My Albums view - strange way of album sorting

I started with Roon not so long ago and I am still populating albums. I suppose if you are only listening to one genre you can use «My Albums» view to scroll through your albums. Or use «Focus» to search for whatever recording you want. But the more and more I add records, the more «My Albums» view becomes bizarre. The only way I found to sort this mess is to use «Focus» or search «by Genre». Then I can search for Blues… and will see Blues only, or Classic and will have only that. But if I don’t «My Albums» looks like this:

…one view I get, Bonamassa, Brahms, Bronski Beat, Bruce Springsteen…

…or Lou Reed, Pavarotti, Maceo

…or Karajan, Iggy Pop

and many more funny combinations.

Is there a way else that can be used, or is Focus really the best way?

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The album browser is all about the albums in your library. If you have albums from Bonamassa, Brahms, Bronski Beat, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Pavarotti, Maceo, Karajan, Iggy Pop and more in your library, then they are for sure all displayed alongside each other in that view. Can you eventually elaborate more what you feel is strange about the album sorting?

Note: For consistent sorting results you should resolve the inconsistent metadata in your library (from your examples: Bonamassa, Joe => Joe Bonamassa, the various Brahms notations).

Also don’t forget to configure the defaults to your taste.

As you wrote, you can use Focus to limit the content displayed to you. There are also some more sort order options available than the default “by artist name” sorting. Use bookmarks to save specific setups (sort order, focus) that you often use and/or are laborious to reproduce. Use Tags to add ways of organizing your library not already provided by Roon but be careful to not “waste” tags to replicate what’s already there – but potentially in other views (large amounts of Roon tags and/or tagged content may have a negative impact on Roon’s performance).

If your current primary interest (primary sort criteria) of looking at the contents of your library isn’t albums though, you’re probably better off using one of the various other browsers Roon has to offer.

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Yes dog course. I do have all these albums and many more. So when sorting my vinyls and my CDs I do it by a broad way of genres. So I have a classic section. I have Pop/Rock/R&B I have a separate Jazz and a separate Blues section. And because I have so much I have a special Funk section.

Let’s put it that way, when I feel listing to George Clinton or any other Funk I would go through my discs. It’s certainly not helpful to have Gershwin, or Glen Gould next to them as it would not fit the “mood”. Same goes the other way, Tchaikovsky next to T-Rex does not really fit.

The only way I found so far is that I use FOCUS and select Funk or Opera and go through my Discs like that. But to me it really looks strange to even have a My Albums way of looking it it without any pre-screening. So I hoped there was something I missed.

The other ting I find disturbing in My Albums view is the sorting. First by artist name OK, but then by release date. So that is probably mostly OK, but not always. F.ex artists with lots of titles would be better sorted by album Title. Also live recording would be good by performance date or by venue.

Hope this is clearer.

If you want to group your collection into sections (e.g. a Classical section, a Pop/Rock section or a female vocalist section), then you could use Focus in the Album browser to create a section and then store it as a Bookmark. Bookmarks are dynamic, which means that as you add albums that conform to a section’s criteria, they will automatically get added to the section collection.

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If you are interested only in one genre at a time, you could go to an album and click its genre tag to show only that genre. Or go to the sidebar> Browse > Genres. Or bookmarks as others suggested

Personally, I have no problem with My Albums showing all of my albums, for me this is how it should be. Maybe that’s because in my physical library I also sort everything by artist name without having separate genre sections, except for classical. I don’t want the constant headache of deciding which genre a physical album should be in, and then not finding it the next time because I’m convinced otherwise :slight_smile:

Bookmarks? excellent.
I definitely did not know that. Seems to me this should exactly be doing what I want.
thanks very much

@Geoff_Coupe
may be you can help me a little further. I see how to make bookmarks, but I don’t see how to add albums to those bookmarks, nor how to remove if I may have added accidentally. Also once I have the bookmarks, where do I see my albums then?

You don’t “add” albums to Bookmarks…

Think of a Bookmark as the result of a database query, which is what Focus, Tags and Roon Favourites actually do.

So you create a query on the Roon database by using Focus, perhaps in combination with Tags and Favourites, and you can store the query for future use as a Bookmark, to be quickly recalled in the future…

And these can be used in many places in Roon, not just in the Album browser. So, for example, my “David Bowie Favourite Tracks” bookmark is the result of querying the Track browser looking for tracks by Bowie, and that have been favourited:

My “Qobuz Classical” bookmark I use to show the results of querying Qobuz’s New Releases with the genre: Classical:

And my “5.1 Albums” bookmark shows me the albums in my library that have been recorded in 5.1 Surround Sound. New 5.1 albums added to my library will show up whenever I open this bookmark - I don’t “add them to the Bookmark”…

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@ Geoff_Coupe
I see. So it actually checks my tags etc I made.

I have some issues

  • with my tags, somehow certain things must be tagged wrongly. But I dont see it in the Roon album edit. f.ex. when I select albums I see all CDs I tagged as albums, but unfortunately also some Prince live CDs.
  • Another issue is when I use Focus and select Prince, I see James Brown, George Clinton, Kate Bush, Madhouse CDs and Janelle Monae’s CDs. May be its because its “performers” and he might have made an appearance on some albums.

Some Tags I created are working. Like Prince PGA Records… now I can make a bookmark with that PGA name. Any I idea how to make a Bobookmark f.ex for Prince live or Prince album. Since these Tags do not really show what I want. Any creative idea?

Indeed - in the Album browser, Focus looks at performers, which covers both Album artists and artists on individual tracks, so you’ll see Kate Bush’s Red Shoes album, because Prince was a performer on one of the tracks.

If you want to see Prince’s albums, the way to do it is to use the Artist browser - and choose the Discography and click the “in my library” icon…

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I’m not clear what you mean here. The Album browser will show albums, period; no matter what the type: live, studio, bootleg - in fact, any collection of tracks in a folder will be classed as an “album”. I store my podcast collection locally and they appear as “albums” in the Album browser.

Albums here I mean just regular albums released by the artist. US, GER or Tap I dont car, but no singles, maxis, lives and no bootlegs.
I would want a section bootlegs or live and a section outtakes. any idea how to do that?

will try that definitely.

Roon should know about these in its database (because there are icons to denote these on the cover art)

All of those can be selected for or against (using + / -) or combined using the Focus feature - as long as you classify albums accordingly using the available criteria in Album View (…) / Edit.

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I guess I have too many, Roon does not have 25% of them… and I definitely would like to separate between live and outtakes

Then (if these are local albums; ripped or downloaded) it sounds as though you have some metadata that needs fixing.

I guess I have too many boots, Roon does not have 25% of those I have… and I definitely would like to separate between live and outtakes

Then (if these are local albums; ripped or downloaded) it sounds as though you have some metadata that needs fixing.

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You can….de-focus (?) as well.
If you double click a focus criteria it will turn red and remove that trait.
So you could focus your genre and un-focus criteria such as

IMG_1344

How well this works will be dependent on how your albums are tagged and/or the accuracy of Roon’s metadata.

You can also edit your albums in Roon to add traits like Live, bootleg etc.
But I’d suggest you do it via tags as edits in Roon aren’t applied to your files.

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