Roon's Playlist Improver - Feedback Thread!

Roon Software Discussion
65

Hi @sbr,

Agreed, this was raised / discuss earlier …

I’ve also notified Roon seeking clarification.

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66

I would always want the higher resolution whether local, Tidal, or Qobuz. We have the option not to accept the recommendation if we don’t want to. If the Improver were to always choose local, you may never know there is a higher resolution available on Tidal or Qobuz. That seems to me to defeat the purpose.

EDIT: My post is in reference to someone wanting to always choose local over streaming.

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67

Hi @Jim_F,

This aspect of the discussion is not about local vs. streamed, it’s about perceived quality of format MQA vs. PCM.

Some people prefer MQA other don’t which can be adjusted in Roon’s settings but it seems that the Playlist Improve does not respect that choice.

68

I was referring to local vs streaming.

69

OK noted, I thought it was related to my post. Thanks for edit / clarification.

70

First of all, sorry for not wading through all previous posts.

  • We need to have a priority order, which can be customized.
    I prefer local DSD over any Qobuz 24/192 on every day! And i also prefer local RedBook media to streaming service highrez.

And when choosing “Show improvements” it would be easier to validate if it was a distilled list:

  • Track A locally in 320kbps will be replaced with track A from Qobuz in 24/96
  • Track B from Qobuz will be replaced by local DSD file of track B
    Now the scrolling is confusing, and i might even consider a “one click improver” (all of these improvements will be performed)
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71

Worked well, identifying and substituting higher resolution versions of dozens of tracks and eliminating duplicate tracks, all in a couple of quick and easy steps, including review prior to approving changes. This all went smoothly, unlike some other Roon operations, but first I updated Roon on all devices. Hopefully the new update will improve Roon performance in playback mode.

72

Another couple of reasons you might want to match with a local version:

  • You can download those local copies via ARC. Which means you can play or listen to a playlist even when you don’t have access to internet. Lots of potential use cases here.
  • You can export all the files in a playlist if they point to local copies. This might be useful to some users if, for example, they were making up a playlist that they wanted to play outside of Roon in another software package or via CDJs ie. compiling a list of tracks for a radio show or DJ set.
  • Those local tracks will work for ever more, assuming they remain in your local library, even if you switch or cancel streaming providers or the track drops out of their catalogue.

Also, as above, the version provided by the streaming platform may have ‘bigger numbers’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a better mastering / recording, often it’s not. You may prefer the lossless 44.1khz/16bit version you yourself ripped from a CD.

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73

You can already get this information. Add Show Format to the displayed data, and then when you go to the item being suggested you can toggle it on/off to see what it is upgrading from and to.

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74

Yes, i realise that and it should perhaps default to that view for this purpose?
Still, i need to browse and click through a potentially loong list.
What i meant is that i would like to see a list of changes only, not the full playlist, where each change suggested is shown.

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75

I agree with a long list it is cumbersome. I had 1300 suggestions in one Playlist, I’m not going to review thst many lines individually.

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76

100%. I hope people understand this. Mastering is such an important factor.

Tony

77

Would be nice to have more visual feedback about the status of Playlist Improver. When a playlist is selected, the “Improve” button does not appear while the playlist is being evaluated. With a large playlist, this can take a minute or more. You have no way to know whether the playlist is optimized or whether you should continue to wait. It would be nice to have three states displayed - playlist being evaluated, playlist can be improved (existing button), playlist optimized.

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78

It’s not available on my iPad tablet, not sure why.

79

I’m glad to see that Roon is finally giving playlists some attention. These improvements are nice, but there is a major issue with import/export of playlists. Basically the feature doesn’t work well and is hidden. In addition, it does NOT import excel playlists, but it does export them…? Why? Let’s face it, manually making playlists via the interface is slow and arduous. Excel playlists could be quickly changed and manipulated. The export of M3U playlists is a huge waste of space and time; why export the tracks as well as the playlists? This is not done on other systems…???

Recently I had a hardware failure on my Intel NUC (which was only Roon native software), I needed a new system. I had a windows computer available and set that up as the server instead. However, when I tried to recover from a backup from the NUC, my playlists were garbled; many songs missing or completely empty. I was able get them back, but once the computer went to sleep or restarted, the playlist were garbled again. Of course I couldn’t import the excel playlists I had available. After much frustration, bad advice, internet searches, and weeks of time. I gave up and started manually updating the playlists.

There was obviously some difference in the native Roon software on the Intel NUC (Linux?) and the windows machine that were incompatible. Anyway, if there was a simple import that worked, especially from excel, I would not have experienced these issues.

80

did you update your tablet Roon SW, when it first came out I also could not find it on my tablet, you need to at the right release or higher for it to show up.

81

I did and it still doesn’t show up on my iPad. But after the horrible experience using it on PC, I won’t be using it either way. Too bad, it was a great idea … if only it worked at all.

82

Has anyone had a good experience with this new feature?

83

Yes, it’s great. I also used it to find 518 upgrades to my 4000+ albums

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/playlist-improver-feedback-thread/276578/74?u=jim_f

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84

Thanks. I haven’t tried it, cuz it sounds like it’s either going to screw up my library or just not work well and annoy me. I’ve had enough issues with Roon over the years to be very reluctant to try anything that might cause problems.