Roon is simply unusable for classical collectors

They’re good in moderation, but become unwieldy if too many.

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an interesting observation about editing compositions in Roon. You can’t edit directly from the composition browser but you need to navigate to the composition. [edit]: you can - I was too fast… Right-Click on the entry in the composition browser and select Edit.

It says "Concerto"as Form, but when I edit I see the following:

Roon says “No Value Set” (which is not true) and it offers a “Prefer File Data” option (which is set - I have no idea why) that I am not aware of. You cannot set that in the library settings. Is this mapped to some sort of file tag already???

Actually, there’s no composition file data Roon would read so the given choice is misleading. The only option is to enter something manually in the Edit :crayon: field.

Thanks, but considering the work involved its indeed a bit too far away from perfect

Yes, I’ve done a lot cleaning up that way in my collection. Note that the “Intrumentation” field is not editable, which renders it useless for me. “Solo keyboard” is meaningless as there is quite a difference between romantic Piano music and baroque organ music…

I also believe at this level a “Genre” field would make sense. Because a “Piano Concerto” is a piano concerto and stays a piano concerto, independent from the Album or Box Set or whatever.

NB: I have not tried to enter the Form in my tags, maybe Roon doesnt pick those up.

it doesn’t

That’s what I thought. Was just confused by the option.

But that brings me to something slightly different. I have many works which I have only on non-identified albums. Therefore there is not additional data for the work in Roon. It would be a nice feature to allow for “identify work”, similar to “identify album”.
As soon as I add a new album which can bei identified and which has the same composition on it, the work details appear for both…

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Thanks :wink: So we can probably add this to the ignored feature request list…

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… stay positive: it’s on the list of things still to come. :sunglasses:

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I just took a note in my calender for 2025 to check :sunglasses:

Why is genre not possible at track level in Roon? Seems something pretty basic.

It was a design decision, not an oversight. And I believe that will not change any time soon. See for instance this post:

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But that needs management outside of Roon. If you create your top 10 composers as Bookmarks they will automatically add to as you add new albums woth no action from you

In my legacy i have Genre and Sub Genre, NB no use in Roon just my legacy

Eg Orchestral, Concerto, Symphony, Chamber music, Keyboard, instrumental, Organ, Song, Opera, Choral these are fixed and numbered 1 - 10 eg

04 - Chamber Music

Then say Chamber, more Free Form, String Quartet, Piano Trio etc

In Opera i differentiate Aria, Excerpt, Overture and Full

In Jriver i use a Pane view, it makes drilling down very efficient

Just my way , there are many options
Composer, genre, sub genre Album etc

I admire your detailed metadata approach. Even before Roon, though, I’d simplified down to “Classical” (vs. “Bluegrass” or “Soundtrack” or “Broadway” or “Rock”, etc.) and have never tried to maintain a hierarchy.

That said, my albums are tagged very consistently (I still use iTunes for this, believe it or not), using pretty much all the default fields, carefully choosing Composer, Album Artist, using a standard for Album Title, etc., and my library shows up 100% correctly in Roon.

That is, I never have any difficulty finding albums, works, or tracks I wish to play, and I’m more than satisfied with the simplicity Roon brings to managing and playing my library of 7,500+ albums, 2,500 of which are classical.

This is not, of course, to say those who are NOT satisfied have no say - of course not! - just giving a comment from those who ARE satisfied, as well :wink:

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nah - you just didn’t check closely enough… :wink:

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With more than 6000 albums I couldn’t possibly say that I see errors as I spot them and fix them if I can

there are tools like Focus that can help but simple stuff like unidentified …

I too use iTunes for this purpose. I organize albums in folder hierarchies (one root folder, e.g. is “Classical”). I try to avoid deep hierarchies but I find the hierarchies help me focus down on what I am looking for: Clapton … Corea … or Chopin? Overall this works well for me when I want to pick some music, almost always an album or work or piece, depending on the type of music, from my library but want to browse as I pick the album. Once chosen, I then can quickly (most of the time) find it in Roon to listen to. Clunky but it works. Is that roughly how you use iTunes?

My approach avoids rigorous tagging which seems like lots of work. But I don’t have experience browsing a collection that is properly tagged, either, so can’t comment on the relative merits.

I maintain that some of these issues could be Mitigated by a few relatively quick fixes.

  • Allow separate libraries. That way, classical can be managed differently from other types of music as it demands.

  • A box set option (though you can accomplish a rough version of this with nested tags).

That said, as a former cataloger and tag tweaker who spent hundreds of hours ripping and organizing a large CD collection using a highly customized interface within MusicBee, count me among those who Roon has liberated from managing music to be able to simply listen to it.

I changed my habits - I now browse the Qobuz new/reissue Classical releases each Friday and revisit old favorites as well as discover new music and artists. For 90+% of the albums reviewed in classical periodicals like Gramophone and BBC Music, I can browse those magazines while jumping to the recordings. I still have access to my rips through a few easy tags and a search. I no longer obsess over how many versions of Mahler’s symphonies I have, and I can find any old chestnut or hear a new recording with a quick (albeit imperfect) search. In short, thanks to Roon, my enjoyment of music has never been greater.

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