I am trying to add track-level recording dates for a compilation. The album, Blues Masters, Vol. 16: More Harmonica Classics contains sixteen tracks with origianal recording dates ranging from 1946 to 1992.
I see from this guidance that Roon can display original release dates, but can it do so if the original release date varies track to track?
Here is what I’m seeing using Yate as my tag editor. I entered the year the album was released - 1998 and that carries over to Roon. The original release time varies for each of the tracks, but is displayed in Roon as a constant - 1966:
I don’t use Yate but with mp3tag I use the following tags (which I think are self-explanatory) for each track’s recording info, which Roon recognises:
RECORDINGSTARTDATE
RECORDINGENDDATE
RECORDINGLOCATION
along with the tag ORIGINALRELEASEDATE for the album as a whole.
In this example, recording dates and location are the same for all tracks so the info is shown once, at the top. If they vary by track, then they show against each track. For example:
Both ways will work but I always prefer the actual file tags in the event that I ever move away from Roon or I am playing my files from another media player.
You can do what you wish, but Roon cannot use or display track dates. Please see:
I just use the “Year” tag in Yate and other tag editors, as it has existed the longest and has the widest support. Tracks one downloads from certain services (such as Apple Music Store) use this field as well.
But it doesn’t matter which field you use…Roon cannot use or display it in anyplace other than “View File Info…File Tags”. Roon only display album release dates and album original release dates, which, when “Preferring local,” assume all tracks on an album have the same date.
That is very, very different. It’s a third piece of information that is really designed for live recordings. For studio recordings, like Strawberry Fields Forever, what would you put, for instance? What the OP really wishes to show, as I understand it, is the release date.
I know it’s for live recordings, but I enter studio recording days and the studios (instead of the live venues) anyway. It’s a bit odd with the wording of the prefix, “Performed”, but it’s better than nothing.
(Annoyingly, in ARC the prefix is “Performed at”, including the proposition, so entering propositions along with the place, which kind-of works with the “performed” prefix in Roon, has ugly results in ARC. E.g., when entering in some place as the location, it is displayed fine as “Performed in some place” in Roon, but it’s “Performed at in some place” in ARC. Or entering at ABC studio results in “Performed at ABC Studio” in Roon but “Performed at at ABC Studio” in ARC )
Not sure what Roon Labs themselves consider it to be, after all they called it “Recording Date” and “Recording Location”, instead of, say “show date/location”, and a recording can clearly take place not only in live shows.
Dunno, I guess I overlooked it in the development of the thread I went with the thread title, “track-level recording dates”.
Nothing right now because I still haven’t gotten around to working on Sonic Youth metadata in detail. This scares me
Chances are that I never will have anything for Kool Thing specifically. Of course, the concept of one single recording date and place doesn’t make sense for everything, and there’s no need to force it. It’s useful for other tracks/albums, though, and I enter it where I care for it and where it is relevant / has meaning to me.
(Though the recording studios and engineers used by Sonic Youth are important parts of their history for many albums, so I guess I’ll have to dive in at some point).
I guess 1990 as a release date is of primary usefulness, though, right? That is what I presume the OP wants, and what I find so (still/currently) lacking in Roon myself.
Sure, but isn’t this fundamentally covered by the album release date, in this case? It’s not as if the tracks of Goo were released at different times. (The singles, yes, but that’s different from the album).
Of course, this doesn’t work for compilations, and generally a date displayed per track would be nice (instead of the track dates being summarized as „between xx and yy“).
I’m not saying that this is solved perfectly, just saying what I do within the constraints. Maybe it helps someone, it does help me even if not perfect.
)
I went with the thread title, “track-level recording dates”.
