The smart downloads feature sounds great in theory. And download speeds have definitely increased. But the results are underwhelming.
It just keeps downloading albums I listened to recently on Roon, with no connection to my past interest in those albums. Why would I want this? I just heard it yesterday. Not very smart.
Some more choices of how it selects in a ‘smart’ way is necessary before this becomes valuable for me. Some way to add random seeds, pick the way it recognises favourites, or even choose albums for you based on Qobuz hot picks or Roon’s latest playlists or something. More smartness please!
They said in EA that there is certainly room for tweaking the balancing, so i am sure feedback from different users and their use cases will be helpful:
There are a bunch of factors currently:
Personally, for instance, I prefer that it downloads recent plays because I never listen to an album just once and it’s more that I dive into a “topic” for a while and listen to a set of albums all the time until I switch to a new topic. Others will see it differently. I do agree with others (in the first link) that the percentage of existing favorites is too low. But others may then say “I heard the favorites, why download them” Maybe it needs some dials to satisfy everyone.
If it helps for now, you do still have the option to download albums manually that you really need offline. (Or convert smart download to permanent manual ones)
Maybe it needs some dials to satisfy everyone.