’t like to give timelines or details (other than reasons for certain of their technical decisions). You may think it’s unacceptable, but that’s the way it is. Some things take a long time to come to fruition. For example, the major UI overhaul was hinted at a year ago, and it’s still not here. I’m happy to wait. YMMV:
If the “Roonies” think even my italicized, suggested bits of input above give away more than they want at this time, let me suggest two more responses that would help at least a little bit:
“Yes, we plan on doing this at some point.”
“No, we’re not going to do this.”
Why would that tiny bit of info help me and possibly others? Because I need to know how to organize the box sets in my Library. Do I continue to use a useless-in-Roon-now-but-useful-as-a-general-management-tool file hierarchy in the hope that one day Roon will automatically glom on to my file setup and display the metadata I want? Do I abandon all hope of Roon ever getting this feature and resort to un-merging my box sets and putting the DISCSUBTITLE tag info into Roon’s album Version field so that I can see at a glance in the album view which disc is what? Or do I do something in between that will make the transition to this feature super easy because its implementation is just around the corner?
I’m tired of the status quo in Roon right now regarding handling of box sets. I need to do something to make finding what I want to listen to in box sets better/easier than what Roon offers now. Which something? I don’t know. That would be why I’m here asking about it. All the general task ideas I listed above require a serious time investment, and I’d like to avoid spending time on something that the “Roonies” will obsolete or make unworkable now or in the near future. So even a hint of a crumb of information about this from the dev team would be a big help.
What won’t be a big help, Geoff, is if you jump in again to tell me they’re not going to say anything. I know that’s your opinion, and restating it again won’t advance the discussion in the slightest. And to be frank, the topic/discussion you linked to belies that opinion, since the very first sentence is: Next major UI release is going to primarily vertical scrolled, with full functionality on phones. That kind of info, even at that general level, is exactly what I’m looking to hear from the devs about this topic right now. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
This is on our radar. We’re interested in fixing it.
We have not been able to come up with a product design for this that does everything it needs to. We’ve considered several approaches to this over the years, but none of them have gotten us to where we want to be.
This is a thing that no-one currently does well. To be clear–I’m not talking about little band-aids like supporting per-track or per-disc artwork for local files, I’m talking about the whole problem of understanding and representing box sets properly throughout the product.
This means:
We generally do not build major metadata-oriented features like this one unless we can automatically populate the data–it is important that when we solve this problem, we solve it for everyone. That includes people using streaming libraries like TIDAL and people with few or no files of their own.
A version of box set support that only helps people willing to do manual data entry on local files is not that interesting. Even in our enthusiast user base, this is a small subset–and adopting short-sighted approaches to problems like this one can be really limiting later on when we try to do it right. People understandably kick and scream when we do things which render their past grooming/organization efforts unusable. So the choice is between “do a band-aid to help a few people while putting the larger objective at risk” or “wait until we figure out how to do this right for everyone”.
This topic comes up for discussion over here several times a year. We haven’t forgotten about it. We are still thinking about it. There is obviously no ETA for addressing it. I hope that has shed some light…
I for one wouldn’t mind a band-aid fix while Roon develops a long term fix, especially around the area of cover art for individual discs in a box set.
I think its unlikely that you will find a source that has metadata for everything. Thats why I think it may be necessary to allow small fixes that would satisfy a signficant portion of users.
