Yes to all except bio and pic (back then). Since then they have appeared too.
Yes, I already wrote the same above. Your quote is from my answer to Suedkiez where I put that hint in because I don’t know Howe Gelb and so it is unclear to me, following this thread, if there can be Composed by entries expected realistically or or not, merely a hint to recheck the circumstances given all the ifs and whens uncovered so far.
I’m aware of that but there should be other community members better suited to comment on that. The only real source here, so it seems to me though meanwhile, is Roon Labs itself. I joined the discussion when you wished for a composed by category for all composers, sharing my thoughts and reservations against it. What I learned is that, what it looks to me now, Roon has issues correctly displaying data which is the source for your initial question. If Roon Labs could fix the display, the discussion could be over because we all get what we want/something we can live with or get a new base line to look at and reconsider.
I have the same issue with this CD I ripped even though Roon had no trouble identifying it. The only way I can find it is by searching album title. This is also true for the version on Qobuz.
For sure, but roon would only know about this composition if at least one of your recordings of that one is properly identified. If they are just FLAC or DSF files with some names and tags unknown to roon, how could it extract from this data the composition details? Maybe the primary artists name, composer and orchestra can find their match, but that is not guaranteed either.
I have seen you are having some Beethoven symphonies recorded by the LSO under Bernard Haitink in .DSF. I have the complete cycle, and roon is failing to identify some of them automatically due to mismatches in track duration, disc number and duplicates in form of the ´Beethoven 1-9 Special Edition´:
In case the .DSF files are originating from the DSD layer of an SACD, track durations might differ (and actually do differ in a lot of cases) from the official releases known to roon leading it to leave the album unidentified.
The solution is easy: Go to ´Edit album´ and ´Identify album´ - the correct match will most probably appear as one of the first options. If not, search for them using primary artist name and title of the album.
I did the ‘edit’ ‘identify’ for many of these albums, even the ones ripped from CD’s. Often the exact/correct album wasn’t in Roon’s database and I was forced to choose an album that was closest or no album at all.
I have 3 different albums of Beethoven’s 9th- a DVD-A ripped to flac using DVD Audio Extractor app.,
an SACD ripped using SACD Extract and an Oppo 103, and a CD ripped to ALAC using JRiver and a laptop.
None of them show up when searching Beethoven.
The same ripping techniques were used to rip CD’s, SACD’s and DVD-A’s for the Eagles.
They all show up perfectly.
This is only a problem with classical albums. So, do classical recordings have different data encoded? Or no data? Or is Roon unable to read the metadata?
Well, yes, if the Classical composer has never performed in a recording… So I wouldn’t expect Beethoven to have a “Main albums” section, only a “Composed by” section.
And for dead composers who do happen to have made recordings (even if they were piano rolls originally) then they should be given a “Main albums” section, e.g. Mahler, but alas, in this case even though he is credited as a “Primary artist”, this album does not get shown - neither in a “Main albums” section nor the “Composed by” section or indeed in the “From my library” section in the Composer Overview… Oops.
Do you plan to correct this OOPS (a big oops on Roon’s part) or just shine it on. Again.
Are you sure there is no metadata set for the particular album at all? In some cases the correct metadata might not be offered by roon initially as a result of primary artist, disc number or album title not matching. This might require a bit of detective work (trying several primary artists and alike).
Albums completely unknown to roon do exist, but in most of cases these are niche-releases, bootlegs, regionally distributed samplers, promo albums or alike.
Do they show ´Unidentified´ on the album page? It means the albums have no connection to roon´s own database so composition/composer are most likely not to be recognized as well. If the source is a rip of DVD-A or SACD and they have never been tagged using a database, the local tags usually do not make sense as well. To put it frankly, these rips produce metagarbage and not metadata.
Beethoven´s symphony No. 9 on SACD or DVD-A are all pretty common and widespread releases by ´big names´ (orchestra and conductor). I am sure they are all on Tivo or MusicBrainz which are the sources for roon´s metadata.
If you might want to name the conductors, I can doublecheck that (most probably I have the album as well if it is not the Abbado one from Berlin).
No, classical albums are handled the same way in roon, except from the identification process of a composition which requires obeying to a certain syntax more specifically to be recognized.
There are several reasons why such a classical album might not be identified in the first go: incomplete metadata in the file tags, differing track duration, different primary artists in the database, different album name or alike. Any of these contradictions stops roon from identifying the album automatically but it usually takes 2 clicks via ´Edit album > Identify album´ to get the right one.
With SACD rips in many cases only the track order and duration of the CD layer is known to roon. If only one track´s duration deviates by 5 seconds, the album will not be identified automatically.
Arindal, thanks for trying to help. I have already tried many of your suggestions.
They are not niche albums.
Many originally showed up as ‘unidentified’ but I edited to the album to match the correct album, or the closest album listed. I have tried editing ‘artist’ ‘composer’ ‘label’ and ‘catalog #’ to no avail.
This does seem to be endemic in the ‘classical’ genre. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, etc., are all affected by this shortcoming in Roon’s handling of the metadata of classical albums.
This is a problem that ROON needs to fix. I should not need to go into every classical album I have to edit it. Especially when the edits do not fix the problem.
Classical composers being handled differently carries through to ARC and detracts from its performance on an iPhone. Please don’t have it apply to other albums!
I would suggest that you carefully check your metadata. If these are not niche albums, then the problem probably lies in the metadata. Despite your experience, Roon is pretty good with Classical albums.
I have checked my metadata as much as I can and edited without any improvement.
If this is an isolated problem affecting only me then tell me what I’m doing wrong. What setting needs to be changed?
The fact that all my rock, blues, folk, etc., albums have their metadata read correctly and the albums are cataloged by Roon correctly and it is only classical albums that has a problem leads me to believe it’s a Roon problem with how it handles the metadata. But I’m willing to change my settings if it will fix the problem.
I am not willing to edit all the classical albums that are not being handled correctly by Roon. That needs to be fixed by Roon. And it not an isolated experience affecting only me. This has been brought up by me and others for years. Roon has yet to fix it. @support
The album might be popular but the specific release (DSD-layer of SACD or DVD-A) not equally popular and differing from the common CD version. Usually manual identification process in roon is fixing this. I have a lot of such albums, and not a single major or popular release was unidentifiable and only 2 albums by more or less professional classical record labels. Most common example:
(This seems to be a very special case as it was distributed by the broadcaster WDR3 rather than the record label CPO who are usually keeping their metadata consistent)
That usually does not help. Only in case the local files carry proper tags for main artist, album title and composer (and match the track duration table) which are matching roon´s internal ones, it can automatically identify the album. And even this might fail in case there are contradictions or several equally probable variants (like with Haitink´s Beethoven Symphony No. 9).
Did you try to edit the album from the album page choosing ´Edit > Identify Album > None of these look right´, subsequently giving roon the correct album artist and album title? This helped for me in >99% of all cases of major releases. Sometimes you have to be a bit creative or look up Allmusic or MusicBrainz database beforehand to find out the proper spelling of the title.
It is not roon´s shortcoming but the shortcoming of improper local tags, incomprehensive metadata from the sources or deviations in data like track duration making it impossible for roon to find the correct match.
Don´t get me wrong - I clearly see room for improvement when it comes to metadata for classical releases, and roon is pretty picky with correct syntax or matches. Particularly non-standard releases (such as SACD or vinyl rips), boxsets, samplers and historical recordings are a mess and create a lot of metagarbage.
But we cannot blame roon for that. It is unsolvable with the given quality of metadata. You have to decide whether you want to refrain from such albums (or their integration into roon´s browsing methods), or invest the time and effort to fix the issues. I have made my choice and dismissed most of problematic albums and invested time into those which I consider to be my core collection.
If the local albums are common releases existing in one of roon´s metadata sources, according to my experience chances are high that more than 95% of classical albums are just coming with everything without the user ever touching them. The rest is either requiring manual identification or proper local tags which might mean a bit of work when it comes to recognizable composition syntax and alike.
Fortunately you can focus in the album overview which albums are unidentified and which are not having genres. So you know which albums require manual improvement.
You and me, we seem to have a lot of uncommon releases. That defines a very special collection and requires more of manual work but it is not the standard for roon users. In the beginning I encountered like 30% of unidentified albums but this is almost down to 1% with another 4% of albums requiring manual tagging.
I fully agree under the condition the user is keeping his or her metadata in a good shape. That is certainly not an easy task and might require time but it is doable in most of cases and the roon experience is worth it.
My only issue with that: I would love roon to give me an inspector option in focus to identify or exclude all albums with incomplete or non-matching metadata (so I can easily decide if I want to fix them or throw them out). That would be particularly useful for Tidal and partly Qobuz users as these services create a lot of confusion in the composition lists.
Just to be sure that the albums that are not showing up when I check Beethoven in ‘artist’ or ‘composer’ were in my library I once again added these albums to my Roon library (internal ss 4tb drive).
I then went in and added Beethoven to ‘primary artist link’ and in ‘album artist’ I selected ‘prefer file’ which is Beethoven to all of these albums.
So please explain to me again how “Roon is pretty good with Classical albums.” In my experience it sucks. It is exceptional with rock, blues, folk, pop in my library. @support - I have tagged @support in my posts, but have yet to hear back from anyone there, which leads me to believe that they either know about this shortcoming and can’t or won’t address it.
Speaking about Rota - I tried making him a classical composer, but still, his 100% composed Chamber Music album doesn’t appear as an album of his. A dragged in Fellini Album immediately appeared in that section.
The Chamber Music album doesn’t feature him as anything else than the composer.
Surprise - I just discovered that Roon in any case considered him a classical composer, so I effectively made no change I still wonder, though, why the Chamber Music is only considered an “appearance”?
You might want to check the credits of that particular album as well as local tags again. Is he accidentally credited as arranger or performer of one or several tracks or album artist in the tags? Removing this and re-adding the album might help.
If Beethoven is correctly assigned as a composer as well, it might explain why the album is not shown among ´Composed by´. I would recommend to remove all these tags except from composer.
Are all the albums identified by roon?
The fact that Haitink´s symphonies 1&5 with the LSO is showing as two separate albums is a strong hint the local tags cause problems (e.g. contradictive primary artist assigned to the 2 works on the album causing roon to split it into 2). They usually result in the album or at least parts of it being unidentified by roon.
You might want to take a look at the credits of one of the albums which is not linked to the real Beethoven at all (neither in ´composed by´ not in the composition list). If unidentified local tags are the root, you might see metagarbage tags like ´Beethoven, composer´ or ´Beethoven (1770-1827)´ in the credits.
In theory I would love this feature. In practice it probably won’t work because so many albums fail to provide the information or actually provide false information. I have seen entire albums of covers that are attributed to the artist performing them as 'composer". Even songs by Lennon McCartney and Leonard Cohen. I notice many albums claiming a composed by for merely having made an arrangement of someone else’s work.
Thanks, but none of the kind - this will just be one of those albums that doesn’t show correctly in the system - and for which I will then use the “primary artist” hack to make it do.
I think that all talking about which groups of artists may need a compositions section on their pages should have a built-in element about what actually works and what doesn’t. Adding more features will not help much if they will not work.
Just for the record, I have many albums that are not ending up in the right section, unless the composer is being added as a primary artist.
I still wonder, though, why the Chamber Music is only considered an “appearance”?