I generally use the separate albums of a set as „unidentified“ (if the album does not exist as a single album) so that Roon does not include all credits of the whole set to this separate album. But after some time with some magic Roon add this wanted(!) „unidentified“ to the whole set and the credits mess restarts.
What I mean is that the strength of the Roon engine becomes here to its weakness.
Box set enhancement was promised very specific after the official annoucement from the February.
This couldn’t be anything to do with the way in which Roon identifies and calculates ‘Recordings’ - as in Album editor > EDIT ALBUM > MULTI-PART COMPOSITION GROUPING (at the bottom of that dialogue), could it: such that it reduced the number of putative Albums as if each equated to one identified ‘Recording’/‘Recording’ session and hence Album; or what it thought (given the way we know Brendel’s discography works) should constitute a collection of Recordings?
I split big boxes all the time. I have never experienced what you are describing. Not once. But I make no attempt to identify the box first or in parallel with a split version as you seem to be doing.
Any boxes that have already been identified as seems to be your case you will need to both remove from your watched directories and then “clean library”. If you are not cleaning the library then roon will remember that it has already identified the box you think you have split and attempt to reconstitute it.
Typically I will do the following very minimal edits. I usually only ever change the CD folder names. I used to try hunting down the the original CD catalogue numbers but my experience is that it doesn’t add much and I just let roon find them.
In a separate unwatched directory:
Rename all the sub-directories. That is, rename CD0X to CD0X - Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1.
Retain the tag of all titles in every CD with the title of the box-set.
Retain the tag of all disk numbers / track numbers, the same as the box-set.
Retain the catalogue no. and bar code of the box set.
Transfer the folders to the watched directory, one at a time.
Identify the CD’s one at a time as you go along. In probably 50/50 of cases there will be no other identification except the box set and this is the reason for making no changes to 2), 3) and 4).
Almost certainly, particularly with larger box sets you are going to find that at least some CD’s have different track orders and/or bonus tracks so you will need to manually check and edit accordingly.
Group all the split CD’s with an identifying roon tag so now your box set will display as a browsable “original jackets” box-set.
With the vast majority of box sets split in this way, roon is going to carry over the entire credit list from the box to each separated CD. In principle this is going to cause chaos in searches and also very unexpected “connections” between genres and radio recommendations and that sort of thing. My personal experience is that as long as the number of individually identified CD’s outweighs the number of CD’s that got no other identification except the box-set and you delete the redundant box credits from the CD’s where you did get an original jacket identification then the tradeoff is acceptable. It’s far preferable to essentially unnavigable box-sets if you have a lot of them. If for whatever reason you are not getting a lot of individually identified CD’s then you are better off retaining the box-set identification.
I have a mixture of box-sets and split boxes so it is a judgement call what to do. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a solution from roon as it is essentially unsolvable in my view with the current lack of metadata standards and industry enforcement.
I have used that technique too giving each disc an ‘album name’ then renaming the folder CDx - Album Name.
Quite often I only split out a portion of the whole box to avoid duplication.
I suspect we do much the same , I have some just as the box, some split (All CDs) some split to a selection from the whole.
Since Roon box set handling is so poor , I keep all my main BIG boxes in JRiver where I can define views that look like I want , then I have the splits as pseudo albums in Roon. anything missing I can easily pick up from Tidal.
My streamer is Roon Ready and UPnP compliant so if I am simply listening as opposed to browsing I split my time between the 2.
Just a thought, when Harman acquired Roon , 2 specific areas were mentioned for development effort “demanded by the users” . Folder Browsing and Box Set Handling , we have seen the first so watch this space ?
Did you “clean up library” after removing the box from a watched folder? You don’t mention. If you don’t perform this step then roon hasn’t really removed the box. It’s a bit like the difference between delete and erase in Windows. All sorts of roon edits depend on performing this step.
Settings → Library - Clean up library
It’s not clear to me also if you maintain both a composite and split version of the box in roon so I may have misunderstood but I never do this and don’t see the behaviour you describe. I either maintain a split or a composite version of the box in roon but not a copy of both.
In this experiment I kept both and both co-existed perfectly , it was when I removed the Box and cleaned the db Roon decided to re-merge the “single” albums , that was the problem . From neat set of individual albums , one delete returned it to mess one with 48 CD’s
The album is Alfred Brendel: Complete Recordings on Philips.
I extracted a box set the 4 CDs 2-5 which were previously released as a 4 CD. Box. The tags were changed so as to have no reference to the original box , so I though.
Roon tried to associate it with the 114 compilation box, the [Also Relased As] tag was hidden to me, I saw it by using TagScanner which shows all tags in a track. I have never seen it before hence the confusion. If you read the original post you will see why I am confused.
I am beginning to wonder if Roon’s ID logic has changed recently. This behaviour is odd ?
Has anyone looked at this yet , I am coming to the conclusion that the code regarding IDing albums has changed, especially around box sets (is that a hint ?)
I just imported Claudio Arrau the Complete Philips Recordings, Roon created a 60 CD box not an 80 CD box. The rest I found as Versions in 2 stand alone boxes of Arrau’s Beethoven Sonatas . Also single albums were renamed to other box sets eg Arrau Heritage: Liszt which is not in my library - VERY ODD
The only way to unscramble was to manually move tracks from disc to disc in FOLDER VIEW, 6 months ago this would not have been possible.
I am getting more convinced that the code has changed for the worse, I have never had these issues before
Sounds like the result of wrongly identified disc numbers. What happens if you renumber discs in roon and merge all the albums contained in the boxset?
Cannot confirm that as I personally had more problems with identifiying boxsets after roon 2.0 was introduced. For me it got better and better since that point. Maybe it is a matter of how a user is handling disc numbers, folder names and alike.
I feel Roon really should have a report after importing albums and for ones where there maybe multiple choices give you the option to pick the correct one.
I have found recently that its mechanism for id hasn’t been very good for box sets or even some regular albums if compilations especially if there are different versions of them as is the case for Cherry Red compilations as the vinyl and digital releases often containing different track counts to the cd versions. Also had it split albums and duplicated albums as it’s mixed up tracks from other albums as they have had similar names. My metadata has been correct in all these instances and I have had to manually correct and merge albums.
The [Disc #] is set correctly 1 - 80, all CD have [Album] set to the same text. All subfolder are simply CDxy no other text so all should be fine and dandy !!
As Roon imports (I assume) sequentially CD1 to 80 , the first 14 CD’s actually make up a previously released box set Beethoven: the Complete Piano Sonatas and Concertos , so at the end of disc 14 Roon ID’s that box and carries on
(Importing with the first 14 CD Box already present in the library as I did, Roon treats the first `14 as a box already present and makes it a version)
The next 9 CD make up another box Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas (this time the digital series) so Roon ID’s another complete Box. Also makes it a version.
The next disc Beethoven: Diabelli Variations was a single release , so ID is OK
It’s only when we get to something that Roon can’t ID it starts creating the Big Box
And so on. The 2 boxes 14 & 9 are now MIA (hiding as versions) and the big box comes up 23 CD short (at least), I couldn’t find a way of re-merging a version with the short box
The only way to force the issue is to remove any albums from the library that may be included in the box you are importing and the do a Database Clean BEFORE you start importing. Then it works.
Adding back the albums one the big box is set is also OK ,
What a mess, it hasn’t always been this painful has it ? It has taken me several hours to import one box and sort out the mess…
I do import every single disc of a box set to avoid such behaviour. It is much more work than importing all in a row. I do not choose the box set for identifying but the single recording of the album. If there is no single album recording I let those discs „unidentified“. All CDs are properly tagged with data from MusicBrainz, Allmusic or from myself with Mp3tag (scripts). Furthermore I use Roon tags that contains the discnumber and the boxset name. I use bookmarks to show the sum of all discs of a boxset.
This is in my humble opinion the only proper way to avoid all of the mess with box sets and it is future proof if Roon Labs should extend their long time promised support for box sets.
Each to his own but that method leaves a lot of non IDed albums in some cases. Take an example from a few weeks back discussing the “new” DG Editions for Bach, Beethoven and Mozart where they deliberately mixed and matched artists rather than pick say a Brendel set for all piano sonatas. The almost guaranteed that non were previously released so your technique falls over.
I have always argued that splitting was a recipe for disaster, especially for older recordings where they were LP not CD so packed with extra tracks to make up the 70 minutes At least the full set stands a chance of being IDed. BUT then navigation is a nightmare
You can’t win. I expect Roon to honour their promises for boxes but when , if we can’t agree what the best way is how can they design it ?
You are right, especially with the composer box sets. But I do not care so much about it because I tag my files with care before they get imported. For me it is more important that a box set is properly integrated than if discs are identified.
There is so much room for an objective improvement besides all the individual needs of users.
