I’m wondering if you really understand how Roon search works…
If you search for “Tom Waits” Roon does not know if you are really searching for “Tom Waits” or “Tom” and “Waits” separately. If you remember, one of the examples in this chain of discussion was a search for “Genesis Jesus” where Genesis is the band and Jesus is part of the song so you CANNOT assume two words (or more than two words) just refer to an artist.
So Roon’s first result screen returns a combination of search results for “Tom Waits” and “Tom” and “Waits” and as you can imagine, there would be literally thousands of matches for these words which are very common. It cannot assume you only want “Tom Waits” results because then it would fail completely for “Genesis Jesus” as there is no band or artist named that. So it has to pick some reasonable combination of things to display. You can argue about whether it picked the right things but it would be untenable to list them all. So the first results screen that looks something like this (depending on what is in your local library):
It does properly weight the most likely results to be the Artist Tom Waits (under artists) and a selection of Tom Waits Albums under “Albums” as that is a likely choice for your search terms but of course does not list everything.
If you then tell Roon you really want just the artist “Tom Waits” – which is what you want – by clicking on the Artist “Tom Waits” in that first results screen, you get the screen below – which properly shows the Tom Waits albums I have in my local collection.
And this is properly showing every Tom Waits release in Tidal and Qobuz that is not in my main library.
I’ll also note the Roon album display is superior to both Qobuz and Tidal as it shows multiple releases of the same album as versions (like the deluxe version vs the non-deluxe version) as opposed to showing them as duplicates in the album list as Qobuz and Tidal does.
This is, in my opinion operating very well and is not broken as you suggest. So I would suggest trying to first understand how to use Roon in the right way and then your feedback may be more constructive…
Two things that I would improve (for Tidal and Qobuz searches):
Search results ordered from “exact match” to less exact, etc. Sometimes the exact match appears after 10 other results
Being able to search by label or composer, etc., when you click on it. Now it just applies a “focus” on the library, and that’s a pretty useless feature IMO. I believe everyone is familiar with their own libraries, unless for some reason they added thousands of albums without looking.
Both Qobuz and Tidal offer results by label, it’s just a matter of plugging roon to it.
My process right now is going to Qobuz or Tidal, search there, add to favourites, and then go back to Roon and refresh.
As things stand, your core is not coded to simply return Tom Waits. Nobody said it’s good enough. Many have said it’s being worked on.
So Waits a little bit and when it’s all stripped down and rebuilt your desired results will shoot staight to the top and you’ll forget all hell broke luce. In the meantime it’s alright with me and I’ll take it as it comes.
Just following on from what you wrote. I have no Tom Waits albums in my library, so under the Album results, what I see at the head of the list are the four albums (by other artists) in my library that contain a track that is either performed or composed by Tom Waits, followed by Roon’s suggestions for actual Tom Waits albums (that are not in my library, but available from the streaming service that I have integrated in Roon: Qobuz).
I certainly don’t understand how Roons search works. When I search Qobuz for “Mozart Perahia” I get a reasonable set of albums. When I search Roon for “Mozart Perahia” I don’t get a reasonable set of albums, not is there a way to get them via artist (as you could with Tom Waits) or composer.
Obviously in the case of “Tom Waits” you can get to his albums via Artist (though imo you should not have to).
But how do you suggest I get to Perahias recordings of Mozart? Focus isn’t the answer - it doesn’t include Qobuz.
So, as you seem to know how Roons search works and you think I don’t, please tell me how I can find all the albums on which Murray Perahia plays a work by Mozart?
@Jez – If this whole exchange with you was just about classical it would have been very short and frankly productive. Roon needs to do better on searches for classical artists, performers and releases. That is and has been well known and your example of “Mozart Perahias” may be helpful to Roon as they work to improve (I’m assuming they are as that is what they have said…).
But you chose to take a blunt hammer to everything Roon does in search and assert that it just sucks across the board, that Qobuz, Tidal, JRiver, etc was superior and search is so easy – it’s just a commodity – so Roon must be idiots to not have solved it (these are not your exact words but your clear intent). The Tom Waits example shows this is not true and that is what I have been reacting to.
But in any case, this will be my last post on this chain. I would wish all posters here take the time to learn how to best use Roon search and provide well thought out constructive feedback and examples. I’m sure that is very helpful to Roon. But IMHO, there is nothing more productive to be gained out of this discussion for me until Roon releases enhancements that can be seen and tested so I’ll sign off here…
If you all search for a composer or artist, say Beethoven, do you expect the “track” results to be top tracks from that artist/composer OR tracks that are named similarly to the artist?
(The question could just as well be directed at the Album category.)
A search for the word “beethoven” in my own library presents a pretty strange result:
It needs to be said though, that the search field suggested “Ludwig Van Beethoven” while typing. And if i select that phrase the composer gets the highest weight.
You lucky Mikael. When I search for Beethoven, and then accept the “Beethoven, Ludwig Van…” that appears as the top entry in the pulldown, the top result I get is for Beethoven the artist, not composer. Since Beethoven died long before recording was invented this result is totally and utterly useless. This is just not remotely acceptable.
Yes, there are, but that is a separate issue. I have four albums in my collection where “Ludwig Van Beethoven” is credited as a composer. This seems to be because “Ludwig Van Beethoven” is given a credit for the cadenza. In these cases “Ludwig Van Beethoven” was the composer* of the cadenza, not the artist. So that’s also completely wrong, but a separate issue from the earlier one. Here are the four albums where the composer of the cadenza is incorrectly credited as an artist.
See above. My earlier post was to do with “Beethoven, Ludwig Van (1770-1827j” selected as the first option from a drop down list Roon gives when entering “Beethoven” in a search, This gives Beethoven as an artist as the top selection. If I click through on that artist Inget the following 7 compositions, all from the same albums.
For my library, here are my “Tom Waits” Album search results in order:
It’s Closing Time by Waits - only Waits album in my library
The Best of Holly Cole - Waits’ hit "Jersey Girl’ is on there and in my library
The Other Girl in the Room - Wait’s “Temptation” hit is on there and in my library
The Eagles - Waits “Ol 55” hit is on there and in my library
Secular Hymns by Peyroux = Waits “Tango Till They’re Sore” is on there and in my library
Norah Jones - Waits “Long Way Home” is on there and in my library
Half the Perfect Night by Peyroux - Waits’ “Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night” is on there and in my library
Raising Sand by Plant & Krauss - Waits “Trampled Rose” is on there and in my library
through 34. - Waits’ albums on Q and T
Now we can argue that Roon should have reversed the order of Waits composed versus Waits performed. And some would expect Roon to know that you wanted the Performer only, or first.
But for me, this is a damn good search result, when all I gave it was Tom Waits.
Tested and exactly the same here. But I have these kind of things for many other searches.
Just one example;
Do a search for James Brown.
Ignore Top Result.
Click view all on the right side of Artists.
I get 16 grey squares of artists being called James Brown and one with a picture of James Brown.
Next click on …
1 Picture of James Brown artist who is on 2 albums of Massive Attack in my library? But also has 749 hits on Tidal
2 Grey square James Brown artist who is on or did something with the production for the album Meds from Placebo …
3 Grey square James Brown artist who appears on albums of … James Brown!? And has 44 albums as James Brown! But then one of the top tracks is with John Williams and Daniel Barenboim from 2015!?
Etcetera …
Currently collecting a list clear examples for the Roon guys. Hope this will improve in the near future!
If you don’t find it in roon, try to find it in Tidal, mark it as a favorite there, then import your Tidal favorites into roon and try to find it then in roon as well. Easy, right?
Don’t be so difficult, you only need to know your way around the sophisticated roon search
Have finally taken some time to compare the search within Roon with what I’d expect after using the search capability within the Qobuz and Tidal apps.
The first and foremost request is that Roon work on eliminating the wall between local/library content and streaming service content. As an example (from Classical music, which I acknowledge adds a few degrees of difficulty):
I was reading a special Gramophone magazine edition on the London Symphony Orchestra’s in house label, LSO Live. Wanting to listen to some of the recommended recordings, I turned to Roon. I have two of their recordings in my library, added from Qobuz. LSO Live is the label in the credits for these albums, but clicking on that only brings up the two that are in the library, not the ones in Tidal or Qobuz which share that credit. Jumping over to the Qobuz app, where the ability to browse by label exists, I find about 180 entries for LSO Live. Tidal is more problematic - a search for LSO Live only brings up a sampler.
In Roon, I searched for LSO Live. Only one entry, which is one of their albums which unexpectedly has ‘LSO Live’ listed as one of the main artists. Next I searched for the London Symphony Orchestra, and browsed the ‘Main Albums’ under streaming services. Of the 620 albums listed, there were 70 LSO Live label releases. I stopped there, as finding the other 110 that I know are available on Qobuz would entail entering more artist/conductor/title information one by one in the search bar and then enduring a cumbersome hunt for those releases.
Not sure what the technical issues are that are preventing it, but in this case having the ability to go across the library/service divide with the search would at least return all of the albums having ‘LSO Live’ in the label credit.
In short, for classical, Roon search is rarely useful. Coupled with the poor handling of box sets and the extremely problematic composition browsing/searching issues, Roon is far from a one-stop solution for classical listeners.
If I put composer and an artistname in the search, I get very few results - this was not bad before.
If I put in Strauss and Gwyneth Jones, I get 2 results - but I have 17 recordings in my library.
Same with absoluely every combination of artist plus Album title.
So search fo me is pretty bad - with thousands of recordings, the search feature is vital and in this regard it used to be better.
Searchin: Verdi Domingo - gets me 20 results from my library, but I have 35 which show up if only search for Domingo.
In the search bar I put in Saint Saens Symphony in A Major. I am looking for just that. I get results with everything but. I am specifically looking for a new release that Qobuz announced in their recent email which included this symphony. So then I tried the title of the album exactly: Saint Saens: Symphonies. Still don’t get the result I’m looking for - So then I added “Orchestre Philharmonique” (without the quotes) to the last search. STILL I did not get the result I was looking for. Will someone please fix the search. This is not the first time I’ve had issues. It’s just the most recent.
