Interesting points. But, for what it’s worth, I see things a little differently. Certainly Roon would love to have as customers collectors of extensive libraries of top-40 music. But I see the sweet spot–and here I go speculating about business cases, having just written in a different post that I didn’t intend to do that–as real music enthusiasts, and those folks usually have significant niche interests. Currently–an I suppose this is my key point–I’m guessing the suite spot is the overlap of the music-enthusiast crowd with the IT community–anyway, with people with significant computer expertise. It would be good if that overlap were no longer required–if Roon could realistically market itself to ALL music enthusiasts, not only those with the skills needed (and interest in) maintaining their own metadata and file structures.
It strikes me as a hard problem–and one of the things that makes it hardest is that when you rip a CD, most rippers seek metadata (from the various libraries) one disc at a time–a problem, I’m thinking, for boxed sets. Let’s say–just a thought–Roon were to include its own CD-ripper software; it probably would not be that hard to find some good public-domain program with source code available that they could adopt and adapt. Maybe that ripping program allows you to specify that you’ll now be ripping CDs from a boxed set–then indicate how many discs you’ll be ripping. Wouldn’t that be a big advantage for identifying some of the tougher cases?
Every box set is ripped one CD at a time. A good ripping program will grab the metadata automatically, but, you have to check to verify everything is OK before pressing RIP. And one of the several things to verify is that the disk_number field is set to the correct disk number for the box set. This is just basic ripping and needs to be done whether you use JRiver, Roon or whatever program.
“as real music enthusiasts, and those folks usually have significant niche interests.”
Really? People who listen to rock and pop aren’t music enthusiasts? Not sure whether I should ROFL or
Good point about checking the disc number. It has been quite a while since I ripped a boxed set (although I’ve dealt with the metadata consequences more recently), so I don’t really remember how that went with some of the more problematic ones.
When I rip a box set, With the first CD, I create a notepad work file. In it I put the Album Title, Artists Title, that way I can cut and paste the same into each CD I rip to assure that they are all the same. In the title I always append a - (Disk ?), where ? is the disk number of the release. So, Exile on Main Street - (Disk 1), Exile on Main Street - (Disk2). And, I make sure the album disk number is correct. But, if not, my title has the correct value and I can correct later. Getting the disk numbering correct goes a long way towards getting a good identification in Roon.
In this case of this example, I would store the files in this way
Rolling Stones
…/Exile on Main Street/
…Exile on Main Street - (Disk 1) / individual song files
…Exile on Main Street - (Disk 2) / individual song files
But, this is what I do and have done since I started ripping my CDs in 1990s. But, as has been mentioned, Classical is its own different ball of wax. However, I use the scratch notepad methodology to ensure that my multi-disk classical sets are all labeled the same.
The problem is people. They do strange unexpected things, particularly with computers if they’re not computer savvy. They fret over things that don’t matter and are completely cavalier about things that do. I remember early on when I was trying to help some folks who wanted to change libraries between Cores regularly I suggested a batch file which they might run. Mike coughed gently and asked me to edit it out because he’d seen the consequences of people messing with the Roon database and getting it wrong (it’s not pretty).
There’s even a school of thought that the current Delete functionality for local files is inappropriate for Roon. It’s been significantly hedged around, but while it exists, Roon can affect your music files. If the Delete functionality was removed then Roon could say “there is nothing you can do in Roon that affects your music files”. That’s a pretty safe position Support wise.
I used to use a rule in DB Poweramp ripper to do something similar can’t remember exactly as I am away from home PC but
[album artist][album][IFVALUE]disc,[Album] Disc [disc][][track] - [title]
You can get fancier and add in all sorts of tests and conditional logic to account for compilations etc.
If you do care about library micro management then its all in that rip
Yeah, one problem, and I’ve really only found this on some Opera releases, is that in dbPoweramp, the actual title of the album and artist can vary from disk to disk; not to mention the format and style of the track titles.
I understand. People who don’t understand the technology are a real problem. Still–if the file-management function works well, and the choice is made crystal-clear, it seems to me it should work out OK. Let them know that if you click this button, Roon will change how your files are organized. Then don’t mess it up.
Oh, and they can go ahead and remove the “delete” function. I can understand how that could allow people to screw up. Not Roons fault, still, but irreversible; the music is gone.
Yes. One of the two worst cases I’ve encountered was a box of Janacek operas, conducted by Britten. So many problems. All of these were released previously, but in the boxed set, the individual discs do not reflect the original releases; they’ve split the operas among fewer discs to minimize space. Plus, they used different labeling schemes for the different discs in the box. The only way to get this to work was to start from scratch and totally redo the metadata completely.
Ah the classical conundrum!
Yes, I agree it is a bugger for classical. Fortunately it’s not my main area of interest and so I just put up with being careful and manual as I only had 100 or so classical CDs and most of them came from a 60 CD box set.
What I find the most curious thing in this whole discussion about Roon,.metadata and filestorage is why would you have to provide any metadata in the first place. I mean,.lots of prople have so much faith in Roon they keep telling you over and over that they don’t care where and how their files are actually stored. In that case why do you bother to name any files, why would you store them in any directory in the first place. Just dump them on disc randomly. All the metadata provided by ripper software is not needed, Roon is getting it’s own data from their own database and does nothing with it, a standard disc ID would be more then sufficient to pull this data out of the database . Any ripper software that does “recognize” your cd should be able to provide the disc ID.
So yes realy, and this is a serious question out of curiousity. I’m just trying to understand how many people are “really” willing to totally abandon a filing system. In a full metadata system your files don’t have a name, don’t have any grouped storage location. They only exist as an id number because the rest is stored in Roon’s or any other metadata database. Could you live with that? Because that’s what a full metadata system means. As of now Roon is a hybrid system, wich is totally fine btw, but it might not be all that strange that people also ask for hybrid solutions now and then isn’t it?
I may be missing some subtle cues here. Maybe you know this already. The problem is identification; if Roon cannot identify an album because disc numbers, titles, and filenames are not formatted in an appropriate way. Even renaming the files and putting them in appropriate directories sometimes fails. Then, when the unidentified file is brought into Roon, it shows up in strange, near-random ways: a 7-CD set may be split into 11 parts. I should make it clear that I haven’t tried this in perhaps a year, so it could be that Roon is far better at this today.
I’m not ready for that, but my guess is a lot of people are. I’m basing this not just on Roon-related impressions but also on experience with helping friends and relatives with computer stuff and with providing tech support of a specialized nature for more years than I’m comfortable thinking about. My observation is that vast swathes of computer users don’t really understand hierarchical file systems and aren’t comfortable navigating them. I’ll also point out that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, chose to abandon an end-user-facing file system when it developed iOS (although it now seems that ultimately might not stick).
Well, I can say my reason for worrying about metadata is an assumption that no solution is final and as much as possible I want to be able to have my music available for the “next” solution. I started out with a WD player, which was folder based and ignored tags, then went to a PopCorn Hour player that used some - but not all - tags. Not to mention Kodi sideloaded onto a FireTV and experiments with my Oppo 203 and Pioneer SC-95.
I like Roon - its a great product and I’m very happy with it. But I still feel compelled to control my underlying file storage layout and tag content. Every time I’ve decided to just depend on what the player du jour requires, I end up having to go back and redo.
