While awaiting your answers I want to extend the definitions of the album metadata problematic a little bit :
Let’s take 2 real world known albums :
T.N.T. by AC/DC and Animals by Pink Floyd
Yes, they are of course identified when loading it into Roon but your metadata providers… Really, I don’t know how one will ever get there.
For T.N.T. there are more than 25 different releases out there and for Animals we have way over 100 (taking the release countries into account). I have to admit that both include cassette release which one doesn’t need I think but if I made a vinyl rip I would want to know.
One more problem I see is that really sometimes the same label releases versions with different catalog numbers (eg special editions etc.). The catalog numbers are in every album as tags that I have so I know which release I am having. In your database no catalog numbers or barcodes are there to choose from. Just the label is really often not enough, especially for productions that had great success and were re-released, remastered, reissued very often by different companies (and inside the same company in different versions)
So grooming for both in your database I found 4 versions for TNT and 4 for Animals. As I don’t think this will ever be fully covered by your providers I think people like me that want to have (AND see) such details will always have to go back to own tags for these reasons and so I am really looking forward to your reply on my suggestions regarding displaying own tags in the album details view, … And if it will be possible in the future to keep the “roon experience” with such a solution
Please make use of barcodes in Roon! Wouldn’t that give me the exact match? If that barcode doesn’t exist in the providers database I could get the option to either adjust the metadata and submit it to the provider (for that exact barcode) or I could choose to use data from the “wrong” release.
No the barcode alone won’t help you because the barcode might be the same amongst different releases, barcode is only one component, what absolutely fixes it is the catalog number of the label together with the release country and date. That’s the only way to get a 100% fine result.
Of course the barcode is enough if there is only one release with this barcode.
Yes, but remember : Also the catalog number can be same in different releases (eg countries, or promos vs regular releases) If you really want data or metadata somehow shown for the exact release you have in your collection you need a combination of this data.
Release date yes but where is country?
There are more things for a 100% idenitification like Matrix codes (for identifiying different pressings etc.) but this will lead too far.
As I already described a few posts before one of the greates things would be that in the album detail view I can define custom fields like catalog number, release country, label etc. which are then displayed there instead of an album review (chooseable) or if you have to switch back to your own tags also more custom information that you might have available and groomed over the years. There’s so much of it. I would love that, that would make it - for me - a great experience…
Or you can fill your own credits if you push the credits button - because this is only there if you use roons metadata. Which is great if your releases can be found…
@magnuslsjoberg : Another problem : If you don’t have an exact release date, only year, and you have a promo which was released in the same year as the regular release in the same country with the same catalog number… Then, the barcode might help or the matrix code on the disc.
But I think roon doesn’t have to handle all that in every aspect. Btw, I think roon would be able to do that all (matrix-code matching and other bloody things) but their metadata providers I think might not be able to serve them this data, especially from what I checked for certain albums already.
What I want to achieve is that you can get to great results with a little homework done. The work is not the problem, if I count the hours I already put into this, but the capabilites have to be provided and that’s one of the things I want to talk here about with them…
I’ve had flawless metadata results from Discogs, using MediaMonkey / AccurateRip as my library management system.
I “only” have 2700 albums / 28,500 tracks, but IMHO that’s pretty good performance…
Discogs seems to have a relatively complete database and hasn’t yet failed to find a promo CD or special edition, others might of course have different experiences, but wouldn’t adding (if it’s not already present) the identifiers that they use help to sort out the multitude of conflicts that people are experiencing ?
Hi Ronnie,
No, not yet, my comment was only as a suggestion in response to the recent comments on this thread.
From one HH’er to another - I’m waiting for my ID41 card to arrive for my 861v8 before I finally bite the bullet with Roon - hopefully later this week !
Serious & basic question though, to which I’ve not seen an answer elsewhere : when you install Roon & point it to a library, whether watched or not, does Roon alter the files in the library in any way, or does it build its own entirely separate database elsewhere ?
I’m running an iTunes library, an (entirely FLAC) SqueezeServer library, and I can of course run another, but I don’t want my “perfectly groomed” FLAC library interfered-with in any way whatsover.
That’s because discogs is great in terms of album metadata and it seems much more complete regarding releases than certain providers you have to pay for, much more. There’s one release I cannot find at discogs and many many I can’t find at AllMusic for instance, and if found many of them are just wrong or incomplete.
We’ll see what Roon makes out of the informations in this thread, a few posts before they told me they need some time for figuring out different issues and we should give them the time…
@rolski Just to say Roland, that I COMPLETELY disagree with the picture of being created here by Machine about mis-ID’s and missing data etc.
At this stage, I and many others here have imported large libraries [some of us up to 25,000 Albums] and have found found very small error rates in the way that Roon handles them…Machine’s experiences here are the exception and NOT the rule
Earlier in this thread, Machine has listed the Artists that he has metadata issues with…take a look at that list and see how many of those Artists are in your library, before starting to form opinions about what data source to use etc.
The picture being painted by Machine and a few others is simply not representative of the reports of the many here who have reported largely successful imports of their libraries into Roon
Also Roland, your 2,700 Albums will be imported into Roon in about 30 minutes…and their Folder Structure and ID3 Tags remain COMPLETELY untouched by Roon, as long as you use the preferred “Watched Folder” option
The data presented in the Roon UI is stored elsewhere in a Roon Database
Long story short, it will take you about 30 minutes to see how Roon manages your library and to see how “serious” this issue is for your library.
Hi Ronnie,
Thanks for the rational / balanced / informed feedback : as you’re alluding, there are always exceptions, and not even the established databases are entirely error-free - in fact some of them (as we already know) are far from that !
I’ll “bite the bullet” and see how it goes now that I know my tags won’t be disrupted.
@ronnie : why don’t you stop preaching your sermons here, really??? No one is against Roon, I want to work with them and help them also getting things to work for people like me. I gave plenty of examples now including giga albums like AC/DC’s TNT or Animals from Pink Floyd. 4 Releases available??? Are you kidding me or what? That’s not Roons fault but don’t tell anything here about the quality of AllMusic and the releases it holds for certain albums…
Maybe for some people it’s enough that an album is just identified, maybe also for you. For me it is not!! Most of my albums were identified somehow because there is any release out there from any date that fits to the tracklist… Is it my release? No? Do I want my release in my library? Yes…
If you have 10.000 albums I am sure that you don’t have checked if all releases are right, do you? I think you won’t have finished until now. It is not about only if an album can be identified somehow, there the hits are much higher also in my case, but are they the right release? Very often not… Can they be found manually? Very often not…
Then, the barcode might help or the matrix code on the disc.