What adjustment can we make so radio doesn’t get stuck playing the same tracks from four or five albums over and over?
The only relief I’ve found is to repeatedly hit skip until it starts playing something else. But after a few minutes it comes back to the same four five albums, like, are you SURE you don’t want to hear this?
This is not helpful for background music or discovery.
But anyway, what adjustment should we make?
This certainly a problem that transcends some of the Valence selections (Roon Radio, Play Artist Now). I get stretches when it works great, and then there will be cases weeks later where the same song or two get played 5-8 times in a short time period. AFAIK, the best thing you can do is forward the specifics of that instance to Roon. They use stuff like this to help tune the selection algorithms.
I’ve found Roon pretty receptive to getting these specific examples in cases like this, and for the search algorithm also. As we saw from @Mike earlier in this thread, direct objective feedback is useful.
It usually jars me with choices that are annoying and inappropriate. I just keep it turned off.
My Roon Radio rarely goes astray, but if it does, I just click on another album to play.
Sure but the bad choices are jarring and annoying. I don’t want to have to experience that.
And you have the opportunity to turn it off. So, not really a problem, and maybe kudos to Roon? I have the opportunity to turn off Siri, which is certainly f***ing jarring and annoying, and is the first thing I do with any new Apple device. But they keep trying to get me to reverse that decision. Oh, and by the way, on Apple fora you don’t get to talk to Apple senior management.
I have a set of what I consider Starter Tracks , say for evening on the patio smooth jazz etc I always start with the same track. Its quite interesting how varied the list becomes . I rarely see your Few Albums Syndrome.
I suspect it depends on your musical choice , my understanding of Valence is that the algorithm is trained by ALL Roon users play preferences, the more plays the more refined the AI so if your choice falls outside of the bulk of users the algorithm will be less refined.
The control depends on Thumbs Upping / Downing on a specific track and selecting a reason as to why. No action implies its on a right choice, that’s the way the AI “Learns”, if we are a bunch of lazy people and do not join in the Thumbs / Reason bit then the feedback is lacking. I assume no input of Thumbs , no improvement in the Learning Algorithm
In my case I listen specific choices , I only listen Roon Radio when I am doing something else (cooking, eating etc) when my chosen source has run out. So running to the PC or Tablet to Thumb is not practical. It depends on users making a positive input.
I stand to be corrected if that is not the case.
I was thinking general about Roon, about Roon radio, maybe some settings for adjustment will come in the future, i bet Roon already knows about this.
Make sure your seeds are identified
Make sure you aren’t limited to your library
Make sure you have a streaming service connected
Roon Radio has deduplication to prevent this when there is actual choice. But if you start on unidentified music, or are limited to your library, or your local files, it has no choice.
Thanks for that info.
The seed artist was identified, not limited to library, qobuz enabled. It plays tracks from my library and from qobuz.
I misspoke about same tracks from four or five albums. It plays different tracks but from the same four or five albums. I only noticed it playing the same track very rarely, and in those cases I had likely skipped it so maybe it didn’t count as a play for de-duping.
@Mike_O_Neill hits it on the head in regard to user feedback for Radio - most of us when/if using it aren’t sitting in the sweet spot playing our favorite album (or even a new one) with remote open in hand. If Roon implemented lock screen thumbs up/down for phones and tablets and dashboard widgets for Mac (and PC’s I assume, I’m just not a user) then that would go a long way to getting more info for Valence. As it is often too difficult to continually break away from what one is doing and so just let a wrong track play - or not use Roon Radio at all. One workaround is to shuffle by genre (which behooves one to add lots of titles to their library), but as noted earlier that could be a wild ride if one was to choose the Pop/Rock category or some other more generalized genres.
Plus the questions need revising - or at least “I’ve heard this too many times” added, as the track may be right for the seed but keeps repeating (or tracks from the same album repeating).
Roon Radio, too.
This is what I’ve been doing. Plus, sometimes I look at album related recommendations while shuffling genre and find a lot of good stuff to add that way.
Seriously? Haven’t noticed this as yet.
Roon radio keeps repeating the same limited set of artist and albums when seeded with mainstream 1970’s and 1980’s rock (AKA Dad Rock) AND consistenly includes Elton John, no matter what the seed is.
So I call hyperbole on this one!
I see none of that. I seed with a starting album, not track. I have both Tidal and Qobuz if that makes a difference. I don’t have any of my own music files (only a couple). I play mostly '60’s and '70’s rock.
I probably use Roon 10 to 12 hours per day. I’ll play one album then Roon Radio for several hours. Then, another album, etc. I really have no idea how Roon Radio works, but it seems to work well in this scenario.
Roon radio does not seed from an album inmy experience, it just kicks in after the last explicitely selected track runs out.
I get the same results from seeding by selecting the Roon radio option from the drop down in “play now” as I get by selecting “start after music ends” in the queue side bar.
And always… Elton Bloody John.
I’ll believe @danny 's deduplication bit when I experience it. So far: zilch.
Yep. If I start a jazz Radio with some standard, non-obscure vintage Blue Note artist I end up getting that same damn current Sonny Rollins live album over and over again despite having thumbed it down in the past. It’s not a bad record, just not what I want to hear again and again (and isn’t 1950’s - '60’s classic jazz as started).
I agree with John and others. I have been a Roon user since its inception, and its added so much enjoyment to this old analog user’s enjoyment of music, especially new music through Tidal that I would doubt I’d easily find otherwise. I have 6500 Lps I normally prefer, but digital is catching up fast.
I have had the occasional problem with dropouts, or it finding my Roon device (DAC, music server) quickly, but overall the sound quality (and MQA) have been outstanding. I also have JRiver, and the sound quality between the two is comparable.
I think the Roon guys are to be commended for spending the time and resources to maintain this very active forum, including all the comments, even the most negative ones, without sugar-coating or editorializing.
Good work, guys!
Perhaps that’s because you’ve never explicitly done it (on the Album page, choose Roon Radio instead of the default Play Now option)?
That’s not correct. It obviously seeds from an album or the last track on an album. I NEVER choose individual tracks. I just click play now on an album. When the album is finished playing, Roon Radio kicks in with very appropriate selections related to the music, not necessarily the artist.
This morning, I started with a Bee Gees album. A couple hours later, it’s now playing The Byrds. It’s always relevant.
Now playing The Left Banke “Walk Away Renee.”
I think it has a lot to do with how you use it.