Roon does not play Albums with semicolons in the folder name

Roon Software Discussion TIDAL
1

Meanwhile I have bought this album:

https://i.imgur.com/GkRBIBL.png

I was not able to play it in Roon streaming it from Tidal - too many errors, so I bought the CD and linked it to the Roon Library - same result: too many errors.

Then I looked at the filenames and folder name: The album folder name includes a “semicolon”. So I renamed the folder name from “Satomi Saeki;Alcvin Takegawa Ramos” to “Satomi Saeki_Alcvin Takegawa Ramos” and now it works!

So it would be great if you could fix this issue with the semicolons in filenames. You do not see the semicolon by looking into the album-title in Tidal etc. of course.

2

That’s bizarre. I have hundreds of albums and tracks with semicolons in the file names, and I have no such problems. :thinking:

3

That is strange, I’m using semicolons in the file path without issues too (default dbpoweramp character substitution).

4

@Theodore_Huber what type of file system do your music files sit on?

5

What OS , isn’t a semi colon illegal in a Windows file name, as is a colon ?

6

No, a semicolon is allowed in a Windows file name.

7

Learn something new everyday, a colon isn’t is it ?

8

A colon isn’t allowed :wink:

reserved characters in file names/path in Windows:

    < (less than)
    > (greater than)
    : (colon)
    " (double quote)
    / (forward slash)
    \ (backslash)
    | (vertical bar or pipe)
    ? (question mark)
    * (asterisk)
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9

I have my Roon Server on a Synology NAS. I guess the problem seems to be there. I listen to Roon on my iPhone, iPad, MacOS and Windows, streaming from the Synology NAS. Before I had the same errors on all these devices. After renaming the album folder, all was fixed.

10

I employ a Synology NAS as well. The filesystem choices there are ext4 and btrfs. No issues with semicolons on those. Something else is going on. I wonder if there is a double-byte character that is “hidden” in the filename. What happens if you take the folder and manually type in a semicolon (;) again?

11

Hi ddps, I renamed it back and added the semicolon manually and it played the tracks. So you are right, there must be a hidden character in the album name which is the problem. I will take a look again at the cd and try to copy the name here.

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12

It’s a Japanese album, and what almost certainly happened was that the hidden character got added in as part of the process of translating the Japanese metadata to English.

Did you buy the album online and just drop it into your server without editing the metadata? If so, then the corrupting character was there when you purchased the download.

I’ve had this issue enough that when I purchase a download I always open it in a metadata editor (I often use Metadatics on my Macbook) and replace it. As I often want or need to do something with the album art anyway.

Glad you got it sorted.

13

Well the problem is only partly solved: as mentioned this album still does not play when streamed from tidal through roon.

14

In the end I bought the cd version on Amazon. Since the quality is crap on Spotify and tidal with roon did not work on my synology nas.

15

Plays fine for me

16

It’s an aac album on Tidal…

Does Roon-on-Synology require ffmpeg?

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17

I believe it does. I briefly had Roon Server running on Synology and I am almost certain that I had to install ffmpeg to get some of my local files playing.

Unfortunately, I only installed it once and I can’t remember where I got the instructions from.

The web site at Roon On NAS gives very basic installation instructions but does refer to ‘follow the instructions on screen’ referring to instructions offered by the installer.

18

Good point, yes it does. Plenty of info in existing threads:

https://community.roonlabs.com/search?context=topic&context_id=261709&q=Synology%20aac&skip_context=true

It’s funny how the codec and the apparently hidden character in the file name conspired in this one instance to confuse the issue.

19

Coincident faults are always fun…

I wouldn’t have expected either ‘fault’ to show up as ‘too many errors’. But I don’t have a Synology.

1 Like
20

All other albums from tidal play well on my side too with the roon synology nas. So the problem still persists with the hidden special characters.