I have an unidentified CD [Amadeus Quartet, Brahms: String Sextets Nos. 1 & 2] where Roon misidentifies the first work “String Sextet No. 1, Op. 18” as another work by Brahms “Theme and variations, for piano in D minor (after sextet for strings, Op. 18)”.
Admittingly, the variations are more popular […] but I like Roon to correctly identify the work as the Sextet No. 1.
I have put in dedicated WORK/PART tags and also set the Metadata Preference to File rather than Roon, but Roon continues to stubbornly misidentify the work.
I don’t have your album but I have an Amadeus Quartet box set and that works. I find this sort of miss-identification relatively common. Mostly a cut and paste from allmusic seems to solve it. Often it is where there is a level of ambiguity with the opus number (as in your case). But it also happens where there are competing catalog number systems, often for very famous works. I have had a lot of trouble with the Debussy Etudes and Preludes. Roon seems to require two catalog numbers to make a reliable identification. E.g.:
Indeed, using the allmusic names helps a lot in getting Roon to correctly identify classical works. I have had the same issues with Debussy as you did and taking the exact names from allmusic fixed it
What drives me crazy is that I did do exactly what you proposed here as well … the ‘name’ and ‘work’ tags have the exact spelling of allmusic
I have both the ‘sextet no. 1” and the “theme and variations” as recognized works in my library and it is a complete mystery to me why Roon is connecting the work on this album to the wrong composition … since the work is now bunched together with other (correctly) identified “theme and variations” in the composer/compositions view, I can’t select it and merge it with the right composition either …
I was looking for a way to stop Roon identifying the work automatically and let me decide how to identify the work, through eg the composer / compositions view.
The problem here is that your album is unidentified. When this happens, we do our best to identify the composition and match it to any existing compositions in your library. Unfortunately, we appear to have picked the wrong one. We are investigating ways to do better here in the future.
Fully understand. In 99%+ of the cases Roon does indeed do an admirable job in identifying the work correctly when the album is unidentified (i do have lots of those, especially classical). I don’t know whether it is ever possible to get to 100% through algorithms. I guess what I am looking for is a way to correct Roon by hand in those rare cases where it gets it wrong … I can merge compositions if Roon is stumped, I just haven’t found a way to correct Roon, if it misidentifies the work.
Ah! When that has happened to me I have removed the opus number so roon will not recognize it. If you are lucky it will still show up in the composition editor and then you can merge it with what you want.
If it is a multi-level composition like this then roon will put the opus number back in. Unfortunately with single part compositions it will not.
Is that simply a track listing issue? Remember that Roon displays COMPOSITION names for multi-part performances of a composition, but TRACK TITLES for single-part performances of compositions and single-part compositions.
But from a user perspective with a single part composition in this scenario you end up with two choices.
A completely miss-identified single part composition which happens to share an opus and or catalog number with something else.
A correctly identified single part composition, grouped with your other instances but missing its opus and/or catalog identifiers.
I have raised this issue several times that multi-part and single part compositions are treated differently and this leads to issues/confusion/paradoxes. This is yet another use case.
Choice 2 is just the best of a bad job. Opus and or catalog identifiers may be important to you for a number of reasons.
Thanks for the clarification. I realize that this may be a far from perfect solution, but does WORK/PART tagging help you with single part compositions (or single track performances of a composition) in this scenario? i.e. Tell Roon the WORK name (sans opus/catalog number), but leave the opus/catalog number in the track title.
I think that tip probably works for single part compositions. I wasn’t able to test with opus numbers but that technique seems to work with catalog numbers. I find this to be a relatively common occurance with some composers.
With a lot of Debussy works there are dual catalog numbers. But it can be quite random which one the public databases use or even which ones are on the back of the CD. Allmusic (and roon) adopt a convention of using both catalog numbers to uniquely identify the track title. So for example roon got all the Debussy tracks in this (unidentified) album wrong. That is roon linked to completely the wrong compositions, although because most of the compositions are single part (so the text display was correct) this went unnoticed until I noticed that radio was giving very unexpected results when seeded with this album. I had to edit each track with both catalog numbers to get a correct ID. So for example the Golliwogs Cakewalk (L. 113) was auto-confused with Dances Sacred & Profane (L. 113) by roon.
I tested your tip with this example and it worked. That is I kept L. 113 in the TITLE track and removed it from WORK. Roon removed the auto-link to Dances Sacred & Profane. And I was able to merge the unidentified composition to the Golliwog’s Cake-Walk correctly in the composition editor. As it happens I decided to add the second catalog number to the TRACK title anyway and that also works (with less manual editing steps).
I have noticed a similar problem with Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36” and the “Piano Trio in D major (transcription of Symphony No. 2 by composer), Op. 36”.
Initially Roon correctly assigned the Symphony No. 2, Op. 36 versions on unidentified albums to the Op. 36 Symphony No.2. However after I added an identified album [by the van Baerle Trio] with the much rarer Piano trio, Op. 36 on it, it reassigned the Symphony No. 2 works on unidentified albums to the Piano trio. [Ironically it missed an actual Piano Trio in D by the Beaux Arts Trio on an unidentified album, which I added by hand later].
Rather than having to go in this case into five unidentified albums to remove the Opus numbers and then reassign them by hand in Roon, is it possible to reassign the works directly in Roon
This is extremely common. I have also had a lot of trouble with Dvořák. Here is a quote from wikipedia:
“Opus number 12, for example, was assigned, successively, to five different works (an opera, a concert overture, a string quartet, and two unrelated piano works).”
I am not sure if there is anywhere that these sorts of inconsistencies have been collected together for reference. But there is an interesting discussion on wiki with a random collection of composers:
Automation of such an open ended set of composition assignment rules over the entire universe of compositions seems a very long way off to me. IMSLP, allmusic etc. are often quite patchy once you step outside standard repertoire. Better manual support in roon would be welcome whilst waiting for automated solutions which look so far off.
