Except for better management functionalities (sorting, folders, …) of Playlists, I fail to see the difference between a Bookmark and a Smart Playlist.
Anybody care to explain?
Yeah we brought this up in Early Access
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I’ve read the specs of this new feature (thank you, RoonLabs!) carefully and watched the video.
Would I be being short-sighted if I reached the conclusion - at least for now - that for ‘Classical’ music, where the primary attribute of organization is the works’s composer, bookmarks do the job just as well?
For each composer in my Library I have a Bookmark. Listening to ‘mixes’ of movements or songs in a cycle makes no sense with Classical.
Can anyone think of a use for Smart Playlists for our sort of listening, please?
Should I switch from Bookmarks to Smart Playlists; I’d have thought the only criterion for a Smart Playlist for me would be ‘Composer =’?
Not a criticism. Completely open mind. (Don’t tell anyone, but I’d really rather like to use Smart Playlists 
).
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Well, updated to latest built, there is no Smart Playlist option at my end. It just gives me the option for a regular playlist.
Thanks, Menzies!
I’m going to keep an eye out. I could certainly create a SPL of everything I’ve imported but have yet to listen to. But I think I can do that with Bookmarks after setting the right criteria and it absolutely wouldn’t update itself.
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Others have suggested restarting the Server is necessary. That worked for me…
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Well yes, using Filters and Bookmarks, Smart Playlists seem to be a little bit redundant.
But I guess this is a feature targeted at new customers, so I‘m fine with that.
And it adds something and doesn‘t remove anything, so what 
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Including this.
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I’m super bummed. I really thought this would be useful. I don’t understand the decisions that get made sometimes, it’s as if they’ve never seen the features other music players have had for decades. Focus should have been abandoned long ago for modern search and playlist generation, not rebranded as Smart Playlists.
Multiple nested criteria and XOR/AND/NOR—all the logic gates should be available for every aspect that Roon knows about, from track title to composer—why not? What could possibly be the barrier? I can’t make a smart playlist of all tracks and/or albums and/or all band names that have either Chicken OR Whiskey? I can’t ask for a playlist that has Chicken in any metadata anywhere? What? Why not? You have all this metadata, but we can’t use it freely.
Look at smart playlists in Swinsian or in, say, Adobe Lightroom, and you have a great model that covers almost every conceivable use case… It’s so frustrating to see a “feature” introduced with seemingly zero thought. How does this stuff make it out of Early Access?
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No, you would not. As I stated long ago, the only thing Smart Playlists provide that bookmarks do not is that they work with ARC…
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Thanks. One less thing to do .
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It does indeed update itself.
Focus>Played in the Last All Time [reversed]
Focus>Added in the Last
Bookmark
Now play one of those and see the album drop out of the bookmarked list.
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Andrew,
Yes, thanks; I can see that SPLs have that feature, which I imagine I might use: perhaps all unplayed Albums.
But as a tally of Composers and Compositions to have that criterion would actually be a disadvantage.
Thanks. That worked.
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Although somewhat cumbersome, this can be done (at least partially) by what I would call “nesting” smart playlists.
In short:
- Create a smart playlist
- Create a tag and add it to the smart playlist you created - this will result in the tag being applied to all tracks in the playlist
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 for any other set of criteria you may have
- Finally create a smart playlist that includes or excludes the tags in order to combine what you want.
See above.
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Thanks, that’s a clever solution. Can’t this be done just by applying tags to Focus results and then focusing on all of those tags? No need to make a bunch of smart playlists. As you said, it’s cumbersome; progressively moreso as you add criteria, and you end up having delete piles of single-use tags or risk slowing Roon down.
Imagine this scenario:
Show me ALL songs whose metadata includes the words Chicken OR Whisky.
That seems like a lot of work for a “Smart” list.
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Wouldn’t it loose the dynamic character when only using Focus results. The tag would be applied to anything that meets the Focus criteria when that is executed, but anything that meets the Focus criteria at a later moment in time would not have the tag and anything that no longer meets the Focus criteria would still have the tag.
My use case for this is a smart playlist that includes 5-star tracks (fixed label on track) that haven’t been played in a week, 4-star tracks that haven’t been played in a month, 3-start tracks that haven’t been played in 3 months and so on.
For each of these combinations I have a smart play list. As I want to include all, each of these is smart playlists is assigned a “Smart Shuffle” tag.
I then have a smart playlist that includes all tracks with the “Smart Shuffle” tag.
The individual playlists each have a star tag AND a last played timestamp. The “Smart Shuffle” playlist has the logical OR between all the AND-pairs.
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@Andrew_Webb - no it can’t. @s73nm’s clever suggestion recognizes - is built around - the notion that tags for smart playlists are the very first - and only - sort of tag that would produce dynamic results in all of Roon’s screens. That is to say, even new items that meet a SL criterion would automatically get those tags. I wasn’t aware of this until he brought it up, but it is in fact a key way in which SLs differ from Bookmarks, because while Bookmarks are dynamic, they cannot be referenced in other Bookmarks.
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Hello
how you assign a tag to a SPL and then create a SPL matches any tags?
Step by step:
- Create SPL-1 using any focus criteria you like
- Create a new “SPL-include” tag
- On SPL-1, select “Add to tag”, and select the “SPL” tag created in step 2.
- Repeat steps 1 & 3.
- Create a “master” SPL, using focus to include all tracks with an “SPL-include” tag.
Note: if you want to include all SPL’s from steps 1 & 3, then a single “SPL-include” tag (created in step 2) is sufficient. But you can also exclude one or more SPL’s from the master SPL. In that case, create a “SPL-exclude” tag and assign it to a playlist created in steps 1 & 3 instead of the “SPL-include” tag. Then edit the focus on your master SPL to exclude that tag from the SPL.
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