The feature I would like to request revolves around the scenario where an end user browses to an album they have added to their library, but the files are fairly low quality. Let’s also assume that a Tidal version is available but it has not been added to their library. In this scenario, it seems the end user is completely unaware that a better version of this album exists. Similar to how Roon indicates that other versions of an album are available (i.e. if the Tidal version had been added to the library), if would be cool if Roon could detect the Tidal versions existence and present it in some fashion.
In simplest terms, I think when an end user identifies an album they want to play, all they should have to do is click play to listen, and Roon would source the highest quality version available to the user and play it.
Similar to how Roon indicates that other versions of an album are available (i.e. if the Tidal version had been added to the library), if would be cool if Roon could detect the Tidal versions existence and present it in some fashion.
Something like this is coming in the next build…there will be a link that gets you from an album to its TIDAL equivalent in the alternate versions area.
In simplest terms, I think when an end user identifies an album they want to play, all they should have to do is click play to listen, and Roon would source the highest quality version available to the user and play it.
I think this would be magical in situations where:
The user has an internet connection that can stream TIDAL as reliably and quickly as local files
The user has an internet connection with unmetered bandwidth
The albums are truly exactly the same, and Roon has made no mistakes about the metadata.
The first two points could be addressed with an opt-in/opt-out, but the third is sticky. Relationships between albums and their TIDAL “equivalents” are less unambiguous than they should be. I think we would need to make some progress in that area before this feature would be viable.
Brian, when you think about the effort required to implement the third point, what additional complexity do you see that’s needed which goes beyond the existing ability for Roon to identify and hide duplicate albums? It’s apples to apples when I think about it.
Roon hides duplicate albums based on a “looks the same” criteria–meaning, we are looking for albums that would appear as duplicates, not albums that are copies of the same release. Depending on your view of the world, that criteria might or might not be “correct” for matching against TIDAL.
If you are OK with matching “any release of the same album”, then the behavior is analogous to our current TIDAL linking behavior (which has been the source of some criticism).
If you want to make sure that you’re hearing the exact same release of an album as the one you have, it’s complicated and sometimes ambiguous, and many possible links won’t be made.
There’s a middle ground, and that’s probably where we will end up.
Unifying and merging metadata + content from different sources that provide different sets of information with different levels of accuracy, completeness, and reliability is a complicated data problem loaded with accuracy/usability tradeoffs. Reasoning about whether or not two releases who’s data came from different data providers are “the same” or “close enough” or “the closest possible match” can be very tricky. Features like this cut to the core of these issues.
The scenario of simply clicking play and letting Roon source the best quality version is one that I would expect pretty much all Roon users to be interested in, especially if their library starts with at least some lower quality source files.
That said, I was asking for more detail because from your initial answer it sounded as if the team had to get to the holy grail (identify dup releases) before the scenario I mentioned could be lit up. With my dev hat on, I could see getting to done quicker if you simply leveraged the same “looks the same” criteria you mentioned…and potentially a config toggle when/if you get to the holy grail or middle ground. I suppose another switch might be handy too so users could tell Roon whether during that search it should look beyond what’s already in your library or not.
Brian, I have a question about this function (and if it belongs in a different thread I apologize). What I’ve noticed is that if I have one song by an artist in my library already, the entire album associated with that song is excluded from the Tidal results for that artist. This often results in my having to do a separate search specifically for that album in order to access the remaining songs, which is frustrating. Is there a setting or something I’m not understanding to prevent this?
There’s a navigation path that gets you to the TIDAL instance of the album more efficiently: Go to the 1-track version of the album in your library, then click “Other Versions” then “View Album on TIDAL”.