Roon Search Overhauled [2021-12]

So look what a difference a day makes. It’s like my search has been overhauled.



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I refuse to believe that Roon is fixing individual searches based on feedback on this forum. I refuse to believe that Roon is fixing individual searches based on feedback on this forum. I refuse to believe that Roon is fixing individual searches based on feedback on this forum.

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I don’t believe that either. I just think there was something wrong either regionally or something else that was fixed. I wasn’t getting any artists listed in initial selection over last few days. As you can see, others were getting better results. But who’s to say tomorrow it doesn’t break again.

Only reason I tested again is was looking up Pink Floyd and just typed Pink and Pink Floyd came up 2nd on initial list , right under Pink Moon by Nick Drake. I listen to Nick often so that results seemed expected. Figured something’s working right today and lol and behold the others searches were working too.

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So they didn’t magically add fuzzy logic yet because Ramstein doesn’t bring expected results but partially search working as expected.

I still believe the inconsistency is down to valence being part of the algorithm and this is based of users input. What happens when you post a bad search others search thus making those parameters more popular.

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There haven’t been any recent changes in search that would have made a difference. Have you added a lot of content to your library recently?

That is not the case. Valence is mainly running independently, and it’s not part of roon search.

I apologize for having been quiet recently. There are a lot of changes coming up, so I’m not here as often to answer each concern. Hopefully, some of them will be addressed soon.

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Hey @zenit thanks for popping up and saying that. I know, having led an engineering team that had a big search component that these types of “infrastructure first, then lots of components, then test the experience” changes are not for the faint of heart - so just know we appreciate the work and are rooting for you, even if we’re impatient and frustrated at times. We want to help you make the experience great. Thanks for all you’re doing, and looking forward to seeing what’s coming up!

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Thanks for replying back but nothing has changed with my recent roon habits. Large library but no major new adds. But you can see by my posts that something changed, for the better, overnight. And thankfully that change is still in effect and Artists are showing as expected.

Not sure if you can give us any updates on whether fuzzy logic will be added?

Thanks for clarifying that @zenit how does search quantify what’s popular then? As it does seem to be very different for each user.

Thank you, I appreciate the encouragement :slight_smile: And I do understand the frustration. People here have been mostly posting examples, and that’s valuable information.

There are little bits of it already there, and there’s noticeably more of it coming soon. There used to be way more “fuzzyness” in search at roon, which lead to a lot of result quality issues in general. Now, we’re slowly and carefully reintroducing it, but trying to do so in a way that doesn’t stray away from the user’s query intent. Many artists will intentionally use different spellings or have names like McHael, so a fuzzy search might just yield Michael Jackson and other Michael’s if you actually search for mchael, while burying your original result. It’s just a matter of balance, and we’re getting there slowly.

Search uses the same popularity score that you’ll find on the artists’ page or that is used in other features. There are however other signals that are or will be used as well (i.e. “favorite” an album).

The main difference in what the users will get right now depends on what falls “into” search, user libraries are different, some use Tidal in Germany, some use Qobuz in Italy, and some have both.

That goes someway to explain why some odd things come top as Roons users are not likely to be a good example of the masses and likely very split in some areas. The Chuck Berry. Example given further up being a good example in qobuz he’s top for that song yet in Roon is comes out as She & Him for the same song. I have some of their stuff but not that track but likely it swings it as I don’t have any Chuck Berry.

Sorry for silly question, it seems that a score is visible? How can I find that?

Nope, I think he means that the same “popularity score” is used behind the scenes on features found on the Artist’s page, popular tracks comes to mind.

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Sorry I still don’t get it, I can’t parse your sentence either. But ok whatever, something behind the scenes :slight_smile:

They use code behind the scenes to determine the popular albums tracks to show you as recommendations same codebase it seems is used for searches it explains its shortcomings well as a lot of Roons recommendations are not great to, I think basing stuff on the small Roon community is going to be a problem, given the small selection of overall Roon users and musical tastes. So expecting the same results as streaming services that have millions of users isn’t going to happen I feel.

I get that, I was just thrown off by the phrase “that you find on the artist page”

Search results

What I was actually looking for…

My results look a bit like this, Mothers of Invention??

I can’t quite believe that it’s taken the two “stop words” in the title and used them as the basis for the search. What’s wrong with the least ambiguous word, “booth”? No excuses for that, it’s rank bad implementation.

Yeah, that is no good.

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A post was split to a new topic: Getting no results for some searches