What do you think?
Cheers,
Jeff
I can’t speak for iTunes tag data, because I don’t use iTunes; but as far as I can see, Roon is already using ID3 tag data?
No doubt Roon already uses ID3 tag data. But as far as I can tell, you can’t use Focus to search the tag data. For example, album names that still have “Disc 1” or “Disc 2” in the tag field, or which tracks have AccurateRip info. Or a null search: which tracks don’t have any Style or Grouping entries. I see this as a feature that could help me set up and organize my Roon library initially, more than a day-to-day search activity. I also see it as a feature that is borderline file manager stuff, which is why I thought it might be worth discussing.
There’s already a FR to be able to search iTunes comment fields, I’d like to expand that to all iTunes fields as well as all ID3 tag fields.
If searching any and all tag data in Focus is possible, I can’t figure out how to do it. 
Cheers,
Jeff
Well, I can use Focus on ID3 tags in my collection, so it can happen.
I think what the issue might be is that Roon will first try and match albums against its own metadata information, and use that for functions such as Focus. If an album can’t be identified, then Roon will automatically look for ID3 tags and use them to populate the metadata in its database. There is also the option of telling Roon to use ID3 tags in preference to its own metadata for any or all albums in your collection.
I’m not communicating what I want very well. Sorry about that. I know about and have used the capability you described.
But, for example, there is no way for me to tell Roon to search the TENC (Encoded by) ID3 Tag field for a certain value, or to search a user-created TXXX tag field for a certain value. I don’t want Roon to clutter a search or Focus UI with the names of all the ID3 tags, I just want to be able to tell Roon to go find tracks that have “My important comment” or “AccurateRip” or “dbpoweramp” somewhere in the ID3 tag info.
Roon may use ID3 data to return standard search results (as you mentioned), but I can’t find a way to tell Roon to go search for something in the ID3 data that’s embedded in the file, whether Roon is using that information or not. I can see the data in Roon for any given track (right click/long press > Track Info > File Tags), but I can’t explicitly search for that information.
Thanks,
Jeff
Ah, OK - understood. Roon doesn’t act on all the ID3 tags at the moment. This may change once 1.3 is released, but we’ll have to wait and see what the Roon folks have done. At the moment, user-defined tags are handled solely within Roon, I believe. Creating such a tag does not create a corresponding user-created ID3 tag - and perhaps it should for interoperability’s sake.
Oooh. Great idea! I never thought of that. 