I know this is going to be frowned upon by many but I would love to have a truly random play function on all my music. I’m not a classical music buff (obviously) and it’s certainly not the first genre I turn to but I do like to dip in and out just in case I stumble upon something that I really like. Currently, though, I have to skip lots of tracks if it picks out a classical album. On ‘Romeo and Juliet’ this was about 35 tracks this morning to get it back on random play.
Also, I’m sure that a lot of rock, pop or folk musicians etc would argue that their album was just as deserving to be heard in one go and in one particular order. Just saying that I’m aware that I’m annoying to everyone, not just classical composers.
Roon’s swim function (aka Radio) understands classical works, because to swim randomly into the middle of a classical work is akin to opening a book at random and reading from the first word on the page. It makes no sense. This is good design, and luckily for you it is also controllable.
If you don’t want to hit large classical works while swimming/random play/“Radio”, then do the following:
Browse Albums
Focus on - (minus) Genre Classical
Press “Play all” top left.
And hey presto, swimming with no large classical works in the way.
Aha, thanks. But I would like some classical in my listening - when I’m in the random mood. I totally understand why people wouldn’t understand me wanting to hear one movement of a symphony (say) but I’d like the option.
(The problem is more extreme than that, as movements are often split over multiple tracks, so you won’t get one movement, you’ll just get a bleeding chunk of one…)
I wish Roon would randomize by album, or by work, within a playlist. Obviously, for classical, randomizing by track makes no sense – only album or work make any sense.
RYI the software suite Musichi does a very nice job with classical. You are able to randomize a playlist by album or by work. This makes the most sense.
Yes, I really agree it makes no sense. I wouldn’t do this with serious listening. But I do a lot of listening during the day when I’m working and often use random play to dip into parts of my collection I’m not so familiar with. Call it education. If I listen to a random, unfamiliar movement and like it I’m more likely to play the whole symphony or concerto or opera when I sit down in an evening and listen properly.
I agree with Graeme_Allan that randomizing by work would make more sense with Classical music. However, my experience is that Works is a work in progress. Also, i suspect many Classical music lovers have organized tags so that a work is treated as an Album since the “Work” tag was not functional before Roon (except on other platforms that might not have been very popular).
Is there any way of telling Roon that a piece of music is not a ‘Work’ and so is treated just like a ‘normal’ album? Even if we ignore the merits of random play with classical music I find if irritating when Roon lands on, say, ‘Tommy’ and plays it all when I want to hear single tracks from my collection in a random fashion.
I would love to have a Random Play feature too, where you hit a button and random tracks from your library are queued up. Great way to call up those forgotten parts of your library…
I used to do this all the time with Logitech Media Server. LMS calls it Random Mix.
I’ll jump back in. Yes for Random play, but with options, e.g. Random by Works, Albums or Tracks within a selected set of music. The selected set of music could be a playlist, a manually selected grouping, or a bookmarked set.
This option would raise the usability of Roon to a new level.