I was asked to suggest how “smart playlists” should work in Roon.
I think we’re all very excited that Roon are finally doing something about Playlists.
I have tended to use Bookmarks. These worked excellently up to Roon 1.8. However, in Roon 2.0 onwards, they are unusably slow.
So now I’ve had a look at Playlists.
A playlist that is just tracks that I have added is…. Well, very boring after about a week. I’m sure this is fine if you have a 5 year old who like repetition but with Roon, the joy is having access to a LOT of music.
I’ve been asked to suggest what I’d like to see.
Easy answer is “Look at iTunes” (sometimes called Apple Music)
The Smart Playlists are very powerful.
For instance, I set up a Playlist to play songs that I like but haven’t heard in a while.
And it will prioritise Highly rated songs.
Five star more than 4 star more than 3 star etc. My ratings.
I do this by referencing the 5 star, 4 star etc playlist from another Playlist. Adjusting the number of songs in each playlist means I can balance what I want to hear. I have attached pictures of my Rules.
This is what I’d like to see in Roon.
A good starter would be to have the Bookmark functionality but for the search to be done on a schedule (I could say 03:00 every day) or on request. If try and filter tracks: Tracks with Tag: S never played, then a day after a reboot this may not resolve or, at best, takes a minute or more. When Roon is not well at all, even albums don’t show until a reboot is done. Shown.
Also, I don’t need a queue of 5000 songs, which Roon then struggles with. Let me set a Queue length.
I have put pictures of what happens when Roon struggles.
I hope this helps
I have not had your experience with slowness with bookmarks, which are of course Roon’s equivalent to smart playlists. Have you noticed specific combinations that cause more problems for you than others?
I separate all albums into 2 by using Tags. S means me. JS means me and my wife. Every album is assigned one of these 2 Tags.
Then for my list, I use Never Played.
For my wife’s list we use Not played in the last 6 months.
That’s all I ever really use.
Unusably slow. Except immediately after a reboot. I have suggested schedule reboots for Roon 2.0 but haven’t seen them. I think if Roon rebooted every night, then Bookmarks may be usable. At least in the mornings.
Ah, interesting. There are lots of reports here about tags that are applied to a large number of albums creating a slowdown. It might have more to do with that than the bookmarks functionality itself.
So how should I separate albums into 2 categories if I don’t use Tags? In iTunes I used Grouping. I am quite happy to change my behaviour to something that works. In 1.8 the JS tag didn’t work, but others did. In 2.0, the JS tag works, but behaviour slows down to unusable as time goes by after a reboot.