searching with fuzzy machine logic is often confounding, but i find talking a little more ‘computer’ to it helps, ie. artist title. usually can find that.
for the life of me i don’t understand how it’s so difficult to make the verbatim title match the first hit as a rule, why would it ever be different? so… odd.
I don’t know is this is a bug or a feature, but I have experienced it a few times recently:
Search shows the album third down on the list, but clicking on the entry results in ‘album not found’. I know this one is in my local collection because I previously tagged it. If I go to the tag it shows up and plays fine navigating to the album from there. It is identified with all metadata showing.
Some bottom lines from a long and involved thread (thanks @grossmsj ) -
And a bottom line from me -
It seems it is because what you want conflicts with what Roon wants. If the vast majority of your paying customers type “Elton Yellow”, the result will be Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road, because of course they really do want that album. It’s so simple and satisfying.
God forbid there is an artist by the name of Elton Yellow, because that exact result will conflict with the first case. It seems many of the intermediate cases we all run into must conflict with this general tenet. Then there is a case where the search engine needs to account for typos.
It is very odd, and very undesirable. And most searches we run in our lives don’t fall prey to this. It is not good and needs to get fixed. If there is a professional ‘search guy’ responsible for this now at Roon there’s hope.
Funny remark this. So out of curiosity I ran my “Green Manalishi” search with the search string “Peter Manalishi”.
This time the album section showed more relevant albums in the top hits. The overall result was still a useless jumble as per snafu.
Question remains: which warped mind considers a search string consisting of a first name and a random word out of a title an example of a commonly used search syntax?
Insane!
Sergey Brin? It works in Google, and now we’re spoiled.
I know your point Frank, and some structured search syntax would be awesome. I’m not holding my breath though.
My point is that ‘hit’ popularity seems to be a big driver in how search results are presented. That is a really frustrating consequence of ‘lazy searches’ when you type in an exact match.
You know it doesn’t work in Google, right Scott.
It gives the impression of working but it doesn’t work for real searches. On top of that Google tweaks the results to skew the results in favor of which clicked hit will generate the most money for Google.
None of this is relevant for a music player, except maybe in some twisted developer’s mind.
Alas, when I type in “Elton John” correctly the first 6 albums I get have either no connection with Elton John or in the case of one or two, weak connections, like he’s doing a background vocal on a track (though it is not easy to find out).
I do of course realise I could get a more useful result by clicking through on the artist Elton John and the Discography. But still.
I just started a trial with Tidal and ever since the search have been behaving wonderfully…
Of course, I tried disabling Tidal afterwards : back to chaos !
Hi @Francesco_Doenz - as a classical fan myself I usually find the best way to find an album is to find the composition first. You didn’t say which concerto for flute and harp, but a quick search on Discogs website came up with the album you want I think.
So now I knew it was Mozart I typed this in the Roon search (yes Roon search is not well just now but this still works!)…
“mozart concerto for flute”
This comes up with the right composition as the default choice (after pressing enter, not worth looking at the drop down search list don’t even know what that’s supposed to achieve!).
Now click the result and this will take you to the composition page for that work. Scroll down till you see ‘All Recordings’ and you will see a filter icon and text, click that and enter ‘Galway’ in the box and press enter.
Here you will see all the recordings that Galway is mentioned on. I’m on Qobuz and there isn’t the one you want sadly, although Discogs have listed it in various versions it doesn’t seem to have made it to streaming, which is rare I find.
Anyway - there’s a few to try whilst you wait for the CD to arrive! 
PS. I also use Presto Music website to search for specific albums, their search is amazing. Once I find the album I want I select and copy the title as they have on the album page exactly and paste that into Roon - it’s amazing how even really long titles with artists actually turn up the exact result first time… I think it all depends on what the streaming service have titled it.
Metadata is still rubbish for classical and we have had decades of streaming now… lazy labels, lazy distributors and sadly the streaming services just have to work with what they get given. Still the composition trick works for me nearly every time - although you might have to try several names in the filter, I’ve had albums where the main soloist isn’t even mentioned in the Roon metadata! Sometimes I’ve all but given up and simply scrolled through hundreds of recordings and found the one I want not even titled or credited how I would have expected! 
Instead of reading all this wonderful and absurd examples of errors in searching the database and tips and tricks to operate a search engine (which normally should be self explaining) I’d like to see any answer, explanation, workaround or solutions from the company I pay my annual fee (roon). Would it eventually be possible that we get something like that in the next couple of weeks or how is your schedule to solve this obvious and catastrophic software failure?
Hi all Roon Members!
Im a vietnamese and have a lot of vietnamese songs in my library. The problem now after the new update is that auto search is off. and i cant search with vietnamese chars.
like this song “Bước Qua Đời Nhau” before the update i could just write " Nhau" or “B” then all songs with that begins with be or has “Nhau” will pop up.
So to my question is there a way that i can just search for “Buoc qua doi nhau” without vietnamese symbols like google search. Because today i really need to type in the correct symbols. I´m not using the vietnamese keyboard on my devices thats why im wondering.
thanks
Hi @Tan_Nguyen — Can you share some screenshots of some search examples that aren’t working for you? I’ll pass them along to the team!
Hi Dylan.
When searching “BƯỚC QUA ĐỜI” i got results as expected.
But when searching without symbols get no results.
Is it possible to do search text only like googles search.
Before the update i was able just type type like “nhau” then the auto complete for search suggested at least “BƯỚC QUA ĐỜI NHAU”. Then i could select the song. Now i cant even search any of my songs anymore because i dont have vietnamese language on my devices. Only in my PC. So android and iphone seaarch is useless now.
Thanks for help
Roon search is no 2021 search. It’s a pain in the axx. If I search e.g. for Suicide is Painless the track listing contains everything with suicide and painless. I have to filter the search results again for Suicide is Painless.
Another sample: searching for Maria Mena and clicking on Artist doesn’t deliver her latest album They Never Leaver Their Wifes. Searching the album title delivers a search result with Maria Mena as artist. But when clicking on the artist name the new album doesn’t show up. 
That happens with many artists. So you can not browse a search for any new tracks or albums. You must exactly know the album or track title. That’s no fun at all. Even the very first versions of iTunes had a better search.
Are you using Tidal? I think this is a different issue. New albums sometimes take a while to appear in Roon, see Missing Tidal Album [explained] - #16
If you go into Tidal directly and favourite the album, it will appear as a latest addition to your library if you resync with Tidal.
For me (with Qobuz) Roon does not show the album “They never leave their wives” under the discography for Maria Mena:
but it is shown as a Recommended Album in the artist Overview:
Moreover the album is shown as released in October 2020 so the “missing because it is a new release” hypothesis is weak.
But a search for “They never leave their wives” nails it:
Hmm, you’re quite right. I had thought it was recently added to Tidal.
I can add it via favouriting in Tidal, but it’s not in discography.
Same here.
Sorry for the bad info.
Did you get it in “Recommended Albums”? I did, but not in discography, which is strange to say the least.
Ha! Yes. Weird.
