So one thing I am missing in comparison to Logitech Media Server and SugarCube/Firefly/MusicIP is how they have a ton of user options on how the radio mix is done. Although the radio mix is pretty good, I would really love to have options on how it mixes based on my personal preferences. For example:
sliding scale of 0 - 10 importance on staying within the same genre
exclusions of specific songs, file formats, genre’s, bitrate, length of song etc…
restrict queue to a specific genre
sliding scale of 0 - 10 importance on mix style (here you use the style of the songs in the queue to determine next song)
enter in how many tracks by the same artist can radio play per x time period (I used an hour)
enter in how many tracks by the same artist can play in a row
sliding scale of 0 - 10 importance of variety mixing. here you play with how different the next song is from the one previous. this is really cool because this will help determine how long it takes to roll through your entire collection of music (based on other settings as well) and how a surprise song every now and then gets inserted pushing the entire queue in another direction.
sliding scale of 0 - 10 importance of keeping similar beats per minute.
allowing us to do thumbs up/thumps down on the next song in the queue is a cool feature, but why not have this as an option to display versus creating an automatic queue up to x songs long and displaying that? then allow us to choose to insert a song within the generated queue if we choose? I know someone said this before but having a queue list of previous songs as well would be great to see. along the same lines, let’s say a song comes up and you say, I really want to hear that entire album, so you hit insert entire album, album get’s inserted in playlist, then afterwards the random mix keeps being generated. and then creating a playlist based on the entire set of music that was created.
choose the size of the playlist that’s created. so here I also choose a playlist of 20 and so I would always see the next 19 songs in the queue
option to use outside services to create the next track such as last.fm
dynamic queuing. so this basically just turns on or off the ability to queue songs based on the current playlist. I used this a lot as when I listen, I liked to just pick an entire album to start, then have the system create what songs come next based on the album I played. awesome.
create a mix by songs not listened to a lot with associated options. here, have the system create a mix of music in x genre(s) of songs that aren’t listen to a lot. of course give us the ability to exclude songs by type, bitrate and song length.
create a “Christmas” hot selection. so in the months of November, December and/or January, only include Christmas songs during those months selected.
if done right with the above options as ideas, this could be an extremely powerful part of roon and completely change how we listen to music.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
3
I am going to chime in here although it will be a repeat of statements on other threads. I appreciate that there are a lot of competing priorities with the Roon team. But as a dedicated shuffler rather than playlist user, I am starting to lose patience with how poor shuffle and Radio work within Roon right now.
Even without restarting a shuffle or radio, Roon is repeating tracks and it simply doesn’t dig as deeply as it should. I would love all of the above, for sure, but at the very least, can’t the Roon team issue an interim release that avoids track repetition during the same shuffle?
I don’t want to seem impatient or not understanding of all of the competing priorities, but Roon has been admitting for quite some time that their radio and shuffle functions are poor. Given that this is my primary method of listening, it is getting hard to boot up Roon knowing I’ll get a subpar listening experience with the same songs being played and no options to configure or customize how this is done.
This is again related to my desire for Roon to at least import embedded metadata in files that I could use to accomplish this goal if the Roon team cannot get to this for a while. We need something…
I also would like to see the Radio perform better. It is very repetitive and follow a very similar pattern every time, bouncing around between 3 or 4 singers for several songs before moving to a new one.
Also some association are repeated over and over. For example if I play de Gregori (an Italian folksinger) as last track before radio starts I can be 100% sure the radio will start with “Contessa Miseria” of Carmen Consoli. This happens with other tracks, if I start with them the radio I will get the same play list for the first and sometime second radio song.
I have to agree. This is a serious weakness in an excellent product. I have held back criticism of Radio since the team is said to be working on it (and I acknowledge that you guys have done great work in other areas), but I want to echo the OP’s expression of how important improvements to Radio are and how far it needs to come.
I have a huge collection (nearly 300k tracks). When I use Radio, it mostly picks a few similar artists to my last track, then it picks a single album by those artists (even though I have many albums by those artists) and will then play every song from each of those single albums. To say it more simply, it picks a handful of albums (not artists) and shuffles them, ignoring the breadth of even those few artists and the popularity/critical reception of the music it plays.
Roon Radio needs far more intelligence. Doing it right would probably require that the team invest in a service that ‘knows’ music connections and can provide a large list of recommended tracks per artist + a list of related artists and combine those two things. Oddly, it seems that Roon has this information in its UI already, but it’s certainly not being used in Radio.
An endeavor like this may be difficult and or expensive, but it would add immeasurably to the value and marketability of Roon. The combination of exposure to unfamiliar music + metadata & further connections from that music is a killer use case that Roon promises, but fulfills poorly in its current form.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
6
Just to reinforce: Al Green, I’m Glad You’re Mine. Always, within the first 10 songs of a shuffle of my “mellow” tag (52 artists, 375 albums). I know that one definition of insanity is trying the same thing multiple times expecting different results. Please don’t make us all insane!
I use a Cambridge audio cambridge connect app. This searches by Location, Genre, Codec, Bitrate this means the searching is done by the appnot the user. The user just selects the stations . Can we have this in Roon then any DAC can be used and Roon is the complete music storage system.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
9
Yup, Roon cannot get 10 songs into a shuffle of my “Mellow” tag without playing this Al Green song. It’s humorous, except it is ruining certain tunes by overplaying. There are 375 albums in this tag - the odds are truly against this happening repeatedly by random chance, and thus there is definitely an issue with the logic.
I am a bit confused Radio being discussed here is Roon’s Random music play ( At Least semi random) it’s the randomness that’s being debated
CA Connect that you refer to is Internet Radio- I just love BBC Radio 4
Am I right ?
Mike
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
11
I think so. The topic wasn’t internet radio played through Roon, it is Roon’s built-in randomizing and song selection algorithm, whether “Radio” or just “Play” with shuffle on. Either way, Roon repeats too often and doesn’t go deep or wide.
It sticks out as sub-standard because the rest of Roon is so excellent, generally.
My point is Roon has a Radio function with it, as it is, you have to enter a URL what I am suggesting is that Roon does the searching for stations in the same way my Cambridge CXN searches for stations.it lets the user enter the location of the station the genre your looking for, the Codec and bitrate you prefer the app then goes off and lists all the stations that meet your criteria. You, the paying client can then pick out stations and add them or not as you wish.
This means that you are not you doing the searching but Roon Searching based on the Criteria you imput. This is different but I and others have difficulty finding URLs as many are hidden in programs.
Just a suggestion to improve Roon and you can also play stations based on say bitrate of
broadcast. or other criteria.
And the point of this thread is that it is about the Radio function in Roon, not the Internet Radio function in Roon. They are two very different things.
I suggest that you post your Internet Radio suggestion in a new thread in this Feature Requests forum. It will then get more attention and cause less confusion.
Agree that Radio function is not very useful in present form. I have been asking for more user control on sliding scale/continuum basis since May 2016. Radio should be a way to discover artists and track should the user wish for that. At present Radio is narrow in scope and focuses on 3-4 artists typically. A bit disappointed that ROON has not weighed in on this discussion, much less provided this enhancement.
Lifetime subscriber that uses Tidal (outside of ROON) or Pandora, even with it’s poor SQ, if I want to discover artists and tracks. Can’t understand why ROON can’t do the same and even go beyond the Tidal capabilities. After all, isn’t that a significant part of why ROON was developed?
From Mike (ROON) September 2015:
“…we’re definitely looking at some improvements for Radio in the near future. I can get into more specifics once the work is kicking off, but I think it’s safe to expect a greater degree of control over the breadth of the selections, as well as the option to go outside your library and have Radio include relevant music from Tidal.”
To be clear, I really like ROON and use almost daily. That said, “…near future…” promise was over two years ago.
I am a patient person, but after 26 months, I believe it is reasonable to inquire what type of enhancement can we expect and (roughly) when is the time frame?
obviously priorities changed, and we’ve delivered other stuff in the last 2 years.
as for radio in non-library content, we are still working on making that possible. It’s a big project. In the meanwhile, we do have algorithmic changes that makes the in-library-radio much better, and that is what @mike was talking about. We are hoping to have that out by end of year, but no promises.
