I have had my trouble with search in Roon from the very beginning, but now it is simply ridiculous.
I have a large library of classical music plus qobuz. Searching for the name of an opera plus a singer used to be very hit and miss. Now it is unusable.
Searches like:
Trovatore Pavarotti - just gives me all the Trovatore’s in my collection - ignoring that I wanted the ones with Pavarotti.
La Gioconda - ends up showing me everything but La Gioconda
Gioconda Franco Corelli - again just shows a selection of Gioconda’s in my collection, ignoring the artist.
Why can Roon not do what the simplest search engines in just about every database I have ever used ca do. Instead of being fancy - just look for the files that have the words that were put into the search field and list them.
I have no idea, what Roon is doing. If I put in - Trovatore Pavarotti - I obviously want the results to show all my Albums with Trovatore and Pavarotti. Every streaming service works like this, Logitech media Server did this.
PLEASE fix this. What is the point of having a database / library if you cannot find your stuff?
The actual search - not the search bar. Yes it shows that La Gioconda is a work and you can click on that. It should also show all albums of “La Gioconda” - this it does not do.
Go to Spotify, qobuz, Tidal anywhere and type in “La Gioconda” it will list all albums with the title “La Gioconda”, if you put in “La Gioconda Tebaldi” it will show you all albums that have La Gioconda and Tebaldi.
That is really all I would like Roon to do.
Look at what shows up in my albums - La somnambula etc. not La Gioconda
BTW this is a perfectly normal search result in Qobuz, searched for “Trovatore Pavarotti” and got these results. I would be over the moon if Roon could do this - actually list all albums TROVATORE including artist PAVAROTTI just like that. This really is a very primitive and basic database function.
I too have similar issues with classical search. It seems to me to be worse now, not that I have tested it exhaustively. So far it is disappointing.
I have raised my issues directly with support. Maybe you could consider doing the same with your problems so that they don’t get lost in the hubbub around the new release.
I have done so in the past. But now it is actually much worse, so might do again.
I just hope that @Danny reads this thread and actually really gets the programmers work on this.
The big problem seems to be that these issues go unnoticed if you listen or collect other sorts of music. Otherwise Roon would never put out an update and write that they have been working hard to make search work better.
I am a bit disillusioned, since I have posted about the search issue “album plus artist” many times also in support - with no real reaction.
Yep. The search is fairly useless and even non-sensical in many cases.
Two classical artists paired in a search should give you exactly that result. Instead, your first results are all sorts of “related” albums - but not what you are looking for.
I sometimes wonder if the Roon people test even the most simple needs of users when making a change.
Or are they so enamored of their technical prowess that they don’t see the problems?
Another issue which will probably be ignored (and has existed before the last update) is a bug of the focus function When I look for all performers that contain a “-”, only one result is shown.
However, a quick look through my performers list reveals that there are more performers that contain a “-”
Yes, and that’s exactly why they will fail!
Can’t login to Tidal …
Can’t login to Qobuz …
Can’t login to Amazon, Apple, Spotify …
Roon tries to transfer the functions of the streaming services (playlist, daily mixes …) to his environment. The user will soon be using the other app (Tidal, Qobuz) - because it works here and you can listen to your music without interruption.
To stay with the topic: The search does not work as expected even with a local library.
It is interesting that results are so varied. For example, Rigoletto pavarotti as a search term, returned one album as top pick, but, all the albums under albums are Rigoletto’s with Pavarotti.
Thanks for joining the “show me yours, I will show you mine” party
@Rugby yes “Gioconda Pavarotti” gives me one result - but I have 2 different performances of that combination in my library.
yes “Rigoletto Pavarotti” gives quite a few results - but not all that I actually have in my library and also your search (even though you only have them on streaming) does not get all results.
There is one studio recording missing - which is also on Qobuz and Tidal. Try searching “Rigoletto Levine” and it will show up. This is also starring Pavarotti.
In other words if I did not know exactly what I have in my library and would trust Roon, I would simply not know if I had a certain recording - or not.
Here are two more interesting examples.
“Norma Callas” first the results from Roon and then what is actually in my library- there are actually wrong results in Roon - 2 of the recordings are without Callas and she is not in the Credits.
“Turandot Nilsson” first the results from Roon and then my library - same here 3 wrong results with Nilsson nowhere to be seen in the credits.
Maybe it also make a difference, if one only uses streaming services in Roon for that content, or also has a library. But seeing the result you got for “Rigoletto Pavarotti” shows, that Roon does not even show all albums in that scenario. Searching in qobuz directly gets all results correct.
As you can see on the pictures, the problem exists and I am not the only one with it.
I could produce hundreds of searches with this kind of result. So Roon please fix this - it was definitely better before the last update (but still not good).
I have posted a precise example in Support of how a particular search for Underground Railroad has got worse in 806 - it was already not acceptable in the previous version.
I luckily found further proof from an older thread, where I was stating the Roon search sucked.
These are the results of the search “Trovatore pavarotti” limited to my library. First is before 806 and the second is after 806. Big difference! I had thought search was really bad before - but I would be happy with at least getting these results now…
as you can see, quite different! the second result shows 5 completely wrong albums.
The good news is, that Roon has hired new stuff especially for search. So I am relatively confident they will fix this. So let us all hope for the next release - meanwhile I will just accept it as it is.
It’s worthy to note that nothing changed in 806 related to search code to the search results screen.
806 only changed what happens in the search input before you hit enter.
It proves that the results changed, but not why. Knowing where a big part of the problems of search live, my guess would be your local library has changed and thus you have different results. The streaming sets have changed too, but that tends to make a smaller difference.
It’s be one thing to go from great to bad, but like @Jez’s results, it’s bad to bad. We know there is work to do here. The new search engineers read everything search related and we try to test against all searches posted here as examples of “bad”.
It’ll take time, but we are on it. There is no easy or fast fix here.
I’m going to close this out because our devs look here:
Please post your poor results there. Nothing changed in 806 related to this stuff.
