Tagging Roon using Yate

Yes! you absolutely can :grinning: I have never heard of it before and I just took a quick peek and it does seem to fix some of the shortcoming of things I used in the past like Evernote and some of the other “Mind mapping” tools. I used to do a lot of note taking of my own thoughts when I was in college/graduate school to explain things in my own way. It was useful, but became too time consuming. Thanks for the recommendation!

I will actually take a serious look at it sometime soon so I will let you know when I do. I’ll send you a PM if that is ok?

Yup, you got it!

Roon will use exactly what you import as the tag. Roon will not change the tag or use the tag in a different way than intended. It won’t make up a tag of its own based off of your tag. However, if Roon has its own tag for that album it might use that over your tag. It probably won’t, but I just wanted to mention that just in case so you know what’s going on. I would not worry about this right now, but just wanted to mention every possibility. Of course if that happens there are easy ways to fix it in Roon. We can go over that if it happens.

Yes, exactly. Especially true with the more optional fields that are there to help you personalize your collection, such as “Roon Album Tag”. You can put whatever makes sense to you, even if it is not what the recommended or typical use would be. Being consistent with tags is what is going to help you most. And everyone is going to have their own methods that work for them.

Ha ha ha :rofl: That is the great thing about Yate, but can also be off-putting if you aren’t willing to take time to learn it. It does not take long to get the basics down, but all of the “Actions” that can be used and put together are nearly endless and Barry is always tweaking and improving them.

Thanks for the compliments, I appreciate it! I am always glad when I could help!

Thanks so much for all those confirmations, @AnimalOnDrums. I feel I’ve made spectacular progress and am very grateful.

Please do feel free to PM me - e.g. re Obsidian (there’s a lot to learn, and its functionality is continually expanding: I’ve been looking into CSS snippets this afternoon so as, hopefully, to be able to replicate coloured text - the only thing I like to do in TextEdit but haven’t yet found a way to achieve in Obsidian) any time at your convenience; if I can help you in return, I shall be glad.

Obsidian is streets ahead of Evernote. I also use (and love) DEVONthink. The essence of Obsidian is breaking things down into small, multiple, manageable chunks as you think of things - but being able to interlink in a whole variety of ways. The philosophy (explained very well in this series of videos) specifically emphasizes what you say about making your own, rather than ‘taking’ ideas.

I think my next step is to import a new set of files and see how Roon copes with them. I am aware of - but haven’t experimented a lot with - Roon’s ability to prefer externals files’ tags over its own found in its own database; and vice versa. I ought to start using that, oughtn’t I?

All much appreciated!

Thats great to hear! And I will definitely PM you about Obsidian. I have been looking over the web page and all the plug ins and everything and it looks great! The interlinking and building the graph of all the links looks amazing and that is probably the biggest feature for me. A lot of websites for things like music genres use that format now. Part of my Master’s degree is actually in bioinformatics and data science this really peaked my interest. I guess I am falling behind in that area :grinning:

Yup, you got it! And you might not have to change any settings at all depending on what data Roon has for an album. As you may already know, Roon will automatically use the data in your files for things that it does not have in its own data. So if Roon does not have “WorkID” data but your files do then it will automatically use your data regardless of any settings. You will figure it pretty quickly just by trial and error too!

Thanks. Yes. That means, of course - ‘unfortunately’ - that I shall now have to buy yet more music in order to carry out a proper, peer-reviewed, test of the work I’ve done :slight_smile: .

Your Masters’ subjects sound interesting. Is it taught or research?

I’d say - after less than a month - two things about Obsidian:

  • as with Yate, it’s easy to get the basics; then there’s 75% submerged
  • as a result, Obsidian seems to have two constituencies: the philosophers (data science), and the techies (extending markdown). Each draws off the other.

Exciting. One of the really encouraging things is its stability. There seem to be several (hidden) AI aspects which make - for instance - importing text from other places much easier: its guesses at how the text should be formatted seem almost always right. It also guesses the correct and intended targets (other notes, panes and headings etc) when you start to specify a link.

My only nagging worry at the moment is the way the Vault integrates with macOS. To open a single file inside the Vault - other than by launching Obsidian itself, which has a kind of Windowsy-dashboard model inside the interface with its ‘File Explorer’ - is still a work in progress.

Do please ask at any time if you think I can help or siggestanything, @AnimalOnDrums!

Just to note you should only use SECTION for multi level works such as Opera, giving /WORK/SECTION/PART otherwise just use WORK/PART

If tagging from MusicBrainz could possibly make use of MUSICBRAIN_WORK_ID as a the WORK_ID to give unique (alphanumerical) values for each of your works.

That is really unfortunate :rofl: But I understand the sacrifices that must be made in order to properly test and validate your work, ha ha ha!

My Master’s was both. Half of it was Molecular/Cellular Biochemistry and it required lab work and research in stem cells (applied to healing the human body) and the other part of it was Bioinformatics and Epidemiology. It had research but it didn’t have to be part of my thesis.

oh ok, cool, that all makes sense! Thanks for the tips! For classical music metadata, would you use MusicBrainz over Discogs?

Thanks, Paul.

I’m thinking of keeping these ‘extra’ fields so that my files are tagged as accurately and comprehensively as can be for the longer term.

Is there any harm (confusion, misalignment, mis-tagging?) with Roon that can result if I do so, please?

@AnimalOnDrums - thanks. I am used to sacrifice. But I grin and bear it.

I have multiple wishlists. I am sure something will jump out and cry, “Buy me! Buy me!”

I too became interested - and read a fair amount around - Epidemiology at the start of the pandemic last year, although my background is in the humanities.

Is it the Bioinformatics portion(s) which is/are driving your expertise in data more generally?

Thanks!

Yes, only MusicBrainz even has the concept of Works, the data is much more structured, but the Discogs database is significantly larger so in reality you want to use both for those cases where the album is not in MusiicBrainz but is in Discogs (thats what we do in SongKong)

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The key thing is that the data you add is correct or that could confuse Roon.

Also I am not sure exactly what data you are adding but there are a couple of issues where Roon incompatabilities with other applications can cause problems, I had to make adjustments with SongKong, details below.

  1. Use of the PERFORMER field to store Person(Role) should not be used - Why does Primary Artist contain non Primary Artists with their role? - SongKong with Roon - SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum
  2. ALBUMARTIST should store multiple people as multiple values - Why can I not select the individual album artists on an album? - SongKong with Roon - SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum

Thanks, Paul!

Does that mean that Roon may get confused if I (also) put data in ‘Performer’ to retain compatibility with any other system that I may possibly (seems unlikely at the moment: I love Roon!) use in the distant future to avoid having to retag everything?

Yes it will confuse Roon. You can still import secondary performers with their role into Roon but you need to use INVOLVED_PEOPLE for Ogg/Flac ( TIPL for ID3v24 and IPLS for ID3v23) instead of the PERFORMER field.

It can be a pain, for example MinimServer doesn’t understand the ID3 TIPL or IPLS fields so I have to use PERFORMER field or some other custom field instead if Im using MinimServer

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Sorry if I come to this thread with some trivial questions, but tagging has always been a mysterious to me.

I installed SongKong just a few days ago, and finally, here’s a non-cryptic, easy to use tagger! So I set out to tag my music files so that they match best for Roon. In the main menu, there’s a template ,Roon, Fix Songs’. If I choose this template during tagging, will the tagged files sort of have most of Roon’s tag requirements (I guess so).

Are the Basic settings sufficient for Roon, or would I have to make adjustments with the available tabs? If so, could someone give a template which tabs to adjust for best overlap with Roon?

Once the files are tagged, SongKong generates a ‘folder.jpg’ for the re-mapped artwork. Should I leave the name as is for best Roon import? As all artwork will have the same name ‘folder.jpg’, I’d like to change that for easy tracing of art files. Possible?

Thanks for input and help!

Hi Paul, thx for buying SongKong short answer is just use tbe Roon profile, but this isnt a SongKong thread. Perhaps you could post on the SongKong forum itself, there is a Roon section.

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Thanks, will do that! Can you give me a link?

Sorry for the off-topic mail!

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Sure, SongKong with Roon - SongKong and Jaikoz Music Tagger Community Forum

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Thanks, Paul! Got it.