I know I am late to this discussion but I still wanted to get my ‘two cents’ in on this. I recently renewed my subscription for a second year but mostly because I needed more time to evaluate alternatives. There are three items about Roon that really make me question its value to me:
I want complete control over all the genres and at all levels – most certainly at the top… And I do not want to have to change albums on an individual basis – there should be a way to do a group of them at the same time so that I can move, remove, or change a genre for several albums at once. Roon is, among other things, a basic database and as such should be able to handle basic items like this in a good user interface without much effort. No, using focus is not an acceptable alternative for me. I can make that work for myself but I am setting genres up for others in my household and so they need to be reasonably clear, concise, and consistent.
I really hate how Roon handles box sets. Sometimes it boxes them together and sometimes it does not. And it is so frustrating to try to add items to a box set or remove items from a box set. Again, I want complete control over my box sets – some albums I want in a box set and others I absolutely do not. Again I should be able to add, remove, or change multiple albums at once into and out of a box set at my choice. This is, again, basic data base stuff. Roon seems to have an algorithm that knows what I want and does the opposite! OK – I know that’s an exaggeration but I really am tired of fighting this battle with Roon.
I really dislike that Roon does not display more prominently the composers on the albums or the individual cuts. This is maddening that this field is not displayed or easily accessible. When listening to an album of various movements from various composers Roon does not display this either on my laptop or my phone. I make sure composer information is a populated field when I add these albums but Roon either ignores it or does not bother with it. Uuuugggghhhh!
While I listen to mostly albums, the difficulty in making playlists on Roon is frustrating, too, but not to the same degree to me as the other three listed above.
Yes, there are some features I really like in Roon.
Multi-room control.
Each user having their own individualized view into Roon.
Roon’s ability to show the path the music is taking to the speaker – this is really awesome!
Access to more metadata about the album, artist, and so forth. I do appreciate this but I don’t understand why they don’t allow more sources of information. Let us choice – yeah Wikipedia is not always reliable but it sometimes has more detail and depth then anything Roon currently provides.
So that’s my ‘two cents’ …ok, maybe more like a dime. I hope someone at Roon is reading this.
If you mean tracks, is Settings > General > Browsing Preferences > Show Composer Credits > Always not what you want?
You can choose Wikipedia in several languages in Settings > General > Browsing Preferences > Editorial Sources, and you can adjust the order of preferences.
As for the box sets, Roon Labs mentioned a while ago that they are working on improvements, but there is no public timeline. (It’s rare that they comment on plans at all)
Well I’m embarrassed – that’s what I get for shooting off my mouth without digging into matters more completely. Thank you!. I simply had not found all those features that Suedkiez was so kind as to show me. Thanks. Sorry it took me so long to respond back but my work life crowded out a response.
If I may, humbly, ask a couple of follow up questions?
I actually do have Wikipedia selected as a source but I also have TiVo selected and it seems like all I ever get in Roon itself is the TiVo info (album reviews, artist biographies, and composition synopses) and not the Wikipedia stuff. I’d really like both but to give Wikipedia precedence do I need to shut off TiVo.
You mentioned that Roon mentioned improvements to box set handling, have you heard anything about control of the top level genres?
FYI: I have turned on the composer setting that you mentioned and have used multi-selecting to clean out some of the genres among other tasks.
Thanks again Suedkiez! I appreciate the time and careful effort you put into responding to my rant.
If you go to an album, artist, or composition that has a review/biography/synopsis, it will usually be collapsed, note the little downward arrow. Unfold it by clicking anywhere in the review (or the arrow):
The “6 dots” icon to the left of the editorial sources entries are drag handles - you click and drag on them to move entries up and down the precedence list…
