In my own roon environment I use the iOS tablet client the very most. It is quite convenient already but I’d like to bring up some comments/wishes and questions.
First thing is the overall page after selecting a particular album. Like here…
Giving all the different information and controls this page looks a little bit cluttered. Looking at the areas showing text it gets very obvious that there are so many different fonts, font sizes and font styles used you can hardly count them all . This alone makes the overall page rather hard to read. In this case less is definitely more .
Looking at the very top close to the album cover the first line shows some (recording/publishing?) date. It has a much smaller font size than the title below but it’s at the very top. The date is meant to be so important that it appears at the very top. But it has a rather small font size compared to the album title. This is somewhat confusing.
The album title at the top has the largest font size of all - and a font style that is used nowhere else as far as I see. A serif I think. Why? It breaks the overall image .
There are too many font sizes used here. Even the play counter (?) has its own tiny number. Too many sizes I think .
There’s lots of free space left on the top right which is, to my knowledge, never used on this page. Could it be used to loosen the page a bit?
The top album information text alignment seems to be vertical (bottom). You could think so if the album title is a single line. A rather uncommon way of vertical alignment in this context.
The text area for the biggest font size used for the album title seems to be placed in a pretty thin text area. Wrapping is done quite early. See also 5.
The area with the album details like length, type etc. looks rather misplaced. And again with (usually) lots of free space on the right.
I believe this page would benefit from some changes making it easier to read and navigate . I also believe that not every single tiny piece of information must be shown at a glance . Again, sometimes, less is more .
You can customize the overall album (selection) page pretty much already. But there’s confusing sorting I haven’t understood so far. Look here…
There are some albums by Pink Floyd. There are two of them named “The Dark Side Of The Moon…” Why are these two separated by three other Pink Floyd albums also showing a not so obvious sorting?
First sorting is “by artist”. As far as I know there’s nothing said about the second sorting level nor how to change it. It may be some album date. The one shown at the very top of the album page mentioned before? As far as I see there’s no way to change the second sorting level. So, would be nice we could do so. Artist, then album name, then maybe album date would be great. Otherwise the sorting would visually mix albums of a single artist
Or I missed something here and it’s already possible
For the record — no pun intended — Roon really only uses two typefaces (which is a great and best practice), and they are used throughout the UI. The typeface used for the album name is in fact used as a header in many places throughout the UI. It is used to greet you on the welcome page; it used to summarize your recent playtime on the welcome page; it is used for genres and Discover and all over the place.
Font sizes are well-chosen to highlight the appropriate details. White space is used liberally to separate elements really well. There are a lot of people on these forums who are UI designers and we like the way things are. You might be as well, and your opinion probably has merit for some, but the collective here isn’t necessarily going to agree with you on all fronts.
The sorting and other things you note are interesting idiosyncrasies that have been discussed ad nauseam on these forums. There are ways to group album versions and do all sorts of things to your liking once you delve into the controls.
If Roon’s UI isn’t to your liking, you are free to tinker with the desktop remote’s inner workings, which are detailed on in the Tinkering section of these forums. Unfortunately, you can’t tweak the iPad app the same way, but hey, at least you it’s possible for you to make some tweaks in some version of your world.
It’s not about grouping albums, it’s about sorting them within a single album artist. Do you see a way to sort by album name, within an album artist? Would be great .
Okay, understood that you want things to remain as they are. You don’t have to agree. You do not have to underline that my writing comes from my very own thoughts and I haven’t asked anyone else prior my writing. That’s usual here. But your personal protest is noted, I’m pretty sure
All we ask on these forums is that when subjective things come up that things are civil. I have nothing so deep that I would call it a protest against anything you’ve noted. Your thoughts are as valid as mine.
(I know this is desktop Roon, but I have the same options on my iPad.)
But I don’t have an answer about secondary sorting on the main Albums view for you. Mine seems to work just fine (EDIT: I just noticed that the secondary sort is by date in that view - that may be what you can address in your file metadata), but all my albums are local. Are yours local/streaming/a mix of both?
Sorry to not be clearer, but I was referring to the Artist view, rather than the Album view. In my second screenshot, I showed what it looks like for me in my Albums view.
Ah, yes. Your second image is of album page with artist sort. Just like on my iPad. So, if you look at all the Pink Floyd albums and their titles. I actually can’t figure out a clear sorting order if only looking at the album titles. Even if you ignore “The” as a prefix. There’s no alphabetical order of the album titles here.
Coming from the artist page then, scrolling down to the artist’s albums you can select “album title” for sorting. After that, the albums are properly sorted according to their titles. But only on the dedicated artist page.
So, macOS and iPad clients obviously show the same behavior. But unfortunately, no two-level sorting I could see.
No prob. Sometimes it’s just about too many details . Yes, I also believe that the second sorting level is very likely some date. Unfortunately, I absolutely don’t care about any dates while browsing albums .
So, indeed, a customizable second sort level would be great .
Sounds great. Could you tell me what and how I can exactly customize the album detail page from my iPad screenshot?
No one stated having a better preference. It’s about personal preferences and use cases that are not equal among all users .
. This alone makes the overall page rather hard to read. In this case less is definitely more 
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