An elegant way of solving it for power users could be adding support for “label:”, “artist:”, “track:”, “album:”, “genre:” in the search field. Not obtrusive, but gives the user a quick way to give focus to what they are searching for.
Maybe this is a personal preference, but I first and foremost search for artists/albums in my own library (being local files or added from streaming services), and no wider than that (to begin with). If no local library hits, then the search should expand.
I think this is well-known, but worth repeating: Right now selecting an album suggested by the search result matching a locally added album, brings you to the streaming platform’s (at least with Tidal) listed item instead of the one in my library.
This is super odd, as I then have to go to artist to find thee album in my library and queue from there. Only if no match in local library should the streaming platform’s choice be used (unless already added to local library, but if several versions then main version should always show/queue).
This is pretty shocking - yet it explains everything. SEARCH is the most important part of a library, shame it took Roon so long to realise this.
The good thing is, finally someone is trying to take care of this function, the bad thing was - for a very long time users were nearly marked as outlaws for mentioning the search problems. It took a long time until the big problem was really acknowledged and the “Roon defence squad” stopped pretending that all was great.
Water under the bridge - I truly hope that Search will finally work. Just do not make it too complex - really and truly I would be happy with the most basic of database search functionality - put in album and artist and get the results where both words are present.
this sort of thing worked in databases long before machine learning - just super basic please. If then something extra special can be had by ML - fine by me. So one day, I put " Tosca Price" in the search field and actually get the right results (including my library) - that would make me very happy.
Im with Frank in having some parameters to search in, have an overall as default if thats your thing, but please let us choose if we are only wanting to see tracks, artist, composer, album, label etc. The generic catch all is just too much info most of which is not what you want.
“Tracks” isn’t a very useful construct for classical music (unless you have a particular aria or movement in mind). So in the example of your screenshot, where you have “tracks” such as Beethoven Piano Concerto 4 played by Brendel, what I would find more useful would be the whole composition rather than just a bit of it - your example shows the four “tracks” of the same composition in a random order interspersed with other stuff. One instance for the composition would be great.
You have another issue with your current search in that the tracks don’t always match correspond to the search terms. For example if I search for “Beethoven Brendel” I get these tracks
I appreciate your awareness of the possibility of more subtle and complex searches, but I would encourage you to just get the basics solid. Fancier searches may be better done through the “Focus” screen in any case.
Thank you for the elaborate answer. It’s clear to me that compositions are a much more useful construct in classical music.
At the moment on the stable version of roon, the library search will look for mentions of either “Beethoven” or “Brendel” and display you all the possible results with either. This is of course too broad given the search context. In addition to that, compositions in the search engine currently don’t contain any data about all the performers (unless they are mentioned specifically in the title), which alltogether causes this effect. We will address both issues.
Here’s a great example: a new release, the artist is The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong Allstars. The album title is “A Gift to Pops.” Searching for the artist only delivers Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong and his Allstars, Hot Five, etc., World of Skin and several other World of variations, but not the correct artist. Searching for the album title yields “A Jazz Celebration” from the Marsalis Family, the Beatles “A Hard Day’s Night,” and a host of other completely unrelated titles, but not the album in question.
Searching for the album title in the Qobuz app brings the correct album up at the top of the list in a couple of seconds. So in order to find this album and play it through Roon, I had to find it in Qobuz, set it as a favorite in Qobuz, then wait for it to show up in my list in Roon.
This is also the kind of case of very broad search results that I mentioned in previous posts. This has been addressed, but we’ll have to wait for the release.
I was under impression that some years ago when I was searching in ‘albums’ page search returned albums, when on ‘tracks’ page it would return tracks, same for ‘composers’, ‘compositions’, ‘genres’…. To me this would make sense, Why does Roon have all these pages to display the library and search function does a global search on the first word you enter and not take into consideration that when you display e.g. your albums you would not be interested in albums first hand when doing a search?
But also as you suggest adding and identifier ‘album:’ … would be a great solution as this one could refine search for multiple search keywords from different categories.
Roon’s search is so bad that I find it easier to open the qobuz app, find and like the album, close qobuz, open roon, manual sync qobuz through roon settings, find album on roon homepage.
It’s crazy to think that the above is the easiest way for me to find albums.
I remain basically a fan of Roon in all ways, happy with my purchase, use it every day. But over what feels like the last few months, it has seemed to me that search has grown less and less helpful.
(All content in my database files stored locally on a NAS.)
Just now, I had the same experience on a phone and on my Windows laptop:
Searched for phrase “tell me something good” (no quote marks, no caps)
But I never get any of these within the results (this screenshot from my **Tracks** view, sorted alphabetically), all of which would seem to be better candidates based on my query:
Curious why you don’t just use the filter function to find something in your own library? Search is so broken I would never use it for that. Best to just use the funnel/filter either under albums or artists and then start to type in what you are looking for and results will come up and then they will filter down the more you type in.
Because filter doesn’t find things in your own library. If I use filter for “Beethoven Piano Concerto No 1” it won’t get anything with “concertos” in the album title, which will exclude most relevant recordings as they are nearly always for more than one. And using filter for a search like “Beethoven Brendel” comes back with nothing.
I’m brand new to Roon – only four days into my trial – but thought I would add my two cents to the Search discussion.
I only have a handful of Tidal albums added to my Library, as I’m not yet able to connect my NAS to Roon (still troubleshooting that). One of the games that I play as part of my music discovery is to pick a song and play a bunch of different versions of it. Roon has been particularly bad at supporting that strategy.
For example, I can go to Tidal and search for a song, say ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me’ (with or without the comma), click the ‘Tracks’ option at the top of the page and get 50 dead-on hits. However, if I go into Roon and do the same thing I get four accurate hits and a bunch of other stuff – some with the word ‘Hang’ associated with the song or album, some just a mystery. I don’t understand why the Tracks option doesn’t present the exact matches first. As others have said, it would be helpful to have more control over the searches (quotes, boolean, etc).
I’d also like to thank the Roon staff for listening and responding. It is refreshing; I will most certainly buy a year’s subscription when my 14 days are up. Roon is not perfect, but it sure beats anything else I’ve used.
I posted this elsewhere until someone directed me here. This is posted by way of example.
I have three versions of the soul classic, “A Change Is Gonna Come” — one each by Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and Otis Redding — in my own library, stored on a NAS.
I have entered the following search term: “change is gonna come” (without quotation marks). Roon returns the following 50 tracks:
Title
Track Artist(s)
Livin’ on Change
Willi Jones
—
—
Pick Up the Change
Wilco
Pick up the Change
Wilco
Pick Up the Change
Wilco
Change My Mind
Wagon
Change the World All Around
The Vulgar Boatmen
I Can Change (I Swear It)
Violent Femmes
Too Late to Change
Tuomo & Markus
Small Change
Tom Waits
Small Change
Tom Waits
Small Change
Tom Waits
Small Change
Tom Waits
Change the Locks
Tom Petty
All Things Change
Syd Straw
If I Can’t Change Your Mind
Sugar
Change of the Guard
Steely Dan
Change the Locks
The Silos
A Change Would Do You Good
Sheryl Crow
Could It Be Another Change
The Samples
Make a Change
Ruth Moody
If You Change Your Mind
Rosanne Cash
When I Change My Life
Pretenders
Things Will Change and Go My Way
Pete Droge
Change of the Century
Ornette Coleman
Change Your Mind
Neil Young
I Would Change My Life
Nanci Griffith
Change of Heart
Mr. Henry
Change
Lana Del Rey
Change Your Mind
Kristen Hall
Change of Time
Josh Ritter Live
Change of Time
Josh Ritter Live
Change of Time
Josh Ritter
Change of Time
Josh Ritter
Chill Out (Things Gonna Change)
John Lee Hooker & Carlos Santana
Change the Tune
Jason & the Scorchers Live
Money Won’t Change You
James Brown
Change Your Mind
J.J. Cale
You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave)
Hank Williams
Change Your Tune
Grant Lee Buffalo
Change Your Mind
The Feelies
You’re Gonna Change
Emmylou Harris
Never Gonna Change
Drive-By Truckers
You Never Change
The Doobie Brothers
Gift X-Change
Calexico
Change Is Now
The Byrds
Loose Change
Bruce Springsteen
Time for a Change
The Bottle Rockets Live
Slow Change
Bobby Hutcherson
Slow Change
Bobby Hutcherson
I Guess I’ll Have to Change My Plans
Bob Dylan
None of the 50 returned results contain the actual terms that were searched. When a user enters “change is gonna come,” is there any plausible assumption that the user is searching for something OTHER than the song, “A Change Is Gonna Come”?
