I just signed up for a yearly membership in order to get a 10% discount and as I was pretty amazed what I read about roon.
I am still impressed on the design of the UI and general handling, but I to go slowly I just imported 2 albums into my library and I am not that impressed.
One is “A Pale Horse Named Death - Lay My Soul To Waste”, the second one “Absolute Beginner - Bambule”
So what are my issues, and there are really some. On Lay My Soul… you import really a lot of credits that get hyperlinks, but if I click on the different Artists/Composers/Musicians I just get a page with their names and thats it. On some of them other bands are displayed where they play in but these are not clickable. So this means you cannot retrieve any information about these people??? This is why I wanted to have Roon mainly, grabbing data…
On Bambule there is nearly no metadata grabbed at all, very poor. Album credits are only Label and Artist. Then the release is the wrong one. I tried to fix that but there are only 3 release, no one is right. There is one download release from the original release date in 1998, then a vinyl release and at least a CD release, but this is a reissue from 2005.
Why is there no CD release from the original release year?? I have a lot of special editions, reissues and so on. If I have that lot problems this will drive me mad.
Then the lyrics, it seems no problem to display characters like ß in your software, for example on the Artist page Eißfeldt is written correctly in the lyrics you grabbed I get only ß &aauml; etc.
I have about 800 albums to import and grabbed just 2 out of them for testing. Just grabbed 2 bad ones?
Do you have a timeline for the metadata editing already? Will we be able to get custom tags that can be displayed?
It is not about really about every track itself (ie featuring Artist, track composer) we are talking about more general data here and on an album basis.
And you have to say that there is a lot of whoo made about the grabbing capabilities, so this is really not what I expected but I know the team is doing a lot to improve things at the moment, too.
Not the time at the moment but maybe it’s getting better with other albums. It’s just because I tried 2 and 2 are not satisfying…
And that’s enough to ask the questions I asked above, at least these are standard albums, nothing special and about 30% of my albums are special albums. That’s the point
You can find a lot of information I am missing on discogs and elsewhere with ease, but that’s not about it because then I can stay without special software.
I am keen that soon someone will get back to me from Roon on that
Moonspell, Extinct (Limited Edition) … no cover of the limited edition available
Release date is 6.03.2015 BUT the original release date is 10.3.2015 (how is this possible??), no limited edition available in the database
In Flames, Come Clarity (Special Edition Re-Issue 2014) … no cover available at all and no release to find in the database
ASP - Aus der Tiefe (2xCD Digipack) … no cover available
Also really poor information on the before mentioned Moonspell album.
It’s hard to not sound offending but I don’t mean it offending, but maybe your software is not for people that collect special editions, digipacks, etc.?!?
There is more info for all I’ve seen now alone in discogs, yes this info maybe not deep as you mention but it is there. If there is no information it cannot be deep and expressive.
So how can we go on with this? Is there anything you can do for me?
I really have to agree about the poor metadata quality. The worst thing is that I can’t correct things I know are wrong.
I have a lot of non-English music and in Roon it is a complete mess! Wrong capitalisation, foreign characters replaced by English (e.g. “ä” is replaced by “ae”) and a some track names are just misspelled. Classical work often have some obscure English translation of the correct original German or Italian titles.
If I compare this to Plex Media Server and their latest improvements for music I think that first of all the metadata in Plex is far better than Roon and secondly if something is wrong I can easily correct it.
@magnus I know that Roon is working on a full metadata editing solution, so this will come for sure. But I didn’t get Roon for editing my metadata I got it because everywhere you can read of the deep expressive metadata capabilities but if there is no metadata ( in terms of quantity ) it cannot be deep as I already said. And as you can read in first post I have another understanding of deep.
I am not able to get that into my head at the moment because the release I tried are not THAT exotic, as mentioned in discogs you find everything for them… But this is my own fault, I could have get a trial license before buying.
Greed Because of a few bucks (didn’t buy lifetime)
I have these problem with german lyrics with characters not working, …
At the moment my motivation to go on importing is zero because it is simply not possible that these results are per chance
I think this particular thread needs some balanced perspective…
As near as I can see, you have imported 4-5 albums in total…while Roon pointed at a watched folder will import 1,000 Albums in about 15 minutes…and will do so while you are doing something else or away from your computer…so I simply don’t understand the comment of "I don’t have enough time [to import more albums]
Many of us on here have managed to successfully ‘import’ 5,000 to 10,000 to 25,000 Albums into Roon…with the import of 25,000 Albums taking Roon about 5 hours to populate the Metadata for each album
Therefore, I think that those with libraries of this size are in a much better position to reflect on the Rich Metadata capabilities of Roon…as opposed to someone who has imported a grand total of 4-5 albums???
Is there room for improvement with Roon in terms of its Rich Metadata??..of course, there is…but as has been commented on here many time already, the existing capabilities are FAR beyond what is available elsewhere…including Discogs etc. etc
So…take the 5 minutes that it would take to point Roon at your existing Music Folder…and come back after 10 minutes and see how Roon has dealt with your ~800 Albums…maybe that will give you a more balanced perspective
Hi Magnus
I’ve been using Plex just about since its non-public inception…and I remain part of their Alpha Test program for the early testing of new features etc…and as such, I would wholeheartedly recommend Plex as a Movie & TV Show Media Hub app for multiple client and device types throughout the house and family
However, to even to begin to compare Plex’ ability to handle Music and its metadata with those of Roon must be a ‘joke’ on your behalf…there simply is NO comparison in my experience…Roon is just on a different planet…and this comment applies from the most ‘obscure’ albums in my library…as well as to the ‘special’ Versions that I have of many albums
If you and Machine were to make the small effort required to import your libraries…and then send your logs to Roon, they will revert to you and offer some kind of an explanation as to what maybe happening with your albums
In the meantime, I think the VOLUME of Users here who have expressed their happiness at Roon’s metadata handling capabilities stands in stark relief to the relatively isolated experiences of yourself and Machine
That is because 1st of all I have to change all my Multi-CD sets which are a lot because roon simply cannot handle my folder structure for these sets.
Second, if I just take any 5 releases out of my collection and not one of them has satisfying results this is not per chance. I wrote that already.
This might not be roons fault and if you tell me the capabilites are FAR beyond that might be. I never said anything against that, but if there is just nearly no metadata from wherever they grab it these are just useless capabilities. Point.
And it is not about importing my whole albums, I’ll do that, but in the meantime I might be allowed to ask some questions I hope.
So where’s the problem?
Because I want metadata for ALL my releases in my library software, especially if I pay a premium price for it. And switching back to tag-data completely is no option as it is nowhere displayed, yes I can right click the track and then look at an unsorted mess of metadata in a pop-up. That might be a technical option but is an option of no use. It might be an option if the album screen would be customizable and you could display data there out of your own tags…
It might be that for your most obscure albums everything is ok, I don’t know how many examples I should give here, I just started putting my CD sets into folders so Roon can handle it.
Imported the next example : Böhse Onkelz - 20 Jahre - Gestern War Heute Noch Morgen 3 CD set, correctly imported by Roon
Release Date : 1 Jan 2001
Original Release Date : 8 Aug 2005 (WTF, same error as above)
Metadata : 2 fields, Label and Primary Artist
Who wants to work like that or with that, really?? I don’t know what music you hear and for your type of music everything might be ok, For mine it is definitely not.
This 3CD set has a different cover for every CD, this is also not possible to display. But the covers are in the files as tags. Because again, for this release no cover was found except a completely blurred picture from somewhere.
As I already wrote a few posts before I am not offending Roon here in any way, I am looking for solutions. It’s not important if I imported 800 albums or 10000 or 6
I imported 378 albums now, so less than half of the albums
For the following artists there are no pictures, for many of them also no information available at all :
Adam Plack
Andreas Kauffelt
Basic Implant
Bayerman Vibration
Brian Sanhaji
Cephalgy
Charlie McMahon
Dead Soul Tribe
Decoded Feedback
Der Dritte Raum
Die Krupps
DJ Rolando
DJ Tomekk
Dog Eat Dog
Dorn
Dr. Motte
Edge Of Dawn
Edge Of Sanity
Eisheilig
Emao
Far East Band
Feindflug
Felsenreich
Gabriel Le Mar
God Module
Goethes Erben
Gothminister
Hans Söllner
Heiko Laux
Hocico
Hollenthon
Hypnotix
Inanna Unveiled
Inlakesh
Jamaica Papa Curvin
Janus
Jay Denham
Jestofunk
Johannes Heil
Kopfuss Resonator
Lamonde
Lars Klein
Michael Burkat
Lenny Kravitz
Louisa John-Krol
Mandrake
Matthias Wilden
Messiah’s Kiss
Niederschlag
Nomad
Oliver Shanti
Orphanage
Pascal F.E.O.S.
Paul Brtschitsch
Phoenix Percussion Project
Pierrepoint
Pyranja
Thomas P. Heckmann
Wirtz
And I stopped counting at 30 albums where I don’t find the releases, manually. Or that have an original release date later than release date as I had some cases before. Not to speak of cover art. Most of them limited versions.
This might all not be the softwares fault because it is metadata, but it won’t stop at 30 I am sure.
I don’t want to invest the time looking deeper into that until I get a response from you Roon team. I would be very pleased about it.
I don’t know from where you get all your metadata for albums, I know from AllMusic is one and I checked some of the releases I have problems with, the data there for THESE is just crap, nothing more, sorry to say that.
I can confirm the partially missing pictures and/or artist info. I did a quick check on a few of your listed artists which I also have in my library (Pascal F.E.O.S., Heiko Laux, Gabriel Le Mar, Der Dritte Raum, Thomas P. Heckmann etc.).
Strange…theses are all well known German artists. Maybe AllMusic isn’t very precise in regard to non-US artists?
@freelancer : yes, it’s as I mentioned some posts before, there is a lot that is not that exotic (in terms of western music, maybe exotic to US-market alone), whether artists or releases where the found information (also after manually searches) is really a pain. And most of them is non-US as far as I remember. Most of the music is identified somehow but many releases of an album are not right and are just not there in a manual search. And if they are identified there are date problems, crappy cover art and the information is close to nothing, in many cases only label and artist…
So that would all be not that big problem if there would be a possibility in the future to somehow display own tags that I can define myself on the cover pages (eg instead of the review that is just not there). Not that big because in my eyes it remains a problem because as I said the data is out there. For nearly a 100% of the searched releases with barcode and everything you need.
And I would really appreciate to get some statements on that, maybe we can help making Roon better if they are aware of the problems there are with grabbing from their actual providers. Because the music world is so big they just can’t be aware of everything themselves
@Ronnie
I agree that Plex used to be complete rubbish when it came to music but that changed completely around April 30 this year when the launched the revamped Plex Music. They use the Gracenote database and from a quick comparison I can see that some of the artist bios and album descriptions are exactly the same in Plex and Roon, both systems use “top / popular tracks”, “similar / related artists” etc. In Plex you also get free music videos from Vevo, To get your own music videos into Plex is currently a hassle and Plex is not perfect. If it was, why do you think I paid $100 for Roon?
Roon’s “Experience Music Like Never Before” and similar hyped slogans led me to believe that Roon would blow my mind! So far I don’t experience Roon any better than Plex. They both have shortcomings and especially Roon needs a more polished user interface. When it comes to metadata they both get it wrong some times but in Plex I can easily correct that manually. Most of my Swedish albums have better metadata in Plex (but a few are better in Roon). A feature I would like to see in both is the option to correct the metadata and then send it automatically to the metadata provider so that they can look into it.
I really hope Roon will fulfil my expectations in the near future but I think the way to success is to listen to the people coming with feature requests and criticism rather than to the “Everything is awesome”-choir (like Emmet in the Lego movie)
Yes and that is also what I meant…and as an Alpha tester, I’ve had access to the same for a much longer period
And as I said, there is simply NO comparison between the Metadata handling capabilities of Plex compared to Roon…with Roon being far more advanced in terms of the returned data, the relationships between the various layers…and the interactivity
But it’s easy for people to try both and see for themselves
There is room for improvement within Roon certainly…but its starting point is at a much higher level than that available on other music players of the moment
Roon have already stated that Manual Editing is on the way…and as for your claims of it needing “a more polished UI”, there again, we don’t agree
I’m sure Roon’s UI will improve over time with new Themes and other options…but IMHO Plex and others are far more restricting
Hi @Machine – thanks for raising these issues. I wanted to drop a quick line so you know you’re not being ignored. I don’t agree with everything you’ve said, but you’ve absolutely raised a number of really good points, and I’m looking into them one by one.
Some of these questions require me to look into our database, track where the information is coming from, and then talk with our developers about why things are this way, and what we can do to improve our metadata. You’ve already given me and the team plenty to think of, but gathering this info takes time, so thanks in advance for your patience. Expect a more substantive response soon.
For now, I just wanted to make sure you know we take this feedback seriously and look forward to discussing it further, so keep it coming.
@mike : Thank you for your response. I really appreciate that you are into this and it is not that important to get an answer today. For me it’s enough to know that this is not ignored somehow. If I can help you in any way, eg providing you with information about certain albums or whatever please get back to me.
Roon has certainly the potential to become a real killer application given that you are just at the beginning and I would be glad to help you (and so also me) getting there.
I got it because everywhere you can read of the deep expressive metadata capabilities but if there is no metadata ( in terms of quantity ) it cannot be deep as I already said. And as you can read in first post I have another understanding of deep.