Thanks mpd.
Just came by this post
At least one member of the Roon team finds the album grid as boring as I do.
The Roon devs seem not like to add things just to be optional. They are committed to keeping clutter out of the UI.
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With optional I ment something like a collapse button next to the tag button to collapse the tracklists. Canāt be easier and nothing cluttered about that in my view. But I do understand there point of view. There are allready a lot of things optional this way. The use of playlists, tags and bookmarks and even dsp functions for instance. Not everyone uses them but no one complains they are there or make the interface cluttered. . But I rest my case. Iām hopefull the album browser isnāt even needed anymore in the new UI.
Actually, I was going to suggest that since a whole new UI update was coming, that it does make a lot of sense to table discussions until we see the UI update.
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Good idea.
No! this stuff is really fun to look at!
We have some very cool ideas in this space, and design work is in progressā¦ still too early to share, but your ideas definitely help shape/influence our design
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Damn Danny, you really know who to make people curious donāt you?
I would have liked to be able to explain how I would see a āRaskinā like interface to work as album browser but Iām afraid thatās too far off, just too different for most peoples imagination that I simply can not explain it in words and therefore would only lead to misunderstanding so Iām not even thinking about burning my hands on that one. I would have to create it first, make a video of it and then post it here. It surely would lead to a very clean AND very usefull AND very simple to use interface wich can easily be used cross platform as well. But Iām very glad to know you guys are working on it:slight_smile:
If itās Archy that youāre thinking of, then good luck with that. 
Partly, yes. Not a direct copy of it. Any experience with it?
I suppose that means back to Photoshopping once more
Not trying to hassle you, just trying to persuade you (once more) to illustrate a bit more what exactly you envision.
Does something like Archy reduce the need for manual grooming of data? I find that most of the effort I invest is just to get dead, incomplete or redundant links working in roon so that I can surf around and explore the full potential of my library.
I had a quick look at Archy and I guess there are other proposals out there as well but a key feature seemed to be āleapingā and I just wondered if that reduced the need for highly precise metadata linking that a āhyperlinkā approach seems to require.
canāt be explained in pictures alone because itās a dynamic interface.
My envision is to create a flight view of my (and your) collection. A clean interface that provides more information then just a picture and a title. In a case of people like you who seem to know their collection inside and out there might be no use for it. In my case where I share collections with my family, all on one machine and all add music and all explore a lot of new music toghether with almost forgotten content of 15 years of using computer audio just more is needed to have some visual clues to recognize an album or a version of an album on first sight. A simple grid of pictures is just not enough for me, nor for my girlfriend. She is complaining a lot since I switched over to Roon just because of this, she has quite a lot of problems finding things back that once was very easy to her because of visual recognition by content wich is on another level then using the focus filter. We are heavy users and we are not very organized people, Iām the first to admit that. In our case, a clue like an overview with tracklists is of tremendous help to us, believe it or not, it simply is, itās just sometimes hard to explain why. We also know are collection pretty well but we know it more by content of an album then by title or album cover alone. To be honoust I would not even know how the cover of some of my favoutie albums look like, but I know whatās on it so I recognize it instantly on a tracklist instead of a cover alone. I would have liked to see genre info as well and even maybe more but I also like to keep things clean and clear. But as it seams Iām the only one who recognizes his albums by actual content in an overview page. I know you can get there by clicking on it and go to the album page but thatās not an overview and it means a lot of clicking forward and back. It also helps us in identifying where Roon has had problems importing albums, another very important thing. If I see a lot of albums with just one track in the overview field I just know something was imported wrong, wich unfortunatly happens a lot in Roon. So it helps me in fixing it. It also helps in seperating albums from singles. There is no indicator in Roon that seperates albums and singles, again, a tracklist overview helps out here. All reasons that might not appeal to you but is does to us. Itās the way we handle our music. We are not sitting down, picking an album and listen to it to the end. No for example we often pick an album, have a conversation in the middle, like "hey that sound like thisā¦ wait, there it isā¦ Oh but then you have to hear this, where was it. It goes fast, very fast sometimes, switching back and forth through centuries of collecting music. But thats personal I know but with two people or more that can control Roon at the same time evenings like this are very nice and allways end up late.A good overview with clues that makes sence to us for direct recognition is very usefull here. I allways get lost in the grid of album picture alone and have to work harder to find what I want instantly. Tabs in the browser would be very usefull as well, like having your tags constantly in view makes you more familiar with these tags. The more you see them, the more you get to know them and the more usefull they become. Everyone has a different way of handling their music and I think it IS possible to combine that in one great player.
I like Roon a lot donāt get me wrong. The album page and artist page (not the artists overview page) are very well executed. I like the overall search function, specially on persons or labels and the like and the fact that it includes Tidal, my absolute favourite part TIDAL integration wich made me a streaming convert. But how much as I like the individual album and artist pages what Iām missing is a good full fledged overview page one that functions beyond of just showing me album covers for reason that might be hard to explain. And I also donāt want it to evolve into a cluttered interface like J.river, no, letās keep things clean. How I saw my (one of the many) idea was to have a ācollapseā button on top of the browser where you can collapse the album grid in just covers or cover with tracklist, simply flipping back and forth, nothing more. All in a way of trying to avoid it to become to cluttered. The shown layout was just an example of the funtionality not a fixed idea, it could take all kinds of forms.
Iām very curious what the Roon team has in mind on this subject. They might come up with a very clever idea I have not ever thought about wich works even better. Iām only human after all (daft punk, anyone?)
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In fact, for the sake of it, I just looked at my example picture again full screen to see why it creates so much fuzz and the funny thing is, with only pictures I see them but I have to look twice to see what Iām actually seeing and I have to use my memory to recognize some of the albums. This is just a small grip of my collection from years ago. One mouseclick switches the picture in the one with the tracklists and I instantly feel familiar with them again within a second. Ah, that album, with these songs on it. Another example, there are two albums from ādeath from aboveā and I know I find one better then the other but not by album cover. By viewing the tracklisits side by side I instantly recognize wich album it was I find better then the other. Thatās how my memory works. I have been playing all these records so many times I know whatās on it and I recognize them by whatās on it, by content. Thatās excactly what Iām trying to explain, Feeling instantly familiar with your own collection again. It simply works wonders for me and my family. But I can imagine itās of no use to some one else.
Hope I have explained it clearly enough this time.
I wish we could show some screens weāve designed, I think you guys would enjoy them.
We did this once in the past and it was a disaster. They ended up in the press, and when they were released (and came out slightly different), people moaned and whined endlessly, accusing us of bait and switching on them.
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No please donāt. Doesnāt mean Iām less curious though 
Thanks for this extensive post Sjef. Many interesting points, some of which I agree with, some of which I donāt because we have different listening habits and/or usage of Roon, so thatās perfectly okay.
What you suggest here and in your last few posts is interesting, because it implies some sort of dynamic/interactive interface. Your first screenshot looked very static, so did your subsequent explanation in words (another ā+ā you could use to expand and collapse). This is far more promising and interesting.
I can understand itās difficult to explain in static screenshots, and that a video/animation is very time absorbing. However, I think it would be useful if you could expand a bit (in words) on how exaclty you envision this. For one, you might convert fellow-roonies like me, and subsequently, as @danny suggests, it might even help shape/influence the design of Roon.
Something Iāve been pondering is the artist browser. If it makes sense to have something along these linesā¦
If you focus on an artist in the artist browser you still get a grid, but it with the grid aligned according to axes as shownā¦
Really interesting to find out how different people tap into their large music collections. We have the same issue ā how to remember and access what you have in your collection ā yet completely opposite ways of dealing with it.
Pictures confuse you, so you are helped best by text / tracklists. I on the other hand am even more confused by text ā too much too read this way ā and instantly recognize what I want by looking at pictures. Having to absorb tons of track titles to find a song overloads my mind.
Also, because I have so much music, I no longer remember all the track titles of the best/favourite songs. When I see an album cover, I instantly remember what songs are on it, even if I donāt know the title ā most of the time, that is
The challenge for Roon is to offer something all these different alpha and beta types (and letās not forget the omega, gamma and sigma types) can live with 
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Well one little simplified explanation.
Imagine a zoomable interface. We are all used to pinch zoom on our pc/phone/laptop/tablet. Most of us use it more often then they know because it has become a natural thing to do. Now this zooming has multiple levels. Level zero is a field of thumbnails of your entire collection wich can be ordered in visually recognizable groups like alphabetical by artist/album, or release date or even (oh boy a can of worms) directories. Any sort of order you would like but just in groups in a total field. Simplest example. We have a fenced group A with all album titleas starting with an A. And so on.
Now level zero seems pretty useless. Whatās the use of 5000 thumbnails on one screen you might ask? Well, eh, nothing more then to show off how many albums you have? But thatās is until you start to search or start to zoom. Type in any searchstring from wherever you are in the interface, so not having to click a magnifying glass first and it instantly highlights the albums containing content that matches your searchstring. Now these highlights could have different colours depending on wich field the album matches. Say green if the keyword matches an artist name, blue if it matches a track title, and so on. Now you can do two things. Either narrow down the surface to these matching albums by tapping on one of them and let the interface zoom in on them or pinch zoom yourself deeper in to it. Both have their use. We are still in zoom level zero. Thats a zoom range from my 5000 albums to say 40 albums, depending on screen resolution of the device. Total view of 5000+ thumbnails is still pretty useless but you can search at any zoom level, and therefore the automatic narrowing down function to make it mor visable. From there we can zoom further into zoom level 1. This is where additional information starts to show up like artist and album title. Before this view the thumbnails where still too small for it. Now we go on. Zoom level 2 provides even more info like genre tags, release date etc. Could be depended on your searchstring or act according to a default setting you or the designer has set in case you arenāt in a search process but just browsing around. We go on to level 3. Here is where the complete tracklist is shown underneath the albums. Remember, this is for the whole surface now, not just for the albums you have zoomed in to. From within any zoom level you can navigate wherever you want with new searchstring, donāt have to start all over each time, you can stay in one zoom level forever and do everything from there if you like, then it just behaves kinf of like the current browser does.You can also scroll either vertically or horizontally. Albums still are grouped according to switchable presets or searchstrings. We go on to zoom level 4. Here a miniature version of the album page shows up or any other design with additionsl info. We can stil scroll around all albums, all of them having this view now. You can also zoom in or out any time, any place to bring you back a level and move to another part, new searchstrings, back to preset field, whatever. We can still be in a highlighted section or the entire surface. The highlighted content changes dynamically when you alter the search string (could be anything, composer, bass player, record label, whatever) Zoom level 5 brings you in the album.view like you know it. Remember zooming is very fast, you can get there as fast as you can click an album as it is now. From here you can swipe left or right to the next album that matched the searchstring. Keywords are still highlighted here. In case of no searchstring you can simple swipe back and forth to the next or previous album or just zoom back a level. In the album page you can zoom further into ā¦well youāve got it from here I guess. Now to overcome the problem of getting lost in a fluent giant surface restriction of behaviour could be set by the designer at different zoom levels. Well, hard to explain like many other details that are hard to describe.
All in all it might sound complicated but in fact it is not as long as the parameters where set right. In fact, itās something many graphical designers use as an easy to navigate interface to quickly search for, browse through a huge collection of graphics. Now browsing through music demands other functionalities but thatās in the details but thatās the hardest part to describe without actually showing it.
Just to be clear. This IS NOT a feature request, nor a complete description, nor a completed idea. It should have stayed in the Tinkering section.
Itās just an idea of a different approach of wich some parts could be something to think about, or not.
Yes the artist browser could also be a bit more dynamical. There is a nice website (forgot the name) where you have an artist field with many crossectional references to how the artists relate to other artists, very nice.