Ditto @steveoat87. Right or wrong I have husbanded my own core metadata and cover art. The key point is that I recognise it and know how to navigate through it. The ‘improved’ Roon metadata cuts that essential link of recognition. It really bothers me that the current state of Roon is that you have to make genre preference in one place and then everything else is done per album with no default. I can live with that clumsy solution for now but it is clumsy.
The other part of Roon is all kinds of metadata on additional artists: musicians, co-writers etc. Then there are artist photos and bios, album write-ups and lyrics. I do not really use this but equally I have no problem that it is there in case someone wants to access it.
In sum, there is a set of core data that I have maintained my way, right or wrong, and that I do not want Roon to interfere with. I want an easy way to be able to define my core metadata elements and keep Roon away from it. Then Roon can use whatever expertise it has to populate the non-core metadata that helps to provide a rich experience for the user. I expect many people will be in the same camp of having proprietary metadata and external metadata, but the actual boundaries will vary from person to person. So, I think it is not a question of all Roon data is worthless nor that it is all perfection. We just need a better implementation that lets is control what we want versus what we give over to Roon.
You echo my sentiments.
I don’t really get what the rich data experience is – I don’t need Roon to read what’s already on the AMG site. For classical music, there is much better data (music reviews, recording details) on other sites. I would rather see links to real reviews than the half-baked stuff on AMG.
The rich user data I would like are great album art and pdfs of booklets included with the CD.
And I would like to be able to use my own metadata, which I have carefully created. JRiver gives me much more flexibility with metadata use, though I don’t like the whole gestalt of the JRiver company (they know whats best for me).
Equally important to me is integration of other streaming services, like Tidal. The integration with Tidal is great, but would like to see this with other streaming sites, like classicsonline and qobuz.
Just to throw in a different opinion, I am happy for them to keep going what they are doing at the moment. I am more interested in listening to my music than nursing it.
I think you might have wasted your money then. There are allot of free and cheaper players that allow you to listen to your music using a similar topology as Roon and it’s endpoints. Unless you don’t nurse your tags at all?
Using Tidal as a main data source of course adds value back into Roon without the need to nurse your data.
No, I don’t think I’m wasting my money. Even without the “rich metadata”, Roon offers alot and the whole point of my comments is to make Roon better.
My comments are those of a predominantly classical music listener. For me, Rovi doesn’t add alot, since there are much better sites available for classical music lovers. I am hoping that Roon can improve its offering for a classical music lover.
Hmmm… I must have a small library (16,000+ tracks) and not enough breadth and depth to be seeing this. I have seen some albums that are not identified at all (2L’s Mezzotints, as an example) and some that are mis-identified, but overall I’ve found the meta data to be really good for my collection.
In particular, I really appreciate not having to manually add-in conductors, movements, works, et al. for my classical collection. I suppose there are errors in there, but compared to what I had before it’s a huge improvement.
For me, the best part is the “performances” linking that allows me to quickly see multiple versions of the same classical piece. That and the Roon genre tagging that allows very quick cross referencing to music that is similar or influenced by current tracks. Errors aside, I don’t think these functions could easily be replicated on your own by simply Googling around while you are listening with, say, iTunes.
That is the magic that is Roon, even with its faults.
I guess it all depends on how fastidious you were before, with your organising and tagging of music files. Sure, Roon is “magic” in terms of its features and interface, but for those of use who value rich and valid information, it has to be accurate. I think the most simple answer to some of these issues at present is for Roon to allow the users to edit the metadata - all of it. This will allow Roon to combine the power of the automatically pulled metadata with the verification and fine tuning by the user. Been waiting for this feature since Roon was launched & hope it is here soon.
Here’s an example of how bad the data is.
I have ripped my entire Artur Rubinstein collection box set, which is about 80 albums. Some are multiple discs. Many of the discs are, though in this box renamed and repackaged for the series, identical to albums released first on vinyl with different names. Roon’s data imports these 80 albums in a wildly inconsistent way. Some show up as part of the box set. Some show up as part of other collections. Some show up as individual albums. There is simply no way to accept this data over the carefully curated data I have put on these discs so they are coherent in my collection.
Hi Dan,
you can you edit roons metadata once roon has scanned your files.
Or / and does auto change your existing metadata by default without asking permission first?
Gary, I know I can do that. But that is a problem. Each time I add new albums to my library I have to do the same thing over again and then resave my library data. Much better to state my preference and skip the Roon data as the albums are scanned.
I ripped the Rubinstein collection (142 CDs) and Roon recognized them.
However, when I ripped each album, I used the custom album cover for each album.
However, Roon only shows 1 album cover, not the individual cover for each disc.
I think you misunderstand me - I do care about rich, accurate meta data, and I’ve spent countless hours “working on my music” as my daughter calls it. For example, I have multiple versions of Yes albums, based on mastering/re-mastering engineer, and I ended up having to manage this manually in Roon.
But examples like these are the exception, rather than the norm for my collection, and I am happy to leave the "correct version"in the ID3 tags in the actual media files and let Roon operate under the principle that “Great is the Enemy of Good.” I don’t want to manage my library twice, so iTunes is the reference collection and I (mostly) let Roon do what it does and not worry about it too much.
As the dust settles on all of this and (a) Roon survives, (b) Roon fixes their playback interaction model and © I have a high quality Roon Bridge component (still waiting for Bryston…), then I may change over to using Roon is a monogamous manner. Too early for me to commit…
In the mean time, I am focusing on the positives, like discovering new music via Tidal and re-discovering music in my collection.
There is already a request for better handling of large boxsets, espcially the albumart and identifying of discs. Don’t know the status, but I am sure roon is looking into it.
A user database initially sounds great, but who grooms that incoming data? Just think of 50 users adding slightly different albumart and track naming, typo’s, etc for one album. Roon needs to present one “community” version. I think from practical point this is undoable. I whish it would be possible though.
Also want to mention that chances are that some of the errors or unidentified albums can be down to poor tagging. I personally have a modest collection of 60K tracks and when I started with roon I had hundreds of unidentified albums, although I spent ages in grooming my metadata and thought I had all bases covered. I just finished a project of re-tagging my collection and was able to solve 60 percent of the unidentified albums. Just also something to consider.
I have a Hyperion download of 600 schubert songs, but Roon will just identify 100 of them. Looking for a way of making an album of 600 songs.
My idea too.
then try the comlete Glenn Gould or Alfred Brendel…
Exactly. The Glenn Gould Complete Columbia set really broke my heart, I downloaded it from Qobuz for a hefty price, yet it is not recognized by Roon. I reported it on this forum a few months back but nothing changed (although I haven’t checked it in a few weeks - maybe a miracle has happened in the meantime 
)
Got it
Has roon tech been in touch regarding this issue.
It seems others on the forum have similars issues regarding this ?