The Best Way To Listen To Deep Cuts In My Library

[ebstone]

Good day to all.

Im not new to Roon by any means. Years ago I looked at it to update my library. I originally had my media server ripped to MP3 files back in the early 2000s. Life gets busy and you do things in a hurry to get the most out of what you have.

Years went by and I did look at Roon on a number of occasions, but the time I needed to dedicate to the platform just wasn’t in the cards. Years later we arrive at 2025 and I finally decided, being older and some-what semi-retired I decided to tackle the hobby of jumping into Roon with both feet, re-rip my many thousands of CDs to FLAC.

Ive often thought over the last year of the love and hate relationship I have with Roon. On one hand, I greatly appreciate the platform for its organization and presentation of my music. The upgrade to the way it handles the files and the sound. Ive even gone as far to have some “Roon Ready” devices now.

On the other hand it took a lot of time and pain to get my library so that the Roon database got all the meta data correct. Pro Tip: Go into settings and tell Roon to get the meta data based on song file name. Believe me it makes a world of different. Especially when one has over 250k of songs (and counting).

Music has certainly changed in the last decade or so. There aren’t many artists or albums made today, in the genre of rock at least, that are worth listening to, much less buying. So a big part of my project over the last year and adopting (giving a chance to) Roon was I wanted to revisit the deeper side of my collection. The songs I hardly ever heard, and many since the first time I bought the CD 40 years ago.

I am, and have been at times disappointed with Roon in the fact that when I play my library, and let Roon take the wheel Im finding its just like any other service out there. Example, Led Zeppelin is my absolute favorite band. But if I Hear Stairway To Heaven one more time in a mix that Roon creates!!!%$##$%&@@@ UGH …

Ive read a bit on Valence and it being the curator of the daily playlist and shaping radio in Roon etc … Now, being that Valance is the machine and through my interaction with my library, together they are suppose to make for a better listening exsperience.

My question to the community is how do I “teach” or get Valance to play the deeper parts of my library. I understand, like any AI infused mechanism, it takes time. But what Im looking for is a formula, if there is one, where by I can, over time, get my library to play the deeper tracks by Led Zeppelin. Ones I haven’t heard when letting Spotify, Apple, or Tidal take control. That after a certain period of time when I hit the play Led Zeppelin radio it wont ever think of playing Stairway to Heaven, but perhaps play tracks like Night Flight off Physical Graffiti …

Is it possible to get away from the mainstream album tracks Ive heard for decades and get Roon radio, playlists and all the other goodies inside of Roon unlocked and playing the deeper parts of my collection? When you have 250K worth of songs, it doesn’t make for a good listening exsperience to keep hearing the same 10k of hit songs over and over.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read today.

EB

[Tony_Fardella]

I’m more of an album person myself so I haven’t played with playlists much. You might have tried this before, but maybe creating and smart playlist of tracks not played in the past year (or whatever timeframe) and not picks. I notice that this usually leaves out Stairway to Heaven

Also, I’m curious about the settings you mentioned to get metadata from the song filenames. I’m not sure which settings you mean.

[DDPS]

Great tip - added to Users' Greatest Roon Tips - #75 by DDPS.

[ebstone]

@Tony_Fardella

I’m more of an album person myself so I haven’t played with playlists much. You might have tried this before, but maybe creating and smart playlist of tracks not played in the past year (or whatever timeframe) and not picks. I notice that this usually leaves out Stairway to Heaven

Hi Tony! Thanks so much for the reply. It’s greatly appreciated.

I have made two playlists. One for “Never Played” and that does provide some separation and less “Stairway” coming up as often … But it doesn’t separate out the mainstream tracks that Im trying to avoid. Part of the problem, or as I like to say “My addiction” LOL … is that with 250K tracks you have 34 versions of Stairway throughout the collection, so its bound to come up often .. that, as well as my music collecting addition, is on me, not Roon LOL … And I have made the one you suggested about “not being played in a year” and again, that seems to help a bit …

What I am discovering is choosing a deep track and choosing radio and then as the songs come up in the thumbs up / thumbs down area I thumbs down and mainstream tracks or tracks Ive heard many times when listening and that is starting (as far as I can tell) to “teach” Valance that I want deeper tracks.

It’s more interaction with the library, but I’ll see how it goes. I don’t mind the interaction with looking at the song before adding it to the queue, it makes it more enjoyable then the digital “doom scroll” that music seems to unfortunately turned into … God help the younger generation and missing the greatest of bands like Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. We can only hope their parental units step in and put them on the right path! LOL

There is a setting / library / import settings and then go down to metadata for tracks section. There you will find a setting to prefer the imported tracks by file name … Before I checked this, the metadata that Roon used when importing tracks was off by a lot. I would say 60% of the time it got the metadata wrong and I had to manually go back and fix it. At one point I re-imported my library with the file name preferred selected and it match more than 90% of the metadata correctly.

Thank you again for your reply, its greatly appreciated.