Qobuz not yet available here in the US so it’s not yet on my radar.
My Pi’s connect to DragonFly Black / Denon Receiver / ELAC Debut B6.2 and HifiBerry Digi+ Pro / Sony Receiver / Pioneer SP-FS51. I had replaced the Pioneer’s with a Samsung soundbar when one of my Denon receivers died but after starting to use Roon I got a new Sony STR-DN1080 and went back to the Pioneer’s. Much better sound than the soundbar.
So far my Tidal experience has been great. Since 75% of the albums in my library are from Tidal most of my listening is to Tidal tracks and I’ve had no problems with quality or streaming. I’ve been adding about 3 albums per day and can’t listen to everything I add. So far relying on the Radio function to pull up new tracks. The Pi next to my computer runs Ropieee with the touchscreen display so I can glance over and see what is playing when something I’m not familiar with starts playing.
What do you prefer about Qobuz over Tidal?
New houses in the desirable neighborhoods can get pretty expensive here. Bought back in 2004 and am happy and not planning on moving.
Is there a way to use the “Musichi Clean” feature to standardize all your tags without e.g. “Beethoven,Ludvig Van(1770-1827)”, which Roon chokes on? I haven’t found a way to customize this (his documentation is colorful but not always helpful).
Well and fully stated. I have posted similar concerns re Classical data management as well. That said, IMO Roon offers a service that to date cannot be bested - Classsical warts and all.
Sorry did not reply earlier - been on Grandkid duties…
Qobuz - interface is like Roon with a remote library containing all the music I would ever want and all easily found.
Stream HiRes (92/24 and 192/24) as part of the annual payment. Can download and take away on iPhone without buying album.
Tidal was ANNOYING when it came to finding classical music. Record companies on Qobuz much better. Good range of Jazz too!
Several things could really improve the boxed set situation.
Enable some kind of simple text search of track titles (or musical works) within the boxed set that one has selected.
After one has found an album within a set to play, don’t have the view default (or time out) to kick us back to the overall view of the set (otherwise you have to remember that disc number…very cumbersome). This happens to me over and over in the iPad app. I know it’s possible to click on the track one is playing and eventually find one’s way back, but there are about 3 steps involved when the app needs to “wake up”, and if the selection being played ends it’s even more difficult (involving playback history, etc.)
Allow individual cover art to be displayed (or at least quickly accessed) for discs within the set (if they are in the folder for that disc). It’s nearly impossible to find one set of covers with the existing image search method when there are 100+ images.
Mike raises some valid points and as a former Sonos user I have grown used to tag my own music (mainly classical). What worries me about this thread is a total lack of a response by the developers. Surely the classical music lovers are entitled to an informed response about what specifically Roon is planning in this area?
Then again, there’s at least four factors that need to be considered:
Classical metadata is a hard nut to crack
Classical metadata is generally in a poor state, and this issue begins with the Labels themselves who cheerfully issue releases with erroneous or minimal metadata.
If you get six experts on classical metadata in the room, there will be at least seven schemes for dealing with classical metadata, and every one is the only possible and correct way of doing it.
The Roon devs will rarely spell out in detail what they are planning. All we know is that the issue of how best to present and navigate the classical landscape is on their minds.
The current suggestion (from Roon themselves) is that we should be contributing to Musicbrainz directly to improve the quality of metadata (Roon uses Rovi and Muscibrainz as metadata sources).
I’m not sure if that’s true. The Roon team has confirmed that musicbrainz is used to source some metadata but they also said it’s a work in progress and if you go that route you’ll note what that means. There’s no “official guide” on what’s supported and what not. And if you look at the artist equivalence issues thread you’ll also notice that it’s not fully figured out yet how to merge metadata sources.
Not really. For one thing it’s easy to work with it if you know about that little detail about track artist (vs. performer). For another: it’s kind of matching Roon’s own recommendation to use performer entries and not track artist entries for classical music.
Personally, I like the musicbrainz approach because it let’s me add releases to Roon if I feel the need to do so; no other known way to do this. And: there’s sharing involved, which can feel good. But yes - it takes some getting used to and it’s often quite some work to add stuff there, especially if you’ve to source some of the information first.
There’s been a couple of threads** recently where people on the Roon team have suggested contributing to Musicbrainz, but I agree that this may not be solidified as official Roon policy, and I should not be giving that impression (not being an employee of Roon, I certainly cannot speak for them). And I also recognise that members of the Roon team have made it clear that Musicbrainz is not the perfect panacea.
I agree that there’s “no official guide” - partly because this is all a work in progress, and whilst I might regret the omission, it is what it is, and I can understand that.
I still can’t get my head around using the composer’s name in the Track Artist field though. Unless the composer in question is the actual performer of the track, and then it is valid. There is a tag for the Composer - why isn’t that used?
Regarding **: an answer (on a question of mine) I remember
Knowing that musicbrainz2roon is a moving target is important I think. If someone starts putting effort into adding data to musicbrainz expecting that it will all show up may be counter productive. Knowing that not all data will come thru beforehand and also knowing that support in this area may be limited for the time being may save time for all parties involved.
As for this track artist thingie: it’s easy to deal with programmatically. It’s like this now because it went like it always does: classical music wasn’t really thought of when things started at musicbrainz. Now a track artist is required so the workaround for otherwise clean classical metadata seems to be “use composer for track artist, everything else elsewhere”. What counts more is what’s on the relationship page of the picture like here:
Ok, thanks for this. That workaround makes things a bit clearer viz. the Musicbrainz way of doing things… I’ll admit that I’ve only ever submitted one album to Musicbrainz, and I wondered whether it was worth the trouble. I’ll proceed, carefully, in future as required…
I think it’s almost impossible for any one metadata scheme to work for everyone with classical. I DO find musicbrainz suits my needs best as a starting point, but many titles aren’t yet covered by them. However, I’m resigned to the fact that I will need to edit the tags before putting a title into my Roon folder. For instance, to ME, the artist category is always the performing musician(s), not ever the composer. So, I always edit that to reflect my preference (I use “Tag” for Mac OS).
What I still don’t quite get with Roon is if I have my own system of tags/metadata, why does it seem somewhat arcane to get Roon to use these tags exclusively, with the switch of ONE tab in Roon? It always seems that I think I’ve done so, yet still I get whatever data Roon initially sees as correct to override my own? Of course, it’s very welcome when one DOES have poor metadata assocaiated with some files and Roon DOES find the right info, so it’s kind of a 2 way street on that issue.
But yes - it takes some getting used to and it’s often quite some work to add stuff there, especially if you’ve to source some of the information first.
