Not sure what changed in the latest major release, but the new search is, in a word, terrible.
Search for “Money” – nope, Pink Floyd’s track doesn’t even appear.
Using search on a mobile client is slow, laggy and takes a long time to settle.
Is this a custom search algorithm you are using?
May I suggest going to one of the tried and true OSS solutions?
The current solution is really, really bad.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Danny commenting that they can’t possibly expect to get as good as google at this but I can’t see how they could afford to buy something better off the peg. Then they would need some serious skills to integrate it into the existing code.
I must be missing something; I searched on ‘money’ and the Pink Floyd track was the first result, along with a bunch of other results. Appeared instantly for me, but I am using only a local library (I’ve canceled my TIDAL subscription). Is this an issue with streaming service searches?
Well really curious if they’ve already tried any of the really solid open source solutions that are used ubiquitously.
Works fine using native Tidal app
Came up instantly for me in Roon, no lag. I have a local version but the search actually chose Qobuz version. Wonder why it’s not working for you.
This is what I get with my local + Tidal.
It seems the search privileges the artist and album and there is an Eddie Money’ s album titled Eddie Money that get the biggest share.
If I click my local where there is no Eddie Money here what I get
I just tried “Money Pink Floyd” and get exactly what I wanted
I agree just “Money” doesn’t work but all the hits were relevant
I tried Money then filter “Pink Floyd” and bingo
Its all about skinning cats 
If I search for “Money” it also fails miserably. I have the Pink Floyd song in my local library. It does not find it. Instead, I get several Eddie Money tracks.
Please fix search. This is pathetic.
It does find it it’s just not the top hit. If you show more it will be there, but Eddie Money gets top billing in Roons search. We really need the option to have quick filter buttons by artist, album, track etc this would make things a whole lot easier than a long list of all them like it currently is. Works well in the Qobuz and Tidal apps which is why its easier to find in those. These apps generic search for Money by PF is not top hit either, let’s face it just Money isn’t a good way to search and get what you want. As it appears in many titles how is it to know what version you after. This is why filters are a necessity .
This is entirely correct.
I get that Roon search is at times idiosyncratic and can be frustrating, but one word search terms are pretty unlikely to get you what you want on any search engine looking at many millions of data points.
If you type “Money P” you get the Pink Floyd track at the top of the list. I can’t quite see how the term “really, really bad” is applicable.
From your OP, it appears that you were looking for the Composition “Money” composed by Roger Waters.
It is second in the list of Compositions returned in the Search results. Roon’s search function apparently gives extra weight to an artist name containing a search term, which is why it is not the top result…
As someone who looks after a fairly large search engine as part of my day job I feel Danny’s pain here.
I regularly get questions along the lines of “but Google does X” and I always have to bite my lip from replying “…and Google is a multi billion pound search platform, which can afford to throw ridiculous amounts of resources and data points at the problem”.
Good search is hard, what improves search results for one user often results in another user complaining their results are now out, everything is a balance. You don’t get Google level search accuracy out of any box — OSS, SaaS or otherwise.
Unless I am mistaken Roon use ElasticSearch which is one of the most widely used search engines in the world. It’s roots are in Lucene / Solr which again are/were two of the most widely used search frameworks out there.
The issue isn’t the software, or whether it’s uses a truly open or a slightly restrictive licence, it’s that getting search results that work for everyone is hard and requires constant and ongoing tuning.
Not saying it can’t be better tuned and we’ve already seen progress there, but it’s not the underlying search engine/index software itself that is the problem.
Great to have that insight, thank you for sharing. It must be very difficult to produce results that come anywhere close to what users have come to expect from google, not an easy professional position to be in!
This one is pre-release of the current search though it is alluded to. Talks about search operators etc.
That‘s right, best would be to have a Boolean search function to reduce the search results
Why even compare to Google? Yes Google is a completely different story.
But why not compare it to my local library - these places where they have books made of paper - they have Computer and database systems which seem to be from the dawn of time. If I put in the name of the book and the author it tells me which shelf to go to, to get the book. Very easy.
If it were Roon, it would give me a completely different book and different author as a result. I would never know the actual book existed in the library, unless I looked through all the shelves in the library.
That is the problem! Roon can not do, what the simplest databases on this planet can do - but is trying to do something fancy in a bad way.
If I search for “Dickens David Copperfield” I am simply not interested in “Shades of Grey” by E.L. James.
Never have I had this problem before Roon - Squeezebox, Plex you name it - results have never been this bad.
This rings very true for me. I just want the album/artist/track that I know is in my library to be top of the results. If that happened even half the time I probably wouldn’t visit threads like these.
