Not able to take screenshots at the moment but just started radio from a song called humming bees from aditya, best described as Indian electronic music and radio went all over the place but found out the song is on a compilation album with the following tags, Bollywood, Country, Electro, Electronic, Jazz and World. No that’s asking for trouble. This afternoon it hapoened twice that radio started after a song but shiwed as playing similar to your library. Excuse me fir not constantly being 100% focussed on it so I don’t know what started it.
Since v1.4 the selection of music in Radio has been very strange. I just played an album of Baroque vocal music (From Monteverdi to Handel sung by Sara Mingardo) from Tidal. When completed, Radio then selected a jazz vocal track by Patricia Barber, followed by the Dvorak Cello Concerto played by Rostropovich. Next up is ‘Gentle Blues’, acoustic jazz by the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio to be followed by Santana! Maybe there is a connection between these selections but it is not immediately apparent - from this listeners perspective it is annoyingly erratic.
I have noticed this behaviour several times. Prior to v1.4 the music selected by Radio remained more consistent with the initial music style. Have others experienced this problem?
Thanks for the feedback @John_Tunley – we are gathering feedback on Radio and the selections will continue to improve over time.
For now, the most helpful thing you can do to help us improve is provide some of the information I mentioned above, so we can look into this in more depth. Thanks!
Roon Radio was the primary reason I found it easy to justify the annual cost of Roon. With Radio 1.0, it was as though Roon was SMARTLY curating stations of LIKE music for me. Sure it could be repetitive at times - but it seems the fix in 2.0 tossed out the baby with the bath water.
My journey with Radio 2.0 this morning:
From Yes to Genesis (good) then to Lou Reed (WTF?) then to The Band (really?) then The Who, Little Feat, Cat Stevens, and The Allman Brothers.
No doubt all great artists, but this has ventured so far from Roundabout from Yes that it almost seems entirely random. I used to like Radio keeping me closer in musical proximity to the song that launched Radio.
Interesting - a Fleetwood Mac track (Sentimental Lady) was just followed by Jeff Beck (Freeway Jam). Really? A track from the Dead then followed that (Rosemary). Really? Would any human curator pick these tracks based on a request to play songs like Roundabout? Maybe, but I wouldn’t want him DJing for me.
It used to seem as though Roon was SMARTLY curating stations of LIKE music for me. If I want to sit down to hear Yes and music like Yes, I shouldn’t have to sit through Loy Reed or the Dead or have to reach to my remote to skip over their tracks. If I’m in the mood to stretch that far from Yes, Roon should let me choose to venture that far.
I was able to easily justify Roon’s because of Radio. I’m seriously bummed that this feature has been so radically changed.
Roon should consider adding a slider that allows the user to govern how far Radio stretches from the track that initiated Radio. At the minimum setting, it would use Radio 1.0’s algorithm. At maximum setting it would use stretch to using Radio 2.0’s algorithm. I’d want to set it somewhere in between, but much closer to 1.0. In the short term, I’d be thrilled just to be able to switch back to the 1.0 algorithm. Can you please bring that back as an option?
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Maybe your library doesn’t fit Roon 
Disconnect local files and see if Tidal may please you mow ?
Maybe you discover some good new artists.
I would definitely support a return to the previous algorithm which I consistently enjoyed. Now I invariably stop radio very quickly because of the erratic selections.
Different strokes… I found the prior version of a Radio very repetitive and predictable.
I would support the sliders idea. Great to be able to determine whether I’m in an adventurous mood or want a narrow selection.
BTW to the OP: those all look like fine classic rock selections. If you wanted Prog alone, why not use Genre?
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Previous radio was dreadful and played the same artists and albums over and over.
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“Why not use Genre?” Because the previous Radio 1.0 feature was smarter than that.
Right after I submitted my post here yesterday, Roon Radio determined that “Thunder Road” by Springsteen is similar to Roundabout. Both are great songs, but other that how is it that they are considered similar?
Roon: please give us the option to switch back to Radio 1.0. Or give us a algorithm that’s a good as 1.0’s at finding similar songs but is less inclined to be repetitive,
Agree that the new Radio function is a bit broken, I have audio-books in my library … and yes these are played … Beethoven followed by Stephen King … perfect.
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Second that…it isn’t as good as it used to be.
I’ve noticed over prolonged sessions it just goes crazy now–adding classical tracks, even holiday tracks to the original jazz selection I made.
Needs a do-over.
I think it needs variable settings.
Thanks for the feedback @Ken_Bauernfreund @John_Tunley @A_Brewer @James_I – if you scroll up a bit in this thread, you’ll see my post laying out some ways to give us detailed feedback on Radio.
We’ve spent a lot of time building and refining a new algorithm from scratch, and in most cases the selections should be significantly better. I’m sure there are exceptions, and we are very interested to hear about them, as the current functionality is just the start, and we intend to continue improving Radio over time.
In particular, screenshots of the original selection’s album page, alongside Radio’s subsequent “bad” selections, will really allow us to dig in here. We appreciate the feedback and look forward to continuing to improve this important feature.
Thanks for the feedback all!
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Hoi Mike, I really don’t have a clue why but radio improved when I rescanned my library. Must have changed some import settings that I wasn’t aware off. I also have been busey merging genres from Roon and my own. My opening post was not as much as a critic but as a question. Would be nice to know what parameters are being used for radio.
@mike, I have to say that the new Radio algorithm seems to take some odd turns now and then. Here’s an example, starting with a Handel opera (on Tidal)
The queue shows some interesting detours with the Magnetic Fields, Prince and Queen…
All albums are identified, and I’m using genres extracted from file tags at the moment. I’ll try the same seed using genres from Roon’s metadata database, and then both, to see what difference that makes…
I’m using Roon’s genres. I went back and selected Roundabout from Yes to start Radio. Roughly half the songs Radio selected seemed “similar to Roon”. The screenshots that follow shows some of the dissimilar songs.
A couple other songs deemed similar were “Your Song” by Elton John and “E Street Shuffle” by Bruce Springsteen.
@mike I hope this helps.
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Great song line up there…
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I have to say that I think the new radio algorithm is much improved.
I almost always play (from my library) tracks or albums and then let radio have its way for a while. The old algorithm was generally awful as it was so repetitive, but the new one is much tighter - remaining much more focussed on the genre / tags of the ‘seeding’ track or album.
All of my tracks / albums are carefully tagged (with a lot of help from Discogs) and my collection is rock / pop / electronica in the majority, with very little classical / other - if that helps.
Apparently I have 5,452 albums / 72,540 tracks / 2,214 artists - although that does now include almost every Tidal MQA album available!
