I’ve been evaluating Roon for the last two weeks or so. Overall it’s a really great piece of software but for me it has one major flaw- the search functionality. Searching your own library is fine, but I find that looking for new stuff from Tidal – even albums you know – is frustrating and bordering on unusable. This is for several reasons:
Search results are simply bad. E.g., type “Vivaldi” and you don’t get a single “Four Seasons” album in the results, which of course you do get if you search Tidal directly.
If you type a few letters, the suggestions for completion seem to be based only on your library content. Once you select something, Roon will show you results in Tidal as well, but had the artist or album not appeared in your library in the first place it would never have been suggested. Am I supposed to spell Chaikovsky or Led Zeppelin 100% correct?
If you type a few letters, instead of instantly showing you “live” results like in Tidal or Audirvana, you need to select from the suggested list and only then will it show you the results.
The “focus on similar” shows you similar albums in your library which is rather useless since I want to see similar stuff I don’t have and not what I already have.
All this makes Roon no good for exploring new music or music you know but is not in your library. The result is I go to Tidal or iTunes or Amazon to search for music.
When I search for Vivaldi I get a search result that defaults to the Library artist, albums, and tracks but next to “Library” I get a “Tidal” option for each of these categories. When I click on Tidal I get the Tidal results which include “Four Seasons”
I typed “Chaikov” in the search box and correctly got Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
“Live” search results as you type could be interesting, but the search results page is so busy I think it will be a bit disconcerting. You get a “live” results in the list below the search box…to me that seems better.
I don’t use Focus much so can’t really comment on its utility. I gave it a try with my Vivaldi results and it does seem to limit itself to the library content only. I agree it would be good if it would help search for similar music in Tidal.
It’s fairly obscure, but using the Vivaldi example, if I go to Composers in the sidebar, then Focus -> Inspector -> Storage Locations -> TIDAL Library, that will show me all the composers of music from Tidal that I’ve added to my library. Bear with me.
Then, if I tap the TIDAL Library tag, it will turn from green to pink, indicating that I’m being shown all the composers of music from Tidal that I’ve not added to my library (plus music in my library not from Tidal). I start typing “Vivaldi” into the filter field and I get a choice for “Antonio Vivaldi” which I select. This brings up a screen where I have a tab for 24 Vivaldi compositions from my library (not much of a fan) and another tab for 757 compositions on Tidal (with links to mulitiple versions of the same composition). From there it looks like I can pretty easily get to 118+ versions of “The Four Seasons” on Tidal.
I tried this Focus trick to search for Mahler compositions and it didn’t work very well. If I leave the Tidal Library tag green I get my list of compositions and the 79 available on Tidal. If I make the Tidal Library tag pink Roon doesn’t find “Gustav Mahler” just “Mahler” and when I click on it I only get one of my local compositions…
I’m not sure what you mean. As far as I could see “Focus” always gives results from your music collection. It does not give you Tidal music you didn’t add (via Roon or Tidal). If you click on the “Tidal Library” tag to make it pink you get all the results in your music collection not from Tidal. Clicking this tag or any tag simply toggles between “has the tag” and “does not have the tag”, but always in your music.
Yeah, I get something very similar, except I get absolutely nothing when the TIDAL Library tag is pink and I filter on “Mahler” — just the “Try removing some focus criteria” message.
Strangely, this still works for Vivaldi … doesn’t work for Beethoven … “Mozart” yields only Leopold Mozart … “Bach” yields only C.P.E. Bach. So this seems kind of messed up to me. Maybe if I appeal to a higher power?
I have something similar going on. I searched for “Bach Matthew Passion” to get performances of the St. Matthew Passion (it is Good Friday after all ).
Roon returns just 31 Tidal albums when I select the Tidal results. However searching on Tidal through its web page gets me 65 albums.
Furthermore Roon’s subset (31 out of 65) is not optimised in any obvious way. For example Roon does not list the performances by the Monteverdi Choir; Concentus Musicus Wien (listed as “Dorothea Röschmann” by Tidal; John Elliot Gardner; or René Jacobs. These come out first on Tidal (unsurprising as they are popular, recent performances).
Not sure if this is the right place to post this question related to Roon search in Tidal…I often cannot find a track in Room without knowing the Album. Example: Fat Bottom Girls by Queen. Roon search does not even show Queens Greatest hits. In Tidal it’s the first to come up in search. Help please.
get to 118+ versions of “The Four Seasons” on Tidal.
