Search functionality within "versions"

I have a lot of albums with multiple versions. I enjoy the way Roon groups all my versions of, say, “Toys in the Attic” and then once I have selected the album I can choose to listen to the HD tracks version, the vinyl rip, etc.

However, I would like to be able to search for (and subsequently bookmark) all my vinyl rips, or HD tracks releases, or whatever. To my knowledge there is no way to do this without going through each album individually and tagging the individual versions as “vinyl” or whatever.

Is there is a way to do this or will this be possible with a future update?

Not sure what will be possible in the future as regards focus filtering by metadata, but looking forward to 1.1.

The current focus does permit filtering by resolution (under the item on the far right “Inspector”). That might assist in identifying HD Tracks releases but wouldn’t be enough where different versions have the same resolution.

Edit: Actually its in the Quality tab, not Inspector

I’ve been settling for file type focusing for now. Some of my vinyl rips are 16/44 so it doesn’t help with those.

On another note, listening to Toto IV lead me to discover that Timothy B. Schmidt sang on Poison’s “Native Tongue” album. Which is one reason I am loving Roon!

It is amazing what you find through the links. I’d never really heard of Doris Troy; although I did know of her hit song in 1963 “Just One Look”, and looked her up with my girlfriend. Then we noticed her appearances. There were a couple that stood out. Doris was a backup singer on both “Let It Bleed” and “Dark Side of the Moon”. Not a bad CV.

Hey @Bridgeless – good question! I think you should be able to focus on what you want here, and then save it as a bookmark if it’s something you expect to come back to regularly.

If you go into Focus > Inspector, there’s an option there called “Duplicates” which should focus on all the albums which have been grouped into sets, and it should expose all the versions. So if you’ve grouped 3 versions of Toys In The Attic, and normally see 1 cover in the album browser, when you’re focused on duplicates, you should be seeing all 3 versions.

So, once you’re focused this way and all your grouped albums are visible, you should be able to focus by whatever you want. For example, all your high-res copies, or all your TIDAL copies.

Of course, if you have a vinyl rip, the original CD, and a remaster, they may all be 16/44 FLACS, and you won’t be able to focus on them separately, unless you take the time to apply tags in a way that Roon can differentiate.

Let me know if helps @Bridgeless, or if there’s something else you’re looking for here.

Thanks for the reply, Mike. It seems like that will at least help narrow it down. I’ll report back once I’ve had a chance to experiment.

Ok, I gave that a try. Also tried selecting “show duplicates” in settings, and both had the same result. I can see the multiple versions of my albums but I can’t tell which is which without selecting them individually, in other words, I see three copies of Toys in the Attic but the version info remains hidden as Roon doesn’t use it in the album title. My embedded tags have the version info in parenthesis in the album field.

I realize I could probably revert to embedded tags but I don’t want to negate what Roon has done for the organization of my library. I’m thinking I could use jriver to add a “vinyl rip” tag in the grouping field, wondering if there is a possibility of that field being recognized as a “tag” in a future update. I know that was mentioned in a previous thread…

Ahh, sorry. Missed that.

This will be part of 1.1 – the option is Show Album Version and when it’s enabled, Roon will display version info in the album browser. In many cases we should be extracting this from your tags automatically, and it’s also fully editable.

Check it out when 1.1 goes live and report back ok @Bridgeless?

That sounds like what I’m looking for. Thanks for the info!

I would like to be able to do a search of all my vinyl rips.
I have been putting (Vinyl) after the title, but when I do a search when typing in only (Vinyl)
only a few of my files show up.
Any ideas?

I would suggest creating a tag called Vinyl and bookmarking a Focus based on that tag.

Select all your vinyl rips (either individually or in batches using other Focus tools and select all)
Three dot menu - Tag Manager - Create Tag
Bookmark icon - Add Bookmark
Now add the Tag Vinyl to new vinyl rips and you can bring up all tracks/albums with that Tag using the Bookmark.

I think it would be useful to be able to Focus on Version. The software allows you to edit the Version field, either manually in Roon or by using brackets in the album name in your music folder. There’s just no way to search for it.

I think the best way to find the Version (in Jeffrey’s example, Vinyl) would be in Album View > Focus and be able to type Vinyl in Filter.

Not sure if anyone has made this a Feature Request. I couldn’t find one.

Cheers, Greg

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