Roon Core Machine
Synology DS918+ 8GB RAM, Running on an M.2 volume (Core) and 40TB local storage
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Asus XT8 Router + Qnap 2.5/10GBit switch
Connected Audio Devices
RPi4 running Ropieee XL connected to Holo Audio Spring 3 KTE via USB
Number of Tracks in Library
about 2200 albums and about 10000 tracks in playlists
Description of Issue
I’m running Roon now for several years. The biggest gripe - that just doesn’t improve very much - is the Roon Radio algorithm for me. Especially concerning electronic music. Even using the feedback rating system doesn’t seem to help much with this issue. Especially when starting Roon Radio on a certain track I’d expect that Roon would at least try to stay in a similar genre. But in most instances it goes pretty much overboard with it’s suggestions and drifts into genres I don’t like and don’t even have in my library.
Good example from today would be for example that I started with a house track - DBN - Night Sarafi 2 - Wa Wa - via Tidal. within 3 tracks from Roon Radio it ended up with Mount of Mars - Hybral which is pretty heavy Techno and right after to Synapse - Extrasensory Interface which is more of a ambient electronic track. All with vastly different BPM characteristics and not even close to similar to the original track/genre.
It also happens sometimes that with calm acoustic music that out of nowhere it suddenly switches to heavy metal (that I never listen to). But those are blips within an otherwise good user experience. It just seems to me that the algorithm has a particular weakness handling electronic music and taking the different subgenres of electronic music into account.
I use Roon Radio mostly with the intent to discover new music but in the current state is pretty much unusable for that purpose for me.
As comparison I started a Song Radio on Spotify with the same song and it only came up with nice/fitting tracks of which I even added a few to the library. All within the spectrum of the original track.
First I would like to ask you if I’m doing something on my part that might influence this behaviour negatively. I maintain my playlists/fav. albums mostly on Tidal and synchronize these to Roon. Is there a difference how Roon handles Roon- vs Steaming-Playlists?
Secondly I wanted to ask if there are better ways to steer the algorithm more to my liking since my feedback until now doesn’t seem to have helped very much. I try to give as much feedback as possible. When I thumb down a track choice I mostly say that the track doesn’t fit or that I don’t like the track. Is the “bad for Radio” choice maybe the better one?
I know that I can’t expect a quick and easy solution for this problem. I just thought some feedback from my experience in this area would be helpful to maybe put more attention to this issue for future developments. I’m a lifetime subscriber already so I can wait :-).
If you need any more input from me I’m happy to help where I can.