Well, I want to try again to explain what many of us ask to Roon.
We LOVE Roon and we LOVE the meta-informations handle by Roon, it’s what it does better and we never wanted a shared Meta-information + Browser Folder mode.
We are AWARE that Roon will never be known as a Folder mode player, and we don’t want it.
Said so, we need an tool inside Roon, imagine it as an “hide” function, where you can say to Roon “Play this folder” or “Play this file from this folder”. Roon will plays that file (a song, an interview, a sound effect), but Roon will never put it in its history, will never make you able to add it to a tag or a playlist, it will be like a “privacy browser mode” of a Internet Browser.
The path that Roon will reach in this modality will be not added in its database (where we say to roon the PATHs of our music and Roon examines them), Roon will just give us the opportunity to play a file that is EXTERNAL to it, to it’s database, to it’s history, to it’s ecosystem.
Why we need that?
Because there’s not workaround that could ever work in this scenario:
I have 10.000 mp3s that are NOT songs, they are interviews, me that play guitar or piano, music from retrocomputers, imagine EVERYTHING that is not taggable, not songs, not albums, not normal collections.
Why don’t use ANOTHER player instead of Roon when I need to play stuff that isn’t music? Why bother Roon’s devs to make a Folder browser mode?
Because, in my case (and in many cases I suppose), Roon is my MAIN if not UNIQUE player. It’s connected to my DAC and I never use ANOTHER player, I want only to use Roon.
Also, because I want to continue to enjoy it’s EQs even with that audio files that aren’t simply MUSIC.
In the end, I will be happy if a simply and even hidden “folder mode” will be enabled in Roon. I really don’t understand what’s the problem with it but I see that many people will enjoy it, me first.