Understanding Valence and Classical Music

Just spend a bit more time with Mr. Previn. On the “Discography” its a bit hit-and-miss.
There are some of his Jazz Albums ranking high, which in this case I think is ok. This guy was just too much of a polymath to fit into any software categorization :wink:

Then the Rach Piano Concertos with Ashkanazy, a classic that should rank high. Many of the Albums with Mutter are probably just up there because they are “Popular”. Artistically they are not all cream-of-the-crop.

His late-80’s Strauss recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic are stunning but only start showing at the bottom of the list. And as you say, his LSO work does definitely not receive the attention it should.

AI will never get these judgements right. Had a look at Primephonic and must say that in this specific case they are not doing a much better job. Its probably an artist that is still “un-curated” there.

Now I am getting really confused. I started looking at more contemporary composers like Kaija Saariaho and Olga Neuwirth (playing now) with much smaller catalogues on the Discography page. With those sorts of artists, these albums are organised in sections so roon does distinguish different album types. For example there are sections for “Main”, “Composer” etc.

With an artist like Previn you are not necessarily going to see that because the catalogue is so deep. I only scroll down a couple of pages at most. But if you keep on scrolling dozens of pages to the bottom you will see all these sections. Were they always there, and we just didn’t see them LOL? Or is it more recent?

You are right! Maybe the metadata for Kaija are just better? No idea whts going on here…

It’s there for Previn as well. The problem is that you have to scroll over 500 albums to get there, so you don’t. Maybe it’s new, Maybe it was always there. I don’t really know because it was so hidden.

Why doesn’t roon just put a drop down menu under the DISCOGRAPHY tab? That must be very simple and then you know its there and it is easy to navigate, especially when there are these long Classical lists to scroll through.

Ah ok. Yes, getting a “more” button or something after a few pages would surely make sense. Thats probably a meaningful feature request to file.

I just don’t understand why this has not come up before. Why hide it like that? On face value it seems to address the 1.7 performer/composer switch that was taken away. I need to play around with it a bit more.

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I’m not sure this has been brought up before and it has probably not to do with Valence directly. However, it is about Top Performers, so I add it here…

It is about user expectation in terms of navigation for those top performers. I cam across it the other day when I was listening to Elgars Cello Concerto. I clicked on the discs symbol on a recording and got to the Composition page.

First thing that comes to my mind is: why do I see top performers and top conductors first? My personal use case for this navigation is to explore other recordings of the composition in question. But I do see those only if I scroll way down.

My next thought was: maybe Valence is proposing me some Top performers to simplify navigation to their recording(s) of Elgars Cello concerto. At the end, that’s the page where I currently am. Why would I navigate to this composition page if I’d not be interested in recordings of this work…

But clicking on Yo-Yo Ma brings me directly to the artist page of Yo-Yo Ma.

I am told I have 33 albums from him, but I do not see the Elgar concerto directly. I would need to narrow down focus on Elgar (I can’t select any compositions).

Am I the only one who finds this confusing at least? Why would I be interested in viewing the complete discography of an artist when navigating there from a composition? How is this Top Performer link on the composition page in any way helpful for me?

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I tried the same thing with the same composition.

I get a different result. Yo Yo Ma is not in the top 3. But Sheku Kanneh-Mason is. While he is a very good cello player , “Top Performer”???

In any case, when I click on the huge images of the performers, I do get a list only of performances of the concerto by that performer in my library and on Qobuz. So yours is behaving differently.

There is a bug with searching for Yo-Yo Ma that I have just discovered - going to post in the bug reports forum

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He probalby posts more selfies on Instagram than Rostropovich, Starker, Fournier, Piatigorsky or all the other real „big shots“ of the cello…

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The whole Top Performers thing is now a joke - and Roon have made it so big as to take up huge amounts of screen space.

This person has it right - Roon is not using any type of AI (or intelligence for that matter). It’s just a numbers game

I also had Chick Corea come up (2nd) as a top performer of Mozart’s Piano Concerto 20.
Along with Keith Jarrett.

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:joy::joy::joy:

Not Benny Goodman playing it on clarinet? Disappointing!

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Thanks for cofirming that. My suspicion is that is has to do with a bug I had reported about focus not always showing my compositions.

I wonder if it is related to this -

my problem is the following (copied from the beta section)

Focus does seem to work differently on unidentified albums. That’s a big drawback for me, since it renders it unusable for me for a lot of my albums.
In general the new focus feature seems to adress some of the issues with large classical box sets. But since a lot of those boxsets don’t have proper 3rd party metadata, they rely on files tags only.
My file tags are all maintained based on the best practices for classical and works are maintained consistently.
However I cannot use works for focus in unidentified albums:

Example 1: Jochum DG Box Set Vol.1 (identified)

Example 2: Jochum DG Box Set Vol.2 (unidentified)

The works themselves are properly identified and assigned, so when I click on the disc symbol on the work level I can navigate to the composition page. But I don’t see any compositions in the focus area.

such a pity. Compositions are ihere and the album/composition connection is shown properly on the album view and the composition view, but Focus is ignoring it.

It also seems not to be directly connected to identified vs unidentified. I have boxsets that are identified that show the same behaviour. It seems to be dependent on whether the metadata source directly provides the compositions or not.

Arrau - Complete Recordings. Identified album

Just to add a particulary glaring example of the infamous Composer / Librettist mixup Roon keeps presenting to us:

On an opera like Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Where 7 librettists have stuck their heads together (maybe not physically) trying to make that libretto work, Roon proudly presents us with 8 composers of the opera: One real one and 7 “fake”:

Hi, Klaus. There sems to be something strange going on with your system or metadata (although that should not be the case as Roon clearly recognises the compositions). For 2 of the boxsets you have shown that I also have (all in my personal library ripped from CD originals), I have no issue seeing compositions and ensembles:


for Arrau and for the Jochum opera and choral works:

Have you tried re-analysing or scanning the albums and checking that the library settings for scanning tracks is not set to off? With correctly named tracks even in unidentified classical box sets, I have no issue with Roon identifying compositions and having them appear in the focus area which has been very useful since version 1.8 has been launched so I can understand your frustration.

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It is caused by the genre not set to ‚Classical‘. I would have never thought about that…

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Ah. Ok, good to know and glad you found the solution. i have noticed that not having Classical set as a genre for unidentified albums causes problems in how the album contents are listed. Never noticed the Focus issue as correcting the genre is one of the first things I check when importing a new album especially if it is unidentified or only partially so (as for most SACDs and some rarer boxsets).

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Roon proudly presents: Andrea Bocelli as Top Performer of Wagners Wesendonck-Lieder. What?? Thats for Soprano/ Mezzo-Soprano! And its not the Ave Maria!

Does’nt matter. Roon thought “Andrea” is a girl :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

When and where does the ■■■■■■■■ ever end?

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