After looking through the several relevant posts that exist on this, I decided to start a new topic for the purpose of specifically providing examples and use cases for the Roon team with as much specific data as possible to make it useful and actionable to the team.
I do believe that after getting better for a while, about 3-4 releases ago, the effectiveness of searching through tidal/qobuz catalogs took a major dive. After getting repeatedly frustrated and not seeing any forward progress, I decided that I should do my part to provide the team with actionable, useful data and use cases. I will update this thread as I run into more of these specific, clear-cut, mainstream use cases.
Hereâs the first one:
Try to find âDonât Let Me Be Misunderstoodâ by âJoe Cockerâ on Qobuz. Doing this search simply by typing in âdont let me be misunderstood cockerâ using the Qobuz app on a Mac is trivial and will get you to the right results within seconds. Now try to do the same from within RoonâŚ
Facts of the case:
I am in the US and have been using roon for the past 5 years exclusively
On this roon core, Qobuz is the only service thatâs ever been configured
This song does not otherwise exist anywhere in my roon library. It is not in a playlist and no album with this song in it has been previously added to my roon library.
I do not have the âOnly show my Libraryâ option checked
I do not have ANY Focus/Filters active in any of Album/Track/Artist views
I have not played this song from any file/source/service on this Roon core before
Yes the track and the album are there on Qobuz and available to me in the US. In fact this track appears in multiple albums by Joe Cocker that are on Qobuz and are all available to me.
PS: When relevant, appropriate and truly needed, I will post screenshots but I am also a software engineer with 20+ years of experience including building search backends for retail ecommerce sites as well as social media sites so please kindly refrain from asking for stock intake information that wastes my time as a user without necessarily providing better information for the team. Similarly, I also have full appreciation of the challenges involved in use cases surrounding this type of search functionality across multiple catalogs with imperfect metadata so am more that willing to invest the time in helping the team out when appropriate.
I sincerely hope that I (and others) can provide some good actionable data for the team by way of these posts so that search can be made much better because after 5 years of commitment and persistent exclusive use, my frustration has only grown and every other service out there (Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz) or most other apps (eg: Aurender Conductor) seem to have this figured out pretty well.
Iâm in Europe with Qobuz and Roon. Qobuz finds it fine, Roon fails abysmally. Even if I do a âView Allâ of the tracks, it isnât there. It is such a pity Roons search is so poor. I have given up posting similar examples from the Classical genre.
It is very interesting to me that @Rugby and @Jim_F get one set of results that are very similar (but not identical ! ) and that Jez and I get another that are also similar but not identical.
So clearly roon applies personalization to search results which I had long assumed but didnât have proof for. I do wonder if the search algorithm got tweaked in the past 3-4 releases especially such that personalization is now getting a much higher weight than what the core metadata attribute matching is producing. I canât imagine otherwise why an exact match for a track title and artist name song wonât even appear AT ALL in some search results.
Multiple services sure are a lot more complicated as cross-matching of albums and tracks also comes into play which is why I wanted to focus on super straightforward, clear and mainstream use cases with this thread.
I have one service configured. No matching track in my library. I know the exact name of the track and the artist. Metadata on the track is correct for that service and it is available to me. In any use case, surely this needs to be a direct, exact match and ideally appearing as the #1 search result entry.
Hopefully someone from the roon team with the technical knowledge can chime in soonâŚ
The search is profoundly defective. I do have âDonât let me be misunderstoodâ in my library, on an an Album by Nina Simone. Hereâs what I get when I search for â âDonât let me be misunderstoodâ and select âOnly show my libraryâ.
Yep, thatâs right (or wrong), no sign of the track, just a playlist with some Bartok string quartets. Not the faintest clue what that has to do with the search.
Yet here is the proof that there is a Nina Simone version in my library.
Even when looking at all albums and tracks Joe Cocker is no where to be seen. I only have Qobuz and my local library.
No matter what I type using that track title, Joe Cocker will not come up in the results. If I only type in âJoe Cockerâ, then look through the album results, the album is there (Qobuz) with the track by that name.
Btw, it comes up correctly using the Qobuz app.
Iâve had similar issues before. I agree the search function needs some serious work.
Really strange. Iâm also in The Netherlands on Qobuz. Get exactly these same results. I donât have any version of this song in my library, nor anything by Joe Cocker.
Also I have four library versions of the song by Nina Simone and the Animals that donât show in the results at all although the Qobuz versions by those artists do make the results list.
Iâm also in The Netherlands on Qobuz. Get exactly these same results. I donât have any version of this song in my library, nor anything by Joe Cocker.