What is something you do with Roon that has made your experience better but may be unusual or unintended ?
When browsing Albums I either want all Classical or none. I’ve been tagging albums as “Classical” and now I have that filter in place most of the time. When I want Classical, I click it to +, when I don’t I toggle it to -. One touch.
Oddly I had the exact same thought the other day…I would have mine set to - 99% of the time
I use a Tag for Audio books and Radio Drama. This is easily included, isolated and excluded. Easy
Would love to revive this thread, as I am currently seeking advise on the same question the OP was asking years ago:
"What is something you do with Roon that has made your experience better but may be unusual or unintended ?"
Despite being an experienced Roon user who reads the forum as well as the official knowledge base quite frequently, I am sure many of you have come up with original ways to enhance your Roon experience that others could benefit from. For instance, as gathered from recent forum posts, using tags as an alternative way to browse music by mood (rather than by genre) is very interesting. The fact you can define and use your own Picks as an alternative to “Top Tracks” or playlists is also something I didn’t know until recently. There must be much more not usually mentioned here or elsewhere!
As of myself, I could highlight the following actions that boosted my enjoyment of Roon quite a bit:
In Import settings, I use neither the ‘Roon genres’ nor ‘genres from file tags’ option for artists/albums. Rather, I am just using the Roon genres database as a basis for my own assignment of genres to artists directly in Roon. That way I still benefit from the Roon genres database (the relationships, texts, images, …) but am not forced to see the “Pop/rock” genre listed for pretty much every single artist in my library, which would make genres absolutely meaningless for my use case. (I also do not have to touch my files at all that way.) Btw, I do not use genres with albums (only with artists), to make my life much simpler. And I do some occasional modifications of parent/child genre relationships in Roon to make the genres experience perfect for me.
I have taken the time to find the most representative and high quality image for all artists in my library and, once done, purchased a dedicated tablet to be able to always see the image of artist I am currently listening to in the now playing screen. For me, having not only the album cover but also the artist image displayed is a great way to emotionally connect to the music I am listening to! I do have a specific tablet that can even hang on a wall which is just awesome in some situations!
I ‘favourite’ all artists in my library, to ensure any new release by them is displayed under the “New Releases For You” section. I much prefer this and the “Recommended For You” functionality over Roon Radio, more interesting and accurate discoveries in my case have been achieved these ways.
I am not only using bookmarks to browse the library for music enjoyment but also to keep it in check continuously. I can more easily ensure consistency and completeness of data about artists and albums that way. For instance, thanks to bookmarks, I am always making sure that all my artists have an image, genre and country included or that every album has my personal rating given. That way I can always rely on my library when browsing through it.
I have lately started to appreciate the concept of “portable” Roon zones. Rather than having each endpoint binded to a particular room in your house, why not just being able to carry some of your endpoints with you anywhere you go? I am currently using my closed-back bluetooth headphones as one of such zones, being able to listen anywhere and in any situation. Alternatively, my tablet has quite large built-in speakers that can also do the job if we want to playback music in a room we do not typically listen in.
The Random Radio extension is able to randomly pick and queue whole albums from your library for playback. Highly recommended for those in a mood to spend some days/weeks/months revisiting the old and proven stuff in their libraries, you can just hit play and be carried away!
If you have a music storage structure that you would like to replicate in Roon there are some things you can do that may not be obvious.
Say, for example, that you have separate music libraries for each family member within a Music directory. Instead of telling Roon to watch Music, make each library folder a top level watched folder in Roon.
Now you can Focus on each library folder using Focus/Inspector/Storage Location. You can then bookmark each such Focus.
Using this method, you can retain and continue your existing storage structure and Focus on each library/folder with two clicks.