Time to clean up my library

When I set up Roon I had a mix of albums from my past that I ripped onto my NAS drive. Some are MP3 and I would rather delete and download the best current version from Tidal. Some are FLAC albums that I purchased and I’m happy with those.

I tried clicking on the three dots next to the album and clicking Edit > Delete album. I read in a community post that this was supposed to delete the files. The files on my NAS are still there. It seems that Roon is playing a FLAC version of the first album I’m experimenting with. Not sure where that album is coming from.

Bottom line: I want to go through my album collection and only keep the FLAC versions on my NAS, I want to delete the MP3 versions and replace them with the best version Tidal has. I don’t want to keep the MP3 versions on my NAS.

Any tips?

Delete the albums directly on your NAS from a PC/Mac which have a proper mechanism for navigating file systems: eg, file explorer/finder! Roon will pickup the changes and modify its database accordingly. When you’re done, goto Roon Settings > Library, and “clean up library”.

Here’s what I did:

  • I picked an album to experiment with

  • I followed your instructions and waited for the indexing to end. I wasn’t sure how long that would take

  • I went to the album in Roon. It was still there. I tried playing it. It played with no errors.

If you really want to remove EVERY single mp3 file you could do a fast batch delete through Windows.

open CMD .drive letter: then DEL / S /Q * .file extension

But be warned it WILL remove every single mp3 file with no exceptions!

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Michael I have replaced hundred’s of mp3 albums with CDs this year and I did exactly what Mikeb suggested. I deleted them from the folders and then went into settings->Library and pressed the clean my library button and it deletes the deleted tracks from my Room library.
I did this 10 minutes ago and it deleted the 96 tracks that I updated yesterday.

In your NAS scenario though you might need to force a library rescan for it to show them as missing, which doesn’t need to be done on Rock based Room.

:frowning: I do have a Roon Rock. I’ll try rescanning the library. Now all I have to do is find where that is. I know where “Clean up library” is from the earlier suggestion. Is rescanning different?

If it still plays, you possibly didn’t delete what you thought you were! Within Roon, find a track and press the 3 dots for “file info”. Make sure this is the path you’re deleting outside Roon on your NAS. And I apologize, as pointed out by @Michael_Harris , a NAS setup often requires a manual rescan.

Just for fun I clicked on “Clean up library” again. I reported all zeros, including deleted files in my file system. I searched my NAS for names of three songs on the album thinking the album was also in another folder. Nope. Nothing there.

I clicked the three dots next to the album name, then Edit > Album Options. I clicked on “Delete album” and it came back with “This album has been deleted”. I went back to the artist area and looked at the albums and finally it was gone.

Looks like this is a two-step process.

Then I searched for the album, Roon found it in Tidal, and I added it. It is the FLAC version that I want in my library. Mission accomplished.

In summary:

  • I tried “Delete album” at first. It says that it will delete the files on my NAS drive. Nope.
  • I tried deleting the files on my NAS drive, then “Clean up library”. I verified that the files did not exist on my NAS drive. But Roon was still able to play the album.
  • After deleting the files on my hard drive, then deleting from Roon, finally it was gone.

Seems like it should be more simple than that. FWIW, I’m using a Roon Rock.

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Michael only on my phone and don’t have the force scan option there, but I delete album’s from the filesystem multiple times a day, the difference is I have all my music synced from my NAS to my Rock so it probably has a callback there to tell Room that it has been deleted and then Toon updates. It’s the same when I copy fnew albums to Roon, they show up on Rock as the first files hit Rock, it’s pretty impressive.

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