Roon is simply unusable for classical collectors

The metadata of your ripped CDs is certainly not properly taken care of when ripping

Collectors and listeners are perhaps two different things. (Although their paths cross at times)
One can still collect and document along side streaming and listening but you may need two options to make that work, Roon for listening and whatever for cataloging.

I don’t think the perfect solution exist. Did I see your tags were in German? Would changing the Roon language to German help? Probably not. It’s a long three to double check this stuff.

Being from Europe, I am in the same boat as @bbrip All my composers and artists are in the Beethoven, Ludwig van form, as I would like them to sort alphabetically in Windows Explorer, Foobar, jRiver etc.
I can totally accept that Roon expects a certain way of tagging. And I would be happy to change my tags, if I didn’t have to go get the correct metadata strings from allmusic copy / pasting line by line. That is not a comforting outlook and will keep me busy for the next 10 years.
A way out might be the following. I am assuming Roon does have a consistent object model (based on allmusic / Tivo) behing the glossy surface. Why not give the user a “works chooser” which allows him to select a number of tracks and manually select the correct work from Roon’s object database. Roon would then populate the PART and WORK tags accordingly.
Now THAT would solve most of the problem in my view, including strangely spelled Russian composers.
I have suggested this in another thread, but never got a response.

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You bet! They are based on a standard: My Own. That makes them instantly sorted properly, recognizable and searchable, without the need of a monstrous database.

As Roon does not understand the most simple basics (Symphony = Sinfonie, Beethoven, Ludwig van = Ludwig van Beethoven) its incabable of interpreting these standards and tries to copy and paste from non-standardized metadata sources - and fails.

Doesnt help to translate the user interface to other languages of the content is all english anyway. You get a multilangual mash at the end.

That actually sounds like a constructive idea but if there is even a little work involved I cannot see it happening. I have the feeling that these metadata issues are only important to a tiny handful, most of whom you probably know because they post on this forum (maybe this thread). Personally, I have many more “unidentified” compositions than I have unidentified albums. And of those most are unidentified streamed compositions rather than unidentified local compositions.

The issue is indeed with the unidentified compositions. I have no issue manually identifying an album which Roon does not find on its own. My problem is more with albums whose metadata is just abysmal and inconsistent, such as the Richter-Haaser Beethoven Sonatas discussed here


As Roon is unlikely to get the metadata fixed, a work chooser would solve this issue

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The question is really what information is important. Some tags are very important. Others not at all. Who cares to know the name of the booklet translater or the catering provider?

But then on important things Roon messes up. In my Schubert collection I want to see “pure” Schubert. Now I am getting all those mediocre piano arrangements from a guy called Franz Liszt listed under Schubert… What??

Here Roon gets it completely wrong. It may list the Booklet translater and second fiddler correct, but misses on the important stuff.

I had language set to German, but changed back to english. I hate getting bits in German (interface) and bits in English (content).

That is interesting. I’m not a “collector” in the sense of rare masters and release dates etc. so I haven’t really thought of the options that way. My main motivation for having a large library is surprises on “shuffle”. But TBH I am not sure I really use roon as a player in the way it seems important to other posters either. I certainly like roon for ease of connectivity, background listening and discovery. But a lot of the time when I know what I want to listen to, I instinctively reach for windows explorer because roon search is so awkward and then the easiest thing is right click to foobar. I cannot really hear the differences between players or high rez any more so I am not using foobar because I somehow “hear” a difference. I don’t.

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I don’t know if this will help you, you can change the name of composers to your liking so that they are treated in the same way as you provided your own metadata

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Which came first Roon or the Collection , I started collecting at age 16 , I am 70 next month (Hopefully) and my collecting has been fairly linear over the years.

Roon is in my case 3 years old , while my collecting has slowed of late , adding to my collection via Tidal has replaced it , being significantly cheaper.

I have often considered a split library “Core” and “Non Core” to single out my favourite performances , I have MANY Beethoven Sonatas

That said its unlikely I will stop collecting from whatever source, its the closet librarian in me

One thing that won’t stop is listening :cowboy_hat_face:

Sigh. There is no issue you are reporting that has not been reported multiple times in multiple threads by about 6 other people. You are not prepared to change your tagging scheme so you will continue to have a truely horrendous although quite entertaining roon experience. So thanks for that.

For others reading this thread and struggling with this particular issue of how roon deals with transcribers my experience is entirely the opposite. There is no rule about the composer to use to get a composition identification. But mostly with Liszt transcriptions you need to use Liszt as the composer and not use the original material composer. But this is not a hard and fast rule and you have to experiment. Same with Busoni/Bach transcriptions or Debussy/Ravel etc. With multipart works it is also not possible to customize the work titles to reflect the different instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement etc. Although, confusingly it is with single part works.

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I think you mean the OP? I am mother tongue UK English. I often have problems with Americanizations in roon and yes Americanizing Composer and Artist names and album and work titles and even genres really helps.

There really is no point in fighting with roon. The best possible (though imperfect) experience is just by best practice. You will be assimilated and be happy.

Roon has a habit of making Schubert the Composer and Liszt the “arranger” I prefer Liszt as the composer depends on your view

Yes. There are some rules of thumb but it is not hard and fast. I occasionally go round in circles chasing my tail trying to get a composition identification with transcriptions and forget to swap the composers and arrangers which often does the trick. I would really like to be able to customise the work titles though. I live in hope.

I have similarly read, without comment, a number of threads regarding classical music all with a similar theme.

I’m yet to really go through my classical music; seems kinda scary with all the negative reading.

However, I personally tag…I just view that as part of the course with digital music. I’ve found otherwise, if you rely on the tags of downloaded music, don’t tag your own rips, etc it just becomes a mess.

In saying that, I am already conscious of the fact much of my classical will need ‘deeper’ tagging unlike other styles, which I’ve not been overly fastidious about. It has previously played the way I wanted & needed. It likely won’t now.

To me tagging is part & parcel of digital media. I have some 5000+ albums on my NAS drive…I know what it’s like having a large cd & record collection (which I still have). Without organisation it’s just unmanageable.

Yup it takes a long time…Can Roon do better? I have no idea (yet). It’s the complexity of so many classical releases, the way individuals want their collection to appear that no doubt makes a metadata collector such as Roon very awkward to collate to meet the needs of all concerned.

Hence, it’s back to tagging the way a person demands for Roon to work according to individual needs.

Perhaps I’ve missed something & I am certainly not meaning to trivialise people’s experience. I certainly recognise tagging can be an exhausting task.

Cheers.

Well, its the collection. I had to wait for Uni to get my first serious (budget) turntable. Blew my entire first term grant on that and had enough left over for 5 LP’s I recall. Still have them.

For me the motivation for computer audio at the beginning was search., I just got fed up “loosing” favorite albums and CD’s. Computer audio didn’t really solve that one so I find myself drifting back to physical media. The hardware manufactures have started making hybrid SACD./USB streamers I notice and that is the sort of equipment that can bridge you back to old school audio.

I am just reading between the lines and I could be way off base but I have the impression from posts and screenshots that the vast majority of roon users simply use roon in a completely different way to roon’s (very small) Classical user base.

Classical music is essentially a “covers” genre. Many here will have dozens of copies of exactly the same composition. But these copies will be by different soloists, conductors, orchestras, choirs, played in different venues with different acoustics and at different times with different emotional energy. My favorite Bruckner or Shostakovich for example is most certainly not the latest most high rez, technically perfect recordings but truely horrendous quality 2nd World War era recordings. For example Shostakovich at the siege of Leningrad followed of course by Furtwangler at the siege of Berlin. Priceless. A lot of the “hobby” of Classical collecting is comparing different versions of favorite works.

Roon, in principle really helps with that. Unfortunately, the state of the art in meta-data standards means that this way of enjoying music requires a great deal of tagging effort. Many here, like the OP will have spent years grooming collections how they want them and are now reluctant to change. Personally, I don’t care. When the next roon comes along I will just change my metadata to suit yet again.

As it happens, Classical music is not the only genre where this type of “listening” is common. Its also the same with EDM (Electronic Dance Music). That genre also is built around a lot of arrangements, mixes, celebrity DJ’s of identical compositions and is often enjoyed in exactly the same way as Classical. When I started out with roon I actually tried to identify as much pop/rock covers as I could at a “composition” level. But it was too hard and I gave up. It’s a shame because the advantage is that roon will then make really interesting playlists and shuffles.

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Does that work? In the sense that roon will “equivalent” your composer formatting convention when matching in its database. Or is it just display? I often add accents, umlauts etc. to both composers and artists as I find it annoying that roon strips them out. That seems to work but I don’t change the structure of the name. I’m not really brave enough to go further than that!

How does your directory of your ripped cd’s looks like?
I work in a fixed way for all my clients (fla-ts cd ripping service)