Roon Plays Tidal exclusively when artist chosen - ignores my higher quality and personally curated library

[Kenneth_Suelzle]

Windows 10 Roon 1.71 (610)

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Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

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Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

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As stated in the title, I would like to be able to play my library of chosen albums/tracks by a selected artist.

Example - Say that I have two Amy Winehouse albums that I like. If I select Amy and play Amy, Roon plays any tracks from Amy’s complete body of work that happens to be resident on Tidal. I don’t want to listen to Amy signing a duet with Tony Bennett. I want to listen to only tracks from albums that I have chosen to put in my library.

I should be able to select this option when playing by artist (ie not Roon Radio).

Am I missing something?

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

You have two choices.
One would be to go to Settings>Play Actions>Composers and Artists and under the Customize pull down add “Shuffle”. Then, when you go to the Artist, you see the Play Now button and just to the right is a pull down. Select “Shuffle”. Shuffle will only play your library. If you always want to do this you can set “Shuffle” as the priority when you are in Play Actions, and hitting Play Now will shuffle your library and not include the rest of the streaming service.
The alternative is to go to the Queue screen and near the same row as Queue there are three dots on the right. Click those and select the “Limit Roon Radio to Library”. That will create a shuffle, which is just your library, when you hit Play Now.

[Kenneth_Suelzle]

That’s very good, Thanks.

The question remains open as to why Roon prefers streaming to local library and will chose the same Tidal track @ 44.1 16 bit over local library @ 192 24 bit.

Ciao

Ken

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

Glad that worked for you.
Your open question comes up a lot. The response below is from Mike who leads software development for Roon :

mikeMike FassRoon Labs: Product

Apr '19

Hey everyone,

I understand there have been some questions about why Roon Radio picks lower quality version of a song when higher quality copies of the same song are available.

First off, it’s important to understand that the goal of Roon Radio, generally speaking, is to pick the best possible music for you. These selections are based on what we know about you, and the content Radio started on (also known as “the seed”). A number of complex factors are involved in determining what the best song is, but the starting point is generally going to be relevance – Roon Radio is designed to play songs you love, whether you’ve heard them before or not.

So, the question we’ve heard a few times is, once Roon Radio has selected a song – particularly a song available in multiple versions – why would it ever pick a low quality file when the same song is available in a better format?

The answer comes down to the definition of “same song” – the high quality file on your hard drive may appear to be equivalent to a track on TIDAL, or you might think that the AAC copy on TIDAL is clearly matched to the CD quality version on Qobuz. And of course, you’re probably correct – those may be the same song, same recording, same mastering, etc. Roon may even mark the two albums as “versions” of each other.

But Radio is not picking albums – it’s picking songs. And albums frequently contain all sorts of different versions of a given song – outtakes, remixes, instrumentals, false starts, and so on. And so while Radio will always pick the highest quality copy of a given song, the criteria Radio uses for “equivalencing” two songs are actually quite conservative, because the alternative is not acceptable. A mistake here could cause real harm.

Say our system makes a mistake and matches a remix or outtake with the original. If the remix happens to be higher quality, no one using Roon Radio will ever hear the original, because our system always picks the highest quality.

So the system errs quite heavily on the side of caution – If Roon isn’t 100% sure that two tracks are the same, it’s going to consider them different. And so there will be instances where humans are easily able to discern that two tracks are the same recording, but our system is going to consider them different, in order to ensure we don’t mistakenly match up the wrong tracks.

This is not a description of our goals – this is a description of the current state of this technology. Improving our ability to accurately match tracks is an area of active research right now, and that’s not just to encourage higher quality Radio picks – there are a number of major improvements we are planning that depend on Roon being able to confidently say that all 10 versions of a song are the same recording. Accuracy in this area will improve significantly over the coming months and years.

For the moment, the system errs on the side of playing what it believes to be the best picks – when Roon Radio thinks it has the perfect pick for you, and that pick happens to be available in AAC, it’s going to play it. Because the alternative is rolling the dice, and potentially choosing a higher quality copy of a lower quality song.