Seems to be MIA…
I used to drop files into the Roon folder (“organized”), and it would automatically create the folder structure and put the files in the right place. Now they just sit there. Roon still sees them, but it doesn’t organize anything anymore…
Is this by design? Can we get the “organized folders” functionality back?
Thanks,
Alex
Yes, it is by design, as mentioned in their changelog for version 1.3:
Lame. Extremely lame. I wonder why they did it. Just keep the damn functionality there!
For months now, the Roonies have been advising against the use of Organised Folders. The feature caused problems for some users. IMO, the decision to drop Organised Folders was the right one. Roon doesn’t need them.
I have seen claims on other forums that Roon messes with people’s file structures. I have even seen it said that it is “a well known fact” that Roon does this. Even though there are enough warning signs when people decide to turn on the “organized” folders feature, it still seems people have to be protected from themselves. A good idea to remove it I think, and avoid the risk of re-arranging someone’s carefully organised music folder.
Organised folders were sent to live on a farm upstate. There’s open meadows for them to gambol and run and a lot of other redundant software for them to hang out with.
Seriously though, Organised folders only served a purpose because Roons Watched folder analysis and recognition tools weren’t as good as they might be. Those tools have now had some generations of development. The only change Roon can now make to your files is if you tell it to delete local content. No doubt someone will do that (despite the warning prompt) and we can then read about how Roon deletes files.
To be honest i accidentally put on the organized folders and it completly ruined my structure wich i have build over the years. Ofc i had back ups, but in the end i did spent a shitload of time bring it back in the orginal state. So i am truly happy its gone one thing less to worry about.
All I can say is that I’ve recently only used Roon to actually organize my folder, as none of my DAC/streamers are compatible. Now that the only feature I’ve used is gone, I wish I could get a refund for my money…
And the argument that “people need to be protected from themselves” is wrong on so many levels. It truly boggles my mind.
So, instead of working on the UI and making sure people wouldn’t accidently use the feature they didn’t mean to, you just scrap the feature altogether?
That said, any recommendations for software that will do the same as the old “organized folders” feature? Other than iTunes, of course…
the feature was fundamentally flawed… it assumed metadata was not only always there, but that it was 100% accurate
you still have the functionality you want, just export your music and then replace the old with the new (delete old, move new into place)
this way, you control exactly what you want organized
Ah? I don’t see it that way. If metadata wasn’t there, Roon would use the file tags. And if that failed, you could then identify the album in the Roon UI, and, once identified, the files would be appropriately put in a folder structure, all by Roon itself. And that’s precisely what I used Roon for. I just dropped my files into the Roon folder, and it magically created the folder pairings for artist/album, renaming the files so they’d have track numbers, etc. If there was a mistake in the original metadata, I could always correct it in the UI, and then Roon would fix it in the file structure. That’s a standalone, useful feature right there.
I don’t get your suggestion either. Export from where? Replace?
I don’t need to control anything, I want my software to control it for me. The fact that Roon caved and gave in for the control freaks that need to have their file structure “just so” is really sad. I just want my stuff to be in Artist/Album structure, and I don’t want to have to do it manually, which I now will have to.
OK, got the “Export” option there… So I’ll add stuff, then Export it to the same Roon folder. Seems to work. Not ideal, but I guess it’ll have to do for now until I find a replacement…
Well, if you export to same folder, you will end up with duplicates… then you must delete the duplicates
I understand your frustration, but we clearly are coming from differing points of view here. It’s unfortunate a feature you used safely and appropriately is gone. We knew there would be some casualties along the way, but we felt it was the right thing to do.
All I can do offer is my condolences… 
Danny,
Thanks for the attention here in this thread. Indeed we’re seeing things from two angles, I just wished you guys didn’t take the easy way out, and effectively worked to make sure the feature worked for everybody, not just for those who can use it “safely” 
Maybe a toggle in new “Library Settings” Preferences (off by default) would do the trick. Or maybe an option in the “Add Storage Location” panel, also off by default. And once selected, a message could pop explaining that Roon will change the folder structure, proceed with caution, bla bla bla.
Can’t get any safer than that! Well, only if you nuke the feature altogether 
We made the warning progressively more red, and more scary, and made you click a checkbox to confirm you understood, etc – unfortunately, people continued to blow past all the warnings and use the feature to cause irreversible problems for themselves… Which points to something fundamentally wrong with the design of the feature.
There were really two issues here: first off, the underlying logic of the file organization needed a good deal of work, just to function as expected. In particular, it had difficulty with complex situations where you have multiple versions of the same album that were all named similarly.
In these cases, Roon needs to split the albums into folders, label them in a sensible way, etc. Organized folders never worked properly in these cases, and the results were often unacceptable, with multiple versions of an album merged into a single folder.
The second issue is more fundamental – a folder that automatically moves files around without warning or confirmation needs to be perfect, but basing those actions on metadata (which can never really be perfect) is always going to yield some unpredictable results.
So, we decided to address the first issue by designing some very smart logic to ensure that albums are sorted into folders as expected, even when multiple editions exist. And we deployed that new logic in the newly rewritten Export feature, since the 2nd issue is really insoluble – unpredictable automatic file moves are always going to catch people by surprise, and simply don’t make for a good, predictable feature.
I also used organized folders, and my personal use case was for podcasts and DJ mixes – files I could download from wherever, tag, and drop into my organized folder so they end up neatly organized someplace. What I’ve realized testing 1.3 over the last few months is that when I tagged these files correctly, they tend to show up correctly in Roon – the folder structure on my hard drive didn’t actually matter very much. And, when I actually want to organize files into folders, export is absolutely sufficient.
So, from that perspective no functionality has been removed here; Roon can still organize your files, but it does it in a safe, deliberate way. Only the automatic nature of the file moves – the cause of so much confusion and frustration – has been removed.
Your dacs/ streamers from Noah’s ark?
evand,
This was a completely useless and unnecessary comment, thank you.
You need to get out more. You’ll see not everybody is enamored with Roon.
I guess I don’t understand what you mean by this statement. You don’t explain what the compatibility problem is; with or without Roon, none of my DACs or Streamers have ever had compatibility issues with my own files.
I couldn’t understand it too.