And I’d second the request. Could be very useful. @mike @brian
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Searching by composer does not display albums in the results but only tracks. This is very annoying because there is no easy way to see for instance all Beethoven albums !
David, I’ve moved this into your exiting topic.
Hello. Any progress on this feature ? Painful to use roon for classical music !
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I just signed up for Roon today to try it out for my dad. I’m using a brand new MacBook Pro with fully updated software, and I just downloaded Roon a few hours ago, so presumably everything is up to date.
At the moment I’m just working off of my Tidal subscription and I’m playing the music from my laptop just to focus on Roon itself. I’ll hook things up to my stereo later. (Parasound and PSB Synchrony Ones in case anyone’s interested)
I can’t find a way to organize classical albums by the composers’ last names. I can get a list of composers organized by their last names (seemingly all composers?), but I want a list of classical albums–specifically, the classical albums that I’ve favorited on Tidal (or in the future the classical albums that I’ve downloaded and/or favorited on Roon).
I poked around and found an old thread about this in which the conclusion was that it can’t be done, and I didn’t find anything newer that answered my question (after making a fairly modest search effort).
Is there a way to organize classical albums by composer? (It seems not, since if I have a list albums the drop down list of options for organizing them doesn’t include composers as an option. But I hope I’m wrong! )
Thanks.
Brad
Hi Brad,
I’ve shifted your post into this Feature Request because Roon cannot currently sort Album by Composer and it remains a feature request.
You can sort Classical albums using Albums/Focus/Genre/Classical and make a Bookmark to recall that view with a click. You can also click that Focus from + to - in order to view all Albums that are not Classical.
Within that Classical focus you can sort by Artist, but, as I’m sure you will agree, that is not the same as sorting by Composer.
You can also view your Roon library by Composer, but that is Work based, which is not always what you want.
I would still very much support a Sort by Composer view in Albums, Tracks, Genres etc. so lets hope that this Feature Request gets sufficient support to become a thing !
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for replying. The best option at this point seems to be to focus your albums on classical and then sort them by album title. That way you’re good to go for all of the albums that put the composer’s last name as the first part of the album title, which is a decent percentage of classical albums. Not perfect, but it prevents the problem from being a deal-breaker (for me anyway).
It’s still puzzling why sorting albums by composer isn’t an option …
Brad
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I wanted to third Ludwig’s request.
And me. If I restrict Albums to say Beethoven I get 300 odd albums - I can’t read all the titles (not visible) so have to go through 1 by 1 looking for Symphony No 2 and the artist I want. It won’t allow me to restrict to Beethoven and 2 or Beethoven and Symphony - says try removing some Focus criteria. How nice to select on a Composer and see all the Albums rather than a 100 “1 Allegro” all from different albums.
I agree. For example, I have the complete Beethoven string quartets by two different quartets and it seems impossible to organise them so I am playing the right movements for each quartet in the right order. I am on a trial period with Roon and if I can’t work out a better way of managing my classical music (about 50% of my listening) it feels like this will be a deal breaker.
Sorting an album list by composer is problematic because of multi-composer albums:
This is also why you can’t sort albums by Primary Artists — there may be many of them. Albums can be sorted by “Album Artist” which is a single piece of text, it may contain several artists but it is sorted as one item, by the first artist listed. The problem is that the metadata does not contain an entry for “Album Composer”. So there is no obvious answer for the album listed I included above.
I have asked for an album list sorted by Primary Artist, accepting that albums would be listed multiple times. If we had that, it would work for composers as well. But many consider such a listing disconcerting.
Of course, if the request is only for an album listing instead of a work listing under a composer, that is simpler.
But note that the results may be unexpected. I’m not a classical fan, so my focus on Benjamin Britten as a composer looks like this, which many would consider odd:
I am new to Roon and enjoying it and want to stick with it. I found this discussion because composer view was not showing me albums but, as another poster commented lots of allegros and adagio etc! So yes please group by albums in composers view. This is what I expected and what I get from eg Minimserver on my NAS. I want to see every album in my collection with a composer as main composer or composer of some of the tracks then you can drill down.
Has anything been done on this? I would rather just click on the Composer and have the albums listed like you would for an Artist. This definitely needs to be an option. Having the works listed track by track is just a complete pain and counter-intuitive most of the time. Music lovers work by Abums 99% of the time!
I know we can achieve this by filters but I’m sorry but that is not the way we should have to go!!
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Good morning,
I am new to Roon and, so far, impressed. The only feature (and, for me, an important one) I see missing is the ability to list the albums by a composer. I am adding to the current conversation in the hope that Roon will add the feature. Using the “Focus” method described above is adequate but cumbersome.
Thanks in advance,
Frank Angelini
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So how would you do this without creating an unholy mess? Many albums have a different composer for each song. If you listed them by composer you’d have, perhaps, one album listed for the composer but with only one song, and you’d have to open the album to find the relevant song. AND, you’d have 10-12 different instances of the album showing for each of the composers.
edit: I suppose it might help to have the Only Classical toggle like there is now for Composer view. This seems to me to be a very “Classical-centric” view that would be ugly for other genres.
Suggestion- Genres > Classical > View all albums > Sort by album title and add a bookmark. Most single composer classical albums have the composer’s surname as the first word if the album title. Sorted.
Focus or filter by composer to find the albums. Compilations will appear in the middle of it all if course - but that seems as logical as any other way if doing it.
You need to get your head around the possibility that people are different and have diverse needs. There is very little argument that someone who enjoys classical music would like a view of albums by composer. Accept that. You don’t have to use it. A dance music fan might want a view by BPM. Accept that. You don’t have to use it. A bass player might want a view by bass player. Live with that. People should be able to have whatever views suit them. Nobody needs to see a view that they don’t want. Software. The clue is in the name. Soft ware. It should be soft. Each to his own. Our music has many tags. No reason why decent software shouldn’t offer the possibility of any view you can imagine based on those tags.
This function only interests me for classical music. Over the years I’ve edited metadata on my classical recordings so that compositions (a piano sonata, for example) are regarded as “albums.” If I rip a CD with three separate piano sonatas, each of which has three tracks, that CD will be split into three albums when I edit the metadata. It its current form, Roon lists all of the tracks associated with a composer. This is not how most “classical people” listen to their music.
By the way, listing albums associated with a composer is possible on iTunes and the BluOS controller.
If that’s what you are doing, then it’s hardly surprising that Roon is not able to deal with it. Roon’s object model deals with albums as releases, not as you have defined them. Using this object model, Roon lists compositions (not tracks) associated with a composer.
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