I’ve been trying for the better part of 2 days to reload data into roon correctly, and how roon deals with the absence of data that may have been previously import incorrectly. I don’t want to drag out my long saga, but would rather investigate what, if any documentation is available that would help a user better understand what exactly is happening when simple changes, or additions are made to my NAS library, and what results should I expect to see in the roon database after a rescan.
To keep it short, I have a 3-disc set that I ripped and manually had to edit in JRiver (my standard tool) to add all the artist, album and track data. Three different folders were created under the artist - disc 1, disc 2, and disc 3. Folder one added correctly in to roon, but somewhere along the line disc 2, and disc 3, got - for lack of a better word - hopelessly jumbled up. Track names don’t match the correct file location shown under the file info data. This tells me that either; some of my data was hosed to begin with, or the roon master index(?) for these two discs(folders) could not sort something out properly. After fixing some naming conventions in my NAS file structure, I tried to reload the same three folders and the problem persists.
I’m willing to have a look at any documentation that is available to sort this out myself, so I’m asking if any such detail information exists to guide a casual user through some of the nuances of the roon database, without revealing any proprietary information.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
2
Not a metadata expert by far but I also use jriver to rip and edit my albums.
Quick question, are you editing the discs in jriver BEFORE you rip them as I have found that to be the only route to success.
I just then add in the bottom column of the details the disc number and when finished ( just done a 29 disc set) import the main folder with all the sub folders into my watched Roon storage location.
It’s also a very good idea to NOT have Roon running whilst doing this although not an absolute requirement but some tracks can get orphaned.
I always rip in JRiver and normally it will automatically load all the CD metadata from their online database. However, for some reason, this time it couldn’t find the CD information(very odd), so I manually added the artist, disc #, and track name using the keyboard( a real pain) following the normal naming convention JR would use if done automatically. So, yes, in this case edited everything in JR.
All my ripped tracks are saved in a staging area folder on my local computer. I then copy the tracks from the staging area directly to my NAS in the appropriate artist folder. At this point, I then startup roon and force an immediate rescan and the tracks are loaded without issue.
In this particular case, I’ve literally starting over about 3 times (I really loathe having to manually add the same info more than once on a keyboard! ). It would really be useful to understand exactly how roon behaves and adds and subtract data during a rescan and how their master index is maintained. I’ve tried the ‘Cleanup library’ options under; /Settings/Library to no avail.
My suspicion is that the master index got created when some track names did not correspond to their correct track #, yet in subsequent loads with corrective track data, they simply got loaded against the older index which would not necessarily be correct, hence the confusion created in the master index. See roon File Info below.
It would be nice if the user could simply view the master index and what tracks are orphaned when data is moved around, or unwittingly loaded incorrectly. I have no knowledge of roon’s database and maybe one of their developers could chime in here and enlighten us. If, roon does use some form of a relational database and it the tables have been properly normalized, I suspect the master keys - at a minimum - are made up of artist, album name, track #, and track name. But my assessment may be old school and not how databases are created/maintained in 2023.
I think you need to adjust your folder naming convention for boxsets. Subfolders for the individual discs in boxsets are best named CD1, CD2, …CDn for Roon. See:
Master folder for box named appropriately
CD1 subfolders per disc etc as @Geoff_Coupe says no extra text
The whole album title should be the same, no extras like Disc 2 etc
Anything other than pure CDx in the subfolders is treated as a separate album and will be imported as such
Use JRMC to set Disc # and renumber eacg disc starting at 1 , there is a JRMC tool
I followed the instructions per above, renaming the sub-folders to CD1, CD2, and CD3 - without any other text in the disc folder name - on my NAS. I then did a re-scan to add them to my library - hoping it fixed the issue. It did not. It kinda partially worked.
This time it imported the correct tracks for CD1 and CD3. On CD2 the tracks were in random order and the track name did not match the file info name. I went back and doubled checked my NAS folder for CD2 for the correct track order and name. All was good, and they played correctly using another generic DAP I had on my system.
So, it seems something is still not correctly ‘matched up’ in the roon database software leading to the track order, track title and the file info displayed by roon. I’m not sure how roon can tell the difference between the numbered tracks and incorrect ‘file info’ stored by roon. It appears it cannot and doesn’t know what to do. What it needs to do is delete all the CD2 track info first (index table?) before adding back in the correct(new) data for CD2 when a rescan is issued. But, that is an answer for the roon database gurus.
Mike, That’s essentially what I did, just a little differently. I simply deleted the CD2 folder from my NAS and then rescanned. I then re-copied the correct CD2 folder to my NAS and did another rescan. Voila.
Sometimes the simplest answer(approach) works. I was just assuming that roon would sort out any anomalies, but in retrospect, that was asking a bit too much. Anyway, it was my screwup but all is good now. Thanks for pitching in your solution.
Hopefully, my little saga/solution will help someone else having a similar issue.
I usually don’t have any problems with boxed sets. In this case, JRiver could not find a match in their database - which I thought was really odd - so all the CD information came up blank. So, I decided to enter all the CD, artist, album and track information by hand. Something I loathe, as there was likely a better way. but in the moment I was unaware of it. So, this approach should have worked, but of course something got fowled up along the way. Likely human error in situations like this.
). It would really be useful to understand exactly how roon behaves and adds and subtract data during a rescan and how their master index is maintained. I’ve tried the ‘Cleanup library’ options under; /Settings/Library to no avail.
