I love bookmarks, because they let me create sets of albums I own, based on criteria I specify. For instance, I’ve got a bookmark for “Lossless”, because it excludes all my lossy albums. And what I like most is that it allows me to browse those albums using Roon’s album (or artist) browsing function.
Now I’d like to create the same thing for albums available in Tidal, but cannot see a way to do this. The best I can do is create playlists of Tidal albums. But a playlist is a VERY different thing, and not at all what I want. I want to browse a specific set of Tidal albums.
I should add that - naturally - I’m using the focus function to create said bookmarks. But I see no way to use focus to filter out everything but the set of albums that I’m trying to create. If I could, I’d just bookmark it.
I’m probably not understanding your question if I think I know the answer but just in case - would Inspector>storage location> tidal not give you what your’e looking for? or at least give you a sub-set to further focus on?
John - thanks. And yes, Inspector>storage location>tidal does provide a starting point. It’s getting past that point in a practical way that is a challenge.
I’ve got hundreds of Tidal albums in my library. And the very large subset I’d like to filter it down cannot be done with any of the filters that the focus functions provides.
Or to put this problem another way…
I can easily select multiple, unrelated Tidal albums in my library and group them into a playlist. But I don’t want to use that set as a playlist. I want to browse the albums in a set - to play on an ad hoc album by album basis - like a focus created bookmark allows. Is this possible?
Thanks Andybob. But to use filters to achieve what I’m trying to do, I’d have to go thru a process of creating a filter that includes roughly 100 albums, and excludes everything else. Not sure that’s even possible with current “focus” functions.
What makes this frustrating is that if I just wanted a playlist, it’s stupid easy. But my desire to create a focus of specific albums - that do not conform to current “focus” constraints - appeared to make this impossible.
FWIW my OP was a general question. I did that in the interest in documenting a general question that might be of interest to the community at large. But in the interest of solving what I’m trying to accomplish, please allow me to go into the specifics…
I just got a copy of Stereophile mag’s 10 years of records to die for. Tidal has 80% of the CD’s they identify. I’d like to create a list of the roughly 100 FLACs that Tidal has from that Stereophile list. But I DON’T want a playlist. I’ve got no desire to play those albums sequentially.
What I want is a way to browse through that large set of albums and pick the one I want to play at the moment.
Bookmarks provide this function, but ONLY if the set conforms to the preset filter criteria. This list is far too diverse to fit in such tight parameters. While playlists can be created easily on an album by album basis. Unfortunately playlists do not provide the delightfully browsable album by album selection interface.
A common playlist format existed that could be used across software and exported/imported by users. Then Stereophile could publish the playlist; and
Roon could select all albums in your library in the playlist, and give you the option to import Tidal versions of albums that aren’t. Then you could group tag.
That WOULD be awesome! All except for the fact that Stereophile would charge for the playlist!
I saw that they had come up with a “10 Years of Records to Die For”, and had a web link to it. To my dismay I found it was actually as special, 150 page edition of Stereophile, that you had to pay for. And pay high “shipping and handling” charge because it’s not going to be hitting store shelves.
It sounds like tagging is the way to go here @scolley – you can multiselect and tag multiple albums at once, so I don’t think it should be that much work. Or am I misunderstanding something?
It’s probably MUCH less work if you can multiselect. But my only Roon interface is on an iPad. My PCs are either Linux, or Linux with Windows running in a virtual machine that does not support the needed OpenGL version. And no Macs. So multiselect is not available to me - unless theres a way to do that on an iPad that I’m not aware of.
However, your point is good, as I’d wager most Roon users won’t be constrained by my tech limitations, and have a Roon platform where they can multiselect, where it would be MUCH easier.
Touch and hold a track (long press). It will select. Release it and touch some other tracks, they add to the selection. Touch any of them again, it deletes from the selection. Touch the top left “# selected” button and I get a select all/select none menu. Exit selection with the top right X icon.
Andybob - I had constructed a detailed reply on what I’m experiencing on my Mini 2, using a Roon playlist, trying to multi-select. But suffice to say that multiple outcomes are possible based on subtle timing difference on the length of selected item depression. Your multi-select requires the “middle road”. Too little, and it does not work. Too much, and different things happen. Press JUST the right length of time, and what you suggest appears to be possible.
Thank you. Will explore this further as time allows tomorrow.
OK - I’m multi-selecting in the playlist now, but it’s not a solution. Once they’re all selected there’s no way to modify their tags. That option is available in the album screen, not in the playlist screen (where I’ve multi-selected).
So I’m stuck right were I was before, having to go through the playlist, and on an album-by-album basis, add the album to my library, and then modify its tags to have a “2die4” tag. Bummer. And that’s agravated by the fact that the “+ Add To Library” function is pretty flaky at the moment, and often only works when I reboot my RoonServer. But that’s being addressed in a different thread.
Will explore this further as time allows tomorrow.