Lately I’ve been using the ‘Your Daily Mixes’ feature which I never really used much before. I notice it tends to play my iTunes AAC files instead of my FLAC files for the exact same tracks/albums. Does Roon choose based on the folder name structure of my music (shown below is how mine is setup), or is there a way to force it to always play the higher quality version? I can’t make heads or tails as to why it chooses AAC over FLAC. Thanks.
Which one is configured as the primary version?
Looking at this more, when I look at ‘Storage’, I have the below folder defined (external hard drive hooked up to ROCK NUC):
The folder layout of that directory is as follows:
So I only have one folder it’s looking at, with the above subdirectories. Have I been doing myself a disservice all this time in how I have this setup for Roon? 
The layout is OK, I think, but as this is an external drive you could configure two locations in Settings > Storage, then you could use Focus to only use either one. Or, if you don’t need the AAC, you could turn this location off in Settings > Storage during normal operation
Do you know if the naming convention matters for ‘Primary’ if I setup multiple locations? Does it go in alphabetical order of the directories specified, meaning the first letter of such folders is considered ‘Primary’, or is there a ‘sort order’ function after you add multiple locations? I’m also wondering if the small ‘i’ in ‘iTunes’ is causing that to be ‘Primary’ in the Linux world? If I can avoid having to change this name that would be great - but can certainly do so if it would fix the ‘Primary’ issue (if that is how it works).
So I could do as you suggest and create the following storage locations (instead of just having one):
ROONMEDIA/FLAC ARCHIVE
ROONMEDIA/iTunes (or ITUNES if it matters with the first letter)
ROONMEDIA/OTHER MUSIC
I like the idea of using Focus for different directories (this was on my projects list to do at some point). Thanks for the help!
Good question, I have no idea. My guess would be that if it finds two versions of the same album in different quality, that it would pick the higher quality one by default as primary. Seems to make sense but it’s a wild guess.
If the quality one exists first and then a higher quality one is added, I have even less clue.
The Focus stuff would work for interactive browsing but probably won’t affect automatic mixes, radio, etc.
Sorry 
I found a related thread to this:
I did have 'Show hidden tracks and albums" on, so I set that to off. But it seems there’s some logic not working in Roon to play the higher quality version instead of the mp3 version.
Maybe the defined storage location(s) set have nothing to do with the default Primary version being set in Roon, unless someone knows otherwise. If it has no impact, I’ll leave my storage location setup as-is (until I want to change it in order to improve using Focus by separating it out more).
There is also this recent one from the same user:
In this case the complaint was that the mix did NOT play the local library version, but instead a higher quality from streaming. And now that I read it, I think that the complaint in the past was that mixes/radio didn’t play the local library version, and I think this was improved, and now that’s not right either 
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I’ll leave everything alone then … doesn’t seem like I can change anything
Oh no, you read this wrong I think. I do want the highest quality played. If it’s in my local library as an old MP3 and Roon finds a Tidal version, FLAC or MQA, then please Roon select the highest quality. My MP3’s sound bad now that I have Tidal sources.
Maybe I should split my local library and only give that part to Roon where it can’t find sources in Tidal… And keep the rest as an archive.
I believe this was my understanding, but in that thread it seemed that you have the mp3 in your local library but you nevertheless wanted the higher quality streaming version played.
Which I understand, but my point was that I seem to recall previous complaints by others that it picked a streaming version and they argued it should pick their local file version because there’s a reason that’s they have this local file version. And this is reasonable as well.
So I think (but may be wrong) that Roon made changes to prefer the local version, which is not what you want.
To satisfy everyone it probably needs a more versatile set of preferences, but this comes with its own downsides such as additional complexity
To clarify my ask (excluding streaming): if I have both MP3 and FLAC version of album/tracks in my local library, play the FLAC file over the MP3 (what Roon does a lot of time is play the MP3 version instead of FLAC).
If I include streaming (less important to me): play highest quality version (e.g. FLAC from local library, Streaming version, MP3 version will always be last).