Playlist(s) - removing an entry, general maintenance

Roon Core and Remote 1.3 Build 262, Windows 64 Bit, Ipad mini (new). Documentation on how to edit playlist entries, specifically how to delete one is obscure in the extreme. After reading it, it took a lot of playing arround to finally get to the point I could get the option to delete a entry. PLEASE update the online docs to explain this better - particularly since how it works is completely different when doing it on a Core machine as opposed to a Remote/Tablet. It eludes me why you cannot have a entry for removing a tag/playlist entry in your popup list. You should be able to remove an entry from the same place you made it. Likewise, when you are in an album and click on the playlist icon for a track (that has been put in the play list), it does not take you to your entry (which would be expected), but to the full play list maintenance, where you have to now search and find your entry (sigh). Not sure it tags work the same way - I’m not using them. Noted that when playlist entries are deleted, their number (postion) doesn’t appear to be reused. Is there a way to reorganize and compact the playlist? I seem to notice an increase in the time it takes to add each new entry as the list becomes bigger (about 1000 right now) which implies it is reading to the end of a seqential file to write a new entry (lets hope not-))). If there is something I am missing in working with playlists please advise me. Thanks

Can you be more specific here about what’s different? There shouldn’t be any functional differences as far as I know.

Can you be more specific about what exactly you’re doing, from what screens, exactly what buttons you’re clicking, etc – I just deleted track 15 from a playlist here and it renumbered as I would expect, so I must be doing something differently from you.

When using the tablet, you have to leave your finger on the 3 bar selector for several second to get the Remove selection to pop up (at a different part of the screen where if you are not looking for it, it is easy to miss). Doing it on the Core machine (using a track pad and not a touch sensitive screen), you simply click on the entry, there is no time delay or need to hold down a button. The option to remove the entry shows up in the same place in both cases.

I do almost everything from the Remote/Tablet. I select an album to listen to, select my favorites from the tracks, and select my very best selections to add to (right now) a single master playlist. Usually when want to delete an entry, I select an album to play and then select the playlist name from the album track display (albums, tracks). This takes you to the same place that you get from using the main screen, settings and selecting playlist. Maybe it is doing some renumbering, a lot of the deletes I have done is because of duplicate entries (not sure exactly how they occured). Right now the playlist lowest number is 40, so it has not renumbered to use the first 40 entries. The last entry is 712. Looking at it I cannot find any gaps inside this range so you are propably right, it is renumbering, just not doing it beyond the lowest existing number.

This is a convention across the app – long-press and right-click do the same thing, and you can do both on desktop platforms like Windows and OSX. The only distinction is that there’s no right-click on tablets, obviously.

More information here.

We can definitely look at this, but I’m not seeing the behavior you’re describing – I just made a playlist of 200 tracks, removed the first 50 and the playlist renumbered from 1-150.

Are you sure you’re not sorted by something other than the playlist numbering?

1 Like

Pasted below is the play list display. Numbers start at 40 (667 of 712 tracks). Must be some missing between 40 and 712 because subtracting 40 from 712 yields 45, not 40. I have no idea how to find just where there are gaps, I’m not going to count the entries one by one to find them (grin). With dups selected it finds none (i’ve deleted all the dups). If there is something else I can check please tell me and I’ll do so.

PS: thanks for the conventions on tablet/IOS use - I come from a windows background and am sort obviously a novice with IOS - learn how its works as I need it and Roon is the first time I have needed to do this. Still eludes me why you cannot just put a remove playlist/tag selection is your list in addition to the add them. It would sure make managing them a LOT easier.

What happens if you hit the Reset button?

Removing a track from a playlist is destructive – it deletes the track from the playlist permanently, and there’s no undo (at least right now).

Putting a destructive option in among more benign everyday tasks (like View Album) increases the likelihood of accidental deletes, so for now this requires 2 clicks – once you’ve selected a single track with the long press, you can select additional tracks with a normal click and then remove them all at once.

Nothing - stays the same - tried it before I sent you the screenshots.

Can you try rebooting your Core?

not sure what you mean - I start Roon Core every day and kill it when I am through for the day (there is no exit option so you just have to kill the app). I can start and restart it anytime you want but it isn’t changing anything we have discussed. I started it again this morning. The Roon Core runs on my main PC, an Ipad Mini tablet is used 99% of the time to actually do anything.

What I ment about inserting an option was to add a item to the selection list you get when clicking on the 3 horz bars next to each track. Adding a Delete from play list would take at least 3 actions to actual do it ( pull up the list from the 3 bar icon, select delete playlist, then select playlist to delete from). The current selection isn’t even smart enough to tell you if you add a track to a playlist where it already exists (creating a duplicate). I’d like to see this on the screens that display the album selected and the tracks (being played or not). Then you could change you favorites, playlists, etc. for that album from one place. Maybe you could change the selection to playlist/tag maintenance and then select the add/delete option. Again, this would let you DIRECTLY delete the track from the playlist without having to go to playlist maintenence, find the track and then do it. You can add a track to a playlist easily but it is much more clumbersome to delete a track.

Hi @Alfred_Linthicum ---- Thank you for the report and the continued feedback, both are very appreciated.

Moving forward, I would like to get a bit more information from you in regard to the mentioned playlist. I just ran a quick sanity check to see if I cam up with the same results as @mike and can confirm that Roon is reordering the playlist numbers as expected. Note that I performed this exercise from a remote device.

In light of this, can you please give us an idea of how the mentioned playlist was generated (procedurally speaking) and also some insight into the content comprising the playlist (i.e local, TIDAL, a mixture of both?). Furthermore, while it is a bit unclear from the report if you are running headless or not , have you tried performing any of the mentioned actions on the core machine, instead via a remote device? I am just curious if the experience is the same

-Eric

Tip: I see you have some suggestions on the software. This is great, as we are always looking for insight on ways to make the Roon experience better. I would recommend posting these ideas in the feature request section of the community, as this is the best method for getting your voice heard.

Playlist (I have only one) is a subset of my favorites, which I add to to playlist as I work through the Vinyl Albums I have ripped in the last 2 months, one by one, playing them with Roon, selecting favorites and a subset to add to my one master playlist. As I work on a album, I try and get it “identified by Roon”, sometimes requiring a change in the Metadata, etc. Once I am happy with it I move on to the next album. I have been doing this one artist at a time (basicly). It has taken me a lot longer to get it orginized in Roon the way I want than it did to initially rip it at 24x192, find the track list, fade the tracks as desired, and output the track to where Roon finds them. Unfortunately this means I have been building this playlist during several Roon update/builds, and with different releases for the Remote. As noted before, due to my lack of knowledge, I have been running updated a Roon Core with older releases of Roon Remote until just recently. It is a shame the Remote doesn’t come up with a message when it loads if the version is out of date. This mismatch of releases may be why playlist numbering is messed up. Unless it makes the playlist unuseable I’ll just live with it - there is no way I am going to go back and redo 700 playlist selections, which it has taken months to build. My intent when done is to have a playlist of my favorite selections that I can start playing in shuffle mode and just sit back and enjoy it.

I have not notices any difference between the remote and the Core, but 99% of the time I am adding a track, and doing that just adds it without providing any info on the number, etc. Its only when I have and issue and want to remove a track that I end up in the playlist maintenance screens.

Not sure what you mean by Headless, but I think you mean a computer without keyboard or monitor dedicated to the Roon Core. I am not running that way. I have a single PC running the Roon Core and a Ipad tablet running the Remote to let me control it remotely. I have never had any issue with playback, sound quality, etc with this configuration although from previous discussions I know this is not considered optimum (I have debated this in past posts - many point of view on this but I am not going to worry about it until I have an issue). Perhaps it is because I have a very robust computer setup or maybe its because I am using ASIO drivers and am not using any Windows audio functions at all for any of my HIFI audio. Regardless, I have had no issues during 3 months of use.

I’d be surprised if the version mismatch caused this, but we probably can’t do more here unless we can figure out how to trigger this bug.

That said, it should be simple enough to fix.

  • Long press to select any track in the playlist
  • Chose select all from the top right (click 1 Selected and choose Select All)
  • Add all the tracks to a new playlist

Moreover, just to be clear about this:

There’s a Favorites button at the top of the track browser that will give you this view without the need for a playlist, and you can also bookmark this view for easy access. Lots of ways to skin a cat :wink:

I tried this - created a new empty playlist, went to the existing play list and did what you said and then added all entries to the new play list. Got EXACTLY (grin) the same thing, same track numbering, etc. - no change new list at all - it is identical to the old one. I deleted the new list since this didn’t work as expected.

Note on the Favorites button - i have used this but my purpose for the playlist is different. I use favorites within an album as stuff I would listen to if I want to listen to the album specifically. The play list has a subset that is what I like the very best from the album, not just what I think is worth listening to if I want to listen to the album in depth. Sometimes I have nothing form an album in the playlist but may have most of the tracks flagged as favorites. Other times every favorite will be in the play list. I have been doing all this without actually using it yet - guess I need to do some test listening and be sure this will do what I expect. Thanks.

Hi Alfred,
I’m wonder if taking a short video of the Roon screen might be a way to demonstrate to the Roon dev’s this behaviour you’re seeing.

Not sure about video but here is a screen shot showing for an album how I use favorites and playlist.

Finally tried playing the playlist with Shuffle and it all works. Unfortunately, there is no way to take something off the playlist that is playing if you decide you want to drop an entry except leave what is playing and go into the playlist maintenance, find the track and remove it. VERY inefficient. You can unfavorite an entry, why not be able to take it off the list (sigh). Maybe in the future. Thanks for all the help.

The only other idea I have for duping my playlist “gap” issue (entries starting at 40) is that when I first started using the playlist, I added a bunch of track which all seem to have been added twice. I later went to scan for dupe entries and deleted the dups. Virtually all of them were at the front of the playlist (entry number wise).