My collection is exclusively ‘Classical’. This question pertains to local files (that is, not my Qobuz Service) in Roon 2, 1407 on (macOS 13.6.6), please.
I have many box sets whose CD 1, CD 2, CD 3 etc I have successfully Merged… they each appear as a single Album, which is how I want it; it works perfectly.
I now want to go back and import the ‘liner notes’, ‘accompanying booklets’ (all PDFs) into Roon.
I seem to be able to do this (I know a ‘Force Rescan’ is necessary; that also always works) - but only by moving the PDF in question for each Album into its 'CD 1’ and not the parent folder.
I always put it into the album’s parent folder and it works. This github is the best summary I have seen for images. The PDF should go into a “booklet.pdf” file.
However, I don’t mess with albums or split up box sets. My double CDs go into album/CD1/tracks and album/CD2/tracks.
Aha! That was it. I need always to change whatever the file as distributed was called to ‘booklet.pdf’.
Now I see my test case in a parent folder .
Thanks for that link. Kept!
That’s how mine are at the filesystem level. Always; Yes:
Uniquely-named-Album (Composer: Work(s))
as many CDs as there are in the (box) set (most often downloads) - unambiguously and (never with a hint of a possibly repeated number) sequenced 1, 2, 3 etc; at the same level (under #1, above)
unchanged track names in each uniquely-named CD
But to avoid having multiple ‘Albums’ in Roon itself, I merge them in Roon. A mistake?
Because perhaps as many as half my collection is (from) boxed sets, I would be increasing the contents of the My Albums screen by, what, 50% if I kept (the import of) every CD (and download - most of which do often come in as already 'combined) separate.
I assume I could unmerge if I had to?
I’ve followed this practice. I confess, I was nervous the first few times - in case it muddles tracks. But now I trust the routine .
I don’t understand this - Roon should display a single album entry for a boxset itself - you seem to be implying that you are seeing multiple entries and having to manually merge them?
For example, here’s the 18 CD boxset of Delius’s music in my Album browser (sorted by album title):
I have always assumed that - as long as I correctly name the set’s individual ‘components’ sequentially; that is: ‘CD 1’, ‘CD 2’, ‘CD 3’ etc, where each CD contains (only) that CD’s tracks of course - it’s inevitable that Roon will present these - once imported - as (two, three) separate entities.
And inevitable that - for me to see, say, only one work/composition (e.g. ‘The Matthew Passion’) to be played - I have to merge the CDs.
Yes?
It occurs to me that maybe the procedure is/should be different in the two cases where I either:
buy, download and import a ‘set’ of FLAC files - from Qobuz, Presto, ProStudioMasters etc
rip a physical ‘set’ with dBpoweramp where I am entering my own names for multiple CDs (‘Bach: Matthew Passion 1’, ‘Bach: Matthew Passion 2’, ‘Bach: Matthew Passion 3’ etc) in dBpoweramp’s ‘Album’ filed (top left)
Does Roon treat the two types/formats of ‘sets’ differently, please?
Nope. For multi-cd releases this usually leads to one album entry (provided that the album is identified) where the tracks are listed 1-1, 1-2,1-3, … 2-1, 2-2, etc., and in addition there is a „CD“ menu top left of the track list where you can choose to display just a particular CD or all tracks.
You need to make sure that the folders are named “CD1”,“CD2”, … with no space after ‘CD’ part of the folder name. Both your screen shot and the quoted text appear to use “CD 1”, “CD 2”, “CD 3” - ie with spaces after the ‘CD’ part of the folder name.
Well, that’s where you’re going against Roon’s grain…
Roon considers albums (and boxsets, and EPs and Singles) to be distinct entities. So in your screenshot of your St. Matthew Passion boxsets, Roon will want to treat them as three separate entities - three distinct recordings of the work that have been issued as three boxsets (issued quite possibly by different labels with different artists recorded at different times.
While you can merge these boxsets into one entry in the Album browser, it may impact on the cross connections that Roon can make between the individual albums.
I personally do not merge albums of the same work together, but leave them as the original albums. Roon can show me what other performances of the work I have. I can either go directly to the Compositions browser, or I can go from listening to one performance to see what other performances I have available.
Lets say I’m listening to the new recording of Mahler’s 6th by Simon Rattle - I see on the album page that I have 11 performances of this work in my library:
And note that the album with Michael Gielen as conductor actually has two recordings of the 6th on it that were made at different stages of his career…
I strongly suspect that your manual merging of individual boxsets (and albums?) will have thrown a spanner into the works and Roon will not be showing you what it could do if you had left them as individual entries.
And as @Wade_Oram has pointed out, you are not naming the individual CDs in a boxset correctly. Please follow the guidelines here:
Addendum: thinking about all this, perhaps you are meaning that you have to merge the CD folders in a boxset to reconsitute the boxset, rather than (as I assumed) that you are merging boxsets…
If that’s the case, it’s because you haven’t been using the correct naming convention for the CD folders. They must be CD1, CD2, CD3, etc for Roon to do the merge for you…
No, I am not merging or attempting to merge multiple/more than one box sets into one (just because they contain the same work/piece of music).
Each ‘performance’ or version of a work stays separate - always.
IOW I hope I’m going with Roon’s grain by respecting the integrity/uniqueness of each product, so to put it.
It’s the ‘components’ (individual ‘CDs’ which comprise each release) which I have sometimes - though not always - been Merging.
Now I can see that…
Not ‘CD 1’, ‘CD 2’ etc with spaces - as you, Wayne, kindly point out?
(I think I assumed that because macOS treats spaces as valid characters, any string containing ‘CDspace1’ is as distinct as is ‘CDnospace1’.)
Now I think I can see why some imports (have appeared to me as if they) need Merging; and others not.
Looking at my Roon Watched folder on my Nucleus in the Finder (that is, not in Roon - but at the filesystem level) I can see a mixture of my (Yes, my error) naming conventions:
sometimes ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ etc not even with a leading ‘CD’
sometimes ‘CD 1’, ‘CD 2’, ‘CD 3’ etc with spaces
sometimes (I hope the majority) 'CD1, ‘CD2’, ‘CD3’ etc correctly without spaces.
What’s the best way to put this right, please?
Can I simply - again, at the filesystem level - rename all cases in my #1 and #2 above to ‘CD1’, ‘CD2’, ‘CD3’ etc? IOW manually rename my Nucleus file groups so that all sub-folders for box sets are without spaces?
If I do what will Roon do with individual box sets already Merged?
(In any event, the examples in this thread, the links and the guidance have all (begun to) answer questions which I hadn’t foreseen when asking about where to locate booklet PDFs! Every cloud. Thanks )
I was definitely not doing that consistently. Appreciated. Spaces are my enemy from now on .
But I’m not sure how to correct it - especially if I go through my collection and rename every sub folder so that it has a space and then Force Rescan.
Will Roon cope with those collections already merged?
Pick a boxset and use a file manager to rename the CDs to the correct naming convention to see whether it works (it should). It’s probably a good idea to stop your Roon Server while you’re doing this.
PS - you can stop and start your Roon Server on your Nucleus by using the Web Administration Interface…
Yes; it seems to have worked. The display and audio are all as I would expect
I know what I have to do with my entire collection now; thanks! There is a ‘but’ though. May I ask for help with that, please: (apparently?) ‘stuck’ scanning .
Does that mean that Roon also took care of the albums which I had previously (and erroneously) merged?
Definitely (thanks for the instructions). I also restarted my machine.
So I tried removing albums (now correctly-named) which I thought might be causing it (one in particular with eight tracks/files because that was the delta… it hung at, say, 24/32 and 56/64) when I did a test rename as you suggest and I hadn’t stopped the server, but Roon wasn’t running; then Rescanning etc and Library maintenance > Clean up Library.
But it’s been at 315/590 (Fast 4 cores) for over 30 minutes.
I think I could probably make that go away by switching to ‘Off’. And restarting etc. But I don’t really want to do that.
Then we don’t know whether the stuck analysis issue has arisen because of the folder renaming or simply because of restarting the Nucleus. Also 315/590 would seem to be more than just a test boxset.
I see that you’ve posted in your original support thread. I’ll remove the solution flag and reopen the thread and flag support that the issue has returned.
Indeed. Originally, it seemed to re-appear because of one set of two CDs with eight tracks. So I removed and re-added, doing the necessary clean up. But that didn’t help.
No indeed. But my previous experience tells me that it could be tracks 315 to 323 (perhaps those mischievous same (?) eight) which are holding up all remaining tracks’ scanning.
Very much appreciated, Geoff. Will your having done that ping @benjamin and @andrew.v, who were originally helping with it, pease?
I’m more than happy to find and send logs again. Also to isolate, delete and re-import any rogue CD etc.
If you use these tags, you do not have to care about directory-names and these things. A system should always work properly even if the file/dor-names are not according to a specific system!
I am using a specific system. Just to make it easy for myself to find all the files (I have 231k files). But ROON should not need to have specific filenames!
BTW. The structure of directories is preferable like this (in my opinion):
Bach
- St. Matthews passion
- CD1
- 01 filename 01
- 02 filename 02
- CD2
- 01 filename 01
and so on
You can as well include the name of conductor od Orchestra instead of composer. (Depending on your priority for manual search)
.
)
. My bad!
