Objective: to have a smart list which plays all tracks from my favourite 5 star albums which I have not heard in the last 6 months in a random order. Note: this is about hearing every track from each album, and has been attempted using the album smart list tool.
It appears to be the case at the moment that Roon thinks playing any one track from an album means that the album has been played in the last 6 months, and so the whole album gets dropped from the smart list - not just the one track that has been played from that album. (I tested this last night: my smartlist had been reduced to just tracks from one album. I played one track from that album and all the tracks were removed from the smart list.)
In the tracks smartlist building tool it is not possible to do something like “include all tracks from albums with 5 stars”.
How do I get past the “playing one track of an album = having played the album” rule?
I think the closest you’ll be able to get - and I’m guessing this is what @Suedkiez tried and redacted - is to tag your favorite albums and then go to track mode and select your tag and filter on last played like so:
this is another good example of why it would be nice to include at least some of a track’s related album metadata / tags to the available selection criteria in track mode when creating SPL’s. (I know there’s been requests for adding record label in track mode)- this is another case where having a track’s album info would be helpful.
Create a smart track playlist that filters on all tracks not played in the last 6 months
Add the tag created in step 1 to the playlist created in the 2.
Go to Albums and apply a focus on the tag “Unplayed in 6 months”. This will show you all albums for which at least 1 track has not been played in the last 6 months. You can create a bookmark or album smart playlist from this.
Note however, that random play would apply to track level, not album level.
As a workaround, I typically apply a sort on Most Played (descending).
Thanks everyone for your advice here! I think I’ve hit on a formula which will work based on your suggestions. I’ll give it a shot and report back!
Quite a result, fitting in over 120 hours of music into 47 minutes!!
Clearly the “album” rule is still in play here, dropping whole albums once 1 track is played.
I can make this work as a non-smart list without any trouble - but the subsequent need to update that after any adding any new relevant music rather defeats the purpose!
Unfortunate and IMHO should be moved to Feedback to ensure Roon staff sees it
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
10
I’m tending towards leaving it right here for now just in case someone does come up with a way to make it work.
As you know the Feedback area does not get high visibility to the general populace.
I will keep an eye on this thread as well, it can always be moved at a later date.
I’m not sure what you are doing here, but it feels like you’ve mixed up/reversed some of the steps I mentioned above:
To clarify step 3: navigate to the track SPL created in step 2, click the ellipsis button (the 3 dots), select “Add to tag” and select the tag from step 1.
Additional album level filters/focus should be added in step 4.
Why does this work?
The track SPL will contain all tracks that have not been played in 6 months.
Adding/assigning the tag from step 1 to this SPL (not adding it to the focus) will assign the tag to each track in the SPL.
Album focus using tags will include an album if ANY of the album’s tracks contain the tag
Please do - I feel this is a great example of a case where users shouldn’t have to add tags to their data to create a Select/Focus/ SPL. I would probably venture to guess, most folks wouldn’t even know there was an issue without @ajl 's research?
I feel the Development folks would certainly appreciate being made aware of this thread.
Many thanks @s73nm for coming back to me on this. It has helped me understand your process better. I have had another go, and have just set the SPL to play. Once I got my head around it, the setup process seems to suggest it will work. I’ll keep you posted. (I saw your earlier post when you first made it, and was very impressed; this latest interaction has helped me better understand how to apply it. Great help!)
At one level, this seems to work; at another, there are some loose threads.
I have been enjoying listening to the music; however, despite having enjoyed a few select tracks, the total track count displayed in the SPL has not changed since I started listening. It should, however, because now there are several more tracks which were played in the last 6 months and that therefore should not be included in the SPL.
My question then was whether something was broken and the SPL was not updating. To test this a different way, I added a new album which met the criteria. Immediately the track count and time amount changed. So, that is good: at least one element of the smarts is functioning.
I also checked back to the tag “not played in last 6 months”; this was also updating - the track just played was not included in the tag any longer.
SO I don’t know why it is that the total track count/time amount is not updating.
@s73nm, could you comment on whether your nested SPLs seem to appropriately update track and time counts?
Glad to hear you’re moving in the right direction.
indeed the updating of SPL’s seems to be somewhat unpredictable. There are time when the updating seems to be going well. There are other time where it appears as if Roon misses a trigger and does not update.
I have reported my experiences in the following topic:
For the particular use case of albums not played in x time, I haven’t noticed any specific issues.
Interesting read!
So, the trick of clicking on “Edit focus” seems to work here, correcting the total track number by what seems like an appropriate figure.
Perhaps my issue has been solved!
Despite loving Roon, it does seem that the Smart Playlist feature implementation could have been implemented in a much simpler and more intuitive manner. I don’t understand why there needs to be such a strong division between tracks and albums. This also excludes other possibilities, such as works and compositions. Nonetheless, I would not be without Roon, for all its foibles!!
Last time I wrote, the playlist had about 1619 tracks and 157 hours of playing time.
I’ve not done much driving over the last week (xmas and all) which is when I use this playlist (thanks ARC!!) So it has only been used on a few occasions.
So it is very odd today to notice that it is now down to 167 tracks and 15 hours.
This suggests to me that the initial problem with playing any one track from an album removes the whole album, not just that track, still stands.
I’m not sure how to proceed from here. Will have to give it some thought. Suggestions welcome!!
Edit: ho hum - so something really weird is going on. This morning, the numbers have changed, back to 1501 tracks and 148 hours. That is a good sign, but is very odd behaviour.
