Removing Old Tags

[Mike_O_Neill]

I previously imported Big Boxes as a collection of single “pseudo albums” and then Created a Roon Tag to hold the collection of “pseudo albums”

I revised my thoughts as this wasn’t really successful.

I have now decided to import those Big Boxes each as a single album. BUT the album still contains the Tag I added previously . Clicking it says there is no such tag

Is there any way to delete the tag at Album level . The Roon Tag was previously deleted from the tag view to clean up otherwise empty Tags

[connor]

Hi @Mike_O_Neill,

Very sorry for the poor turnaround time here and that you’ve been kept waiting.

Just to clarify,

• the Roon Tag you created is no longer listed in Focus or in the Tags browser (ie. deleted at the Roon-level)?
• If you click on the three dots in the Album view for the Big Box and access the Manage Tags screen, the Roon Tag is not added to these albums?

Forgive the redundancy, I just want to double-check before we proceed, since this might be a caching issue.

The heavy-handed solution is to refresh your Roon database. You’ll want to create a backup to retain any customizations to your library and settings, but I recommend deleting these particular Big Box sets/albums from your library first, so the backup does not contain any tags that are lingering.

Please take the following steps and let me know if you have any questions:

• Stop RoonServer from running in ROCK’s WebUI
• Navigate to your ROCK’s Database Location
• Find the folder that says “RoonServer”
• Rename the “RoonServer” folder to “RoonServer_old”
• Restart the RoonServer in the WebUI to generate a new Roon database folder
• On the Roon Remotes, press “Use another Core” and connect to the new database

We’ll keep an eye out for your response.

[Mike_O_Neill]

Hi @connor

With 200k tracks, many of them just imported the last thing I fancy doing is rebuilding a db !

Let me give an example. The Alfred Brendel 114 box , originally I split out the CD’S as ‘pseudo albums”. I created a Roon Tag Alfred Brendel Complete Philips

I gave up and deleted that Tag in the Tag View, but the box discs still carries a reference to the old (deleted) tag. Now I have an album with 114 discs. The album shows the old tag name , when I click on it I am told this tag no longer exists in your library. I have removed the ROONALBUMTAG tag externally to no avail

What I want to do is remove the reference to the old tag on the album page as it’s no longer relevant and does actually exist any more. If I tap add to tag the Manage Tag windows but of course the tag I want to remove isn’t there . It’s been deleted previously. Similarly if I go Album>Focus then tags I get the same list.

In addition , if you want to resurrect a Tag , you can’t use a name that has been previously used, that’s fine but you still can’t if the named tag has been deleted. Ie Roon is somehow checking for duplication in Tag Names current and history.

If you actively manage tags like this , indecisively it makes a mess.

It seems 2 “bugs”

1. Allow removal of a (removed or redundant) tag at album level. Currently you can do the inverse of removing an album from a tag , but not the other way around, even an active tag

2. Check for duplication of Tag Names in currently active tags , not current and history so tag name can be reused

Clear as mud ?

[connor]

Hi @Mike_O_Neill,

Thank you for your response, and I understand your hestiation. The two issues you’ve just referenced are both most possibly underpinned by issues with cached data or incorrect filepaths being retained within Roon. In other words:

@Mike_O_Neill

e Roon is somehow checking for duplication in Tag Names current and history.

This is precisely what we’re hoping to resolve with a database refresh. If you perform a backup, refreshing the database by performing the steps in my previous post will not subject you to hours of re-importing (don’t worry).

@Mike_O_Neill

With 200k tracks, many of them just imported the last thing I fancy doing is rebuilding a db !

As long as you create a backup you can restore, or have a recent automated backup, then restoring this backup will retain your entire Library as well as any playlists, custom DSP settings, Zones, etc. This is simply a procedure step to refresh conditions; any cached filepaths will be overwritten.

This may not resolve the issue. However, it will illuminate the source of the bad behavior and why these Box Sets are retaining deleted tags at the Album level. It will also clear log noise from cached data that will allow tech support to expedite our investigation. If you have the time, I do recommend trying the database refresh (after creating a Backup you can restore once it’s refreshed). Please let us know if it changes this behavior.

The tech support team will attempt to ping your Core again for a diagnostic report in the meantime so we can see what’s triggering the “ghost” tag. I’ve noticed our previous attempts failed as the ROCK has been offline - if you’re able to, please bring your Core online for at least one hour so it can report to our servers.

Thank you for your patience, @Mike_O_Neill!

[Mike_O_Neill]

I back up daily so that is not an issue.

My problem is that big box sets are not particularly well served in Roon , so until this week, I have kept them out of Roon and managed and played them through JRiver. It’s not trivial, around 60k tracks

I made the decision to add a USB external drive to my ROCK setup to supplement the 4 tb internal SSD , that drive now contains all the big boxes and hence the source of the errant tags.

With all appropriate backups etc it’s taken me nearly a week to get “straight “ , we are getting power load shedding sometimes 2.5 hrs 3 times a day so I cannot leave jobs running overnight , even unattended during the day

Hence my reticence to create a new db, you suggest removing the offending boxes , this would put me back a full week and back where I started.

If the fix cannot be achieved any other way then I will live with spurious tags. My Roon db is stable and has given me no grief for 6 years , so I am of the mind “leave well enough alone”

The errors do , to my dev mind , point to something that could be fixed in code and probably should . Eg the disallowing of existing tag names seems to be including history as well as current , is that not a bug. Clearly deleting a tag leaves some sort of history.

Removing a tag at album level is maybe a feature request

[Dirk_De_Taey]

@Mike_O_Neill

It seems 2 “bugs”

1. Allow removal of a (removed or redundant) tag at album level. Currently you can do the inverse of removing an album from a tag , but not the other way around, even an active tag
2. Check for duplication of Tag Names in currently active tags , not current and history so tag name can be reused

Hi Mike
I am very intrigued by you problems, no pun intented !

I have been playing a little bit with this, and indeed there seems to be a problem.
However, the good news is, the problem does not happen (at least with me) on all platforms.
Let me explain

First my situation:
Core: Pinkfaun 2.16X Server, running on Audiolinux - Roon version 2.0 build: 1143
Remotes:

• iPad Air Pro – 128GB - running iPadOS 15 - Roon version 2.0 build: 1141
• Samsung S10e – Android version 12 Roon version 2.0 build: 1141 Wifi 6
• PC running Windows 11 Home - 11th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i7 - Roon version 2.0 build: 1143
  So all running latest version of Roon software.

Working on my Windows 11 - Roon Remote - PC , I seemed to have similar issues not being able to create a tag that existed before, but with 1 difference: I do not get any error messages.

I was extremely surprised, as I first tested it on my iPAD, and surprise, surprise:
The new tag ‘TEST’ is created and visible on my iPAD (it remains unvisible on Windows 11)

On my iPad I can add albums to the tag:

and a 2nd one:

and in My Tags:

I can again delete the tag TEST and it will disappear both in My Tags and at Album level
(no pictures)

So, if you can get your hands on an iPad (or maybe an Android tablet) there is maybe a good chance to you can get rid of you ‘ghost’ tag.
Not really a ghost but just invisible in Windows, or is that a ghost, being there but invisible slight_smile:

I hope this is helpfull

Dirk

[connor]

Thanks for elaborating, @Mike_O_Neill and @Dirk_De_Taey. I believe these posts paint a gestalt issue of what’s going on. The team will need a chance to review this internally, but I will escalate and circle back.

[Mike_O_Neill]

I am running a NUC I7 Core on ROCK and use an iPad 12.9 for control, my desktop is Windows 10 again only for control

I thought I was seeing the issue on both (until you said) I will try and see what I can get !!

[Mike_O_Neill]

@Connor
@Dirk_De_Taey

I think I rename this to VERY OLD Tags

All this was done on Windows 10 using the Roon UI 2.0 as a remote. All previous work was done in iOS14 on my iPad 12,9 hence I wasn’t posting pictures

I just created a Tag @Test
Added an album
Deleted from Tag View - it deleted from the Album as expected

I re-created the same Tag Name repeatedly without error

But OLD tags don’t do this

Bach Complete - Hanssler is passed from a ROONALBUMTAG edited externally 1 week ago under 2.0

Click on [Bach Complete Works - Hanssler] and I get this

So it would appear to be old tags , they are no longer on the Tag list. This one Bach Complete Works - Hanssler was probably created from a ROONALBUMTAG in an older version probably 1.7 , before I left big boxes out of my library

I managed to create a NEW tag [Bach Complete Works - Hanssler] (there was no duplicate name error but there used to be) and added an album to it , when I deleted the Tag it deleted the spurious Tag Reference along with it

I get it duplicated (Identical spelling as far as I see)

Now I delete the new tag
it deletes one not the other , I would assume the new version

How odd , so it looks like older tags , newly added tags seem to behave themselves

Phew I wasn’t imagining it

PS the duplicate checking seems not to be a problem anymore , I was allowed to create a new tag with and old deleted name but as you see it created a duplicate - sort that out

[Dirk_De_Taey]

I am sorry to put things on the wrong track, as in fact their is no ‘real’ problem in Windows with creating new tags.
The only issue is that on My Display , the number of tags shwon in My Tags is limited to 20 (5 rows with 4 tags)

Creating a new tag ‘TEST’ is added at the end since my last tag is ‘Society of Sounds’, and not visible.
However, if I change Sorting Order to ‘Date Added’ , of course the new tag is in 1st position.

So, please ignore all my comments, nothing to do with the issue you are dealing with

Dirk

[Mike_O_Neill]

I often number my tags to make sure they come first