Not sure if this is truly a support question, or more of a ‘how-to’ question. I have 2 copies of a track in my library. One is an mp3 that lives in a watched folder (my iTunes media folder), the other version I added to my library via Tidal, to replace the mp3 when I am listening at my desk. Today, while shuffling my library, the Roon played the mp3 instead of the Tidal file. The mp3 is recognized as a duplicate track, the Tidal version of the album is correctly labeled as the primary version. Only the Tidal show up in my ‘Albums’. Any explanation for this behavior so that I can prevent in the future. I don’t think its the first time its happened, but this is the first time I thought to stop, take note, and ask. Thanks!
I continue to see this behavior in the most recent version of Roon. mp3 in iTunes watched folder, Tidal version as primary, Roon recognizes and labels primary and duplicate correctly, but when shuffling tracks, plays the low-res version labelled as duplicate. Is there a way to prevent the playing of duplicate files? Thanks!
Still happening in the latest build, still puzzling. I was under the impression that Roon would always play the primary version of a track. Not happening with Radio/play all/shuffle. A little frustrating. I’m not going to delete the low-res file, because that is the only copy I have that I can play on a portable device. Is this a bug or am I misinterpreting the behavior of the software?
I would expect Roon to work as you expect it to. This may well be a bug.
A workaround might be to negative focus on your MP3 with the focus “inspector”.
What do you think @Carl
SJB
I just tested this with AAC files copied over from my iTunes Library (which is not watched by Roon). For me Roon does play the Tidal version. This was using “Play Artist” and “Play Top Tracks”. My music library folder is ‘watched’ by Roon, but not organized by Roon.
I tried replicating this process with an MP3 file and the Tidal version of the song (MP3 was in my library, added the Tidal version). The Tidal version is a slightly different length and isn’t recognized as a duplicate by Roon, so it shows and plays both the MP3 version and the Tidal version.
The only way I was able to replicate your issue was when I made the lower quality AAC version in my test the Primary Version. Roon makes the higher quality version the Primary by default.
So, when I changed the AAC version to Primary, it would only play the AAC version. It made no difference wether or not the I had Show Hidden Albums in Settings toggled on or not.
I was also able to replicate the issue, as @mrvco mentioned, when the Tidal version was not identical (number of tracks) to the lower quality one. However, it shows both versions as separate albums and neither version has Duplicate above the tracks.
Maybe you could post a screenshot of an album where this is occurring. Display the album and then click on the Other Versions button and take a screenshot.
Cheers, Greg
Thanks for looking at it, and for the suggestion. I will definitely post a screenshot the next time this happens. I will say that I think the circumstance that I’m describing are slightly different from your attempts to replicate the issue - this doesn’t happen when I choose a track, only when Roon chooses it while shuffling my library via the ‘Radio’ function. In other words, I can’t make this happen, I have to wait for Roon to make it happen. Thanks again for your help.
Actually, I did try and follow your situation.
What I did was focus the albums so that there were only a couple on the screen, including the one that had the duplicate. Then I pressed Play All, then Play, so that I was using Radio. Then I just skipped through songs until it played a track from one of the albums that had a duplicate.
It always played tracks from the Primary album.
I will try again soon, just to make sure I didn’t make a mistake. This is a hard one to test.
Cheers, Greg
Thanks for the clarification, appreciate the effort.