Thanks, Kursten, for the helpful information! I am not sure why some folks need to get tetchy in responses, e.g., “this has been discussed so many times over the years.” Not everyone has subscribed to Roon (and either Tidal or Qobuz) for years, generally those who are starting need the most help, and even those who have subscribed for some time might come here only when they need help with an issue, as I do.
Yes, Tidal used alone on my system does not insert a pause after the first track on an album, while Roon always does. On the other hand, I have noticed frequent micro-dropouts on Tidal alone, which Roon does not do. This makes me wonder if Roon buffers the Tidal stream somehow before feeding it to me.
In order to resolve issues of the Roon + Tidal pause after first tracks, here is a brief description of my set-up: My router is hardwired to a Nucleus+, in turn wired to an external hard-drive (which resolved awful loading problems from a QNAP NAS – I do not recommend the NAS route); I stream from the router via a BluSound Node 2i; the Node 2i in turn is hooked up to a DAC and ultimately to my amp.
I assume that when I stream Tidal directly, the pathway is directly router-Node 2i-DAC-etc. In contrast, I assume that when I use Roon to channel Tidal, the Nucleus+, where the Roon software resides, is also involved.
As for the search engine: I now understand the updated dump issue – thanks again for that. I am surprised that the streaming services supply that information to Roon; it must be a lot of work. But even with my own files the Roon search function is primitive. Like many other people, I slowly ripped files and entered metadata over the years, beginning with iTunes and then moving to other ripping software. I used long word streams for single artist entries in the form: Soloist 1, Soloist 2, Soloist 3, etc.; Conductor: Orchestra, Chorus. The search engine for a simple program like iTunes will find, say, “Soloist 3” if I search using that term. But Roon won’t. It seems to do ordered “and” searches rather than “or” searches. There are times, too, that a “not” added to a search would be helpful at burrowing down. As another example, for years I have catalogued album titles in the format: COMPOSER: Work Title (Conductor Year). If I do a search for “COMPOSER Conductor,” my files might not come up. Same with “COMPOSER Work Conductor.” Simply, the syntax of Roon searches is neither clear to me nor flexible. With 9+ Tb of music in 300,000 tracks, a better library search engine would help me considerably. (I try to hand-enter artist and other metadata on Roon as I listen to something or rip new files, but this is a work in progress and will take me years to conclude.)
In any case, the search engine seems to me to be a poor aspect of a wonderful product. It needs to allow logical operators, be able to pick out portions of long text streams during searches, and in general be more inclusive in results. Perhaps even listing results according to degree (i.e., %) of match, as many actual library search engines do.