The metadata of Hans Richter-Haaser’s Beethoven Sonatas is wrong in the Roon database and as a consequence the works are not identified and displayed correctly
So I have just spent half an hour entering the the metadata for the works exactly as they are in allmusic. See the track names on the right in the above screen.
I then deleted the album from the disc and forced roon to rescan and cleared the deleted files in the library.
Then I recopied the album to the disc and had roon reread and identify.
Still, roon does not list the track names correctly.
So next I told roon to prefer the files’ metadata for track names
Still no joy.
Roon WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS SO DIFFICULT? There must be an easier way to get roon do what I would like it to do, namely simply use my metadata. Roon even has a function that is supposed to do just that, but for reasons unknown to me, this function does not seem to work.
You can read about tagging multi-part works here. If you want to disable the display of multi-part work/part names, edit the album (in Roon) and set “Multi-Part Composition Grouping” to “Disable Multi-Part Compositions on this Album”.
What’s being displayed here is not track names but rather the Work and Part names. This is the default behavior. You can go to Edit Album and scroll to the bottom where you’ll see Multi-Part Composition Grouping. Here you can disable this and just use track names, or you can enter your own Work/Part tags in the file’s metadata and use that.
Thanks for your inputs, guys
I have tried different Tags and settings in the Album Editor’s Multi-Part Composition Grouping.
I have found the following:
Preferring Roon, I actually get three different types of work identities in this 6CD Box:
The first three works are being identified as “Piano Sonatas (s) Op2”
I have been ripping and tagging files for a good 25 years, but this does seem to be on the complicated side of things.
Next I need to figure out why roon is not seeing my “Part” tags. Once I get that right, I will have to retag 87 movement parts to get this box (one of many) right. Is this correct?
As can be seen from the example in the documentation linked above, you need WORKandPART file tags in every track. Work is a string that references/names the Work (Composition) the track belongs to and Part is a string that provides a name for the Part (Track) in the Work. The track’s TITLE file tag could theoretically be omitted (not recommended) for multi-part compositions as it’s content isn’t shown by Roon (on default settings). If only a WORK or only a PART tag is present in a file then Roon will use it’s own metadata.
As I don’t know JRiver I can’t provide any help as to how to create a working PART tag.
The PART Tag is now seen by Roon and the works are identified correctly.
I think I will leave it at this one example and let the rest be as it is.
As roon relies on the works database in allmusic for identifying the works, the steps one has to go through to get this to work are quite a few
Get the correct works and movement names from allmusic (line by line copy paste)
Add the tags manually one by one to all the tracks
have roon re-read the file and keep your fingers crossed
It does seem to work, but in this day and age it just seems that roon is offloading a a lot of work to the end user. Even worse, to each end user individually without any possibility for scale effects.
A process that could overcome this:
Establish a functioning metadata correction process that fixes the issues of i.e. this album at the source. I don’t mind if this takes a month, if it is done reliably.
Give the end user a “work chooser” functionality that lets him/her select the files and find the correct work in the roon / allmusic data repository. The “work chooser” then bulk populates the tags of the album (sort of).
In my view the fundamental flaw of roons approach to classical tagging is that it
relies on an external database for classical metadata (allmusic)
lets each user do overrides to the metadata for cases where the metadata is incorrect but
does not give users access to the source data, so they can add the correct metadata
does not offer any tools that help to easily add the correct metadata
As much as I love roon, not really a recipe for great customer satisfaction.
Having all the same issues! Like you spend hours on end and Roon is still messing things up with its own database. I h e WORK and PART tagged on every track and still dont get them picked up by Roon despite having said „use file“.
Thnks but I am an Mac so I dont use JRiver or MP3Tag.
WORK and PART are tagged. I see them in MinimServer. It is beyond me why a software that charges huge sums of money seems unable to handle the most simple tasks.
Its up for Roon to fix, not for the user to fiddle.
I now hve a 8 CD collection of complete Scriabin Piano works with Maria Lettberg where Roon chooses to show one CD with french titles, one with English and one with German (my own) even tough I told Roon to use just my tags.
@brian
The unsatisfactory situation re the quality of classical music metadata and was to fix issues has been discussed ad nauseam on this forum . Unfortunately fixing this does not seem to be a priority on roon’s to do list.
Really a pity.
Unless we keep sticking our fingers at it, nothing will ever change. There isnt even much to fix. Just add WORK and PART to the table of tags to choose between „Roon“ and „File“ and make that the software consistabtly oberves this setting, and this would fix 80% of the issus.
This is no rocket science.
If you charge your users obscene amounts of license fees, that should be fixed in no time and not take 3 Years. Ridiculous.
