I am starting to rip my small (about ~100 CDs) collection of classical CDs with dBPoweramp so I can manage it with Roon. Since I have to rip the CDs anyway, I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to have Roon write the tag information into the FLAC files so I don’t have to worry about tagging anymore (unless Roon makes some mistake, of course).
After reading a few thread on this subject, I have the impression that I should use an “Organized Folder”. But several people warn against doing that and using Watched Folders instead, so I am confused. Does this mean that Roon is really not meant at tagging, unlike, say, MusiChi? Also, if I use a Watcher Folder, where does the tag information go? Is there any way to have it go back in the FLACs?
Roon isn’t really designed to be tagging software, so you’ll want to use dBPoweramp to get basic tags in place during the initial rip, then place the files in your Watched Folder. I wouldn’t spend too much time on the tags, as Roon will use the tags as a starting point, after which it will add it’s own rich metadata on top.
Organized folders will move files around, but don’t re-tag files, and we’ re recommending that most people avoid using organized folders, as there are a few known issues and the feature may be removed or redesigned soon.
I think allowing user to have the option to allow Roon to do tagging will be extremely wonderful and powerful.
For experimental purposes, I also tried to copy a small sample of my music collection to a folder, and configured it to be “organized Folder” under Roon. After Roon “organized” that experimental folder, I tried to use Plex to point to that folder as “music” folder for Plex. However, Plex still failed to recognize a significant chunk of the folder.
Therefore, the conclusion is, it would be really nice if user can be allowed an option to allow Roon to tag the FLAC files we have!
@Peter_Hsieh, I’m not surprised that Plex failed to recognise a significant chunk of a Roon Organized Folder, since it was never intended to be used by software other than Roon.
Actually, if you read through the forums here, you will see that even the Roon folks are advising against the use of Organized Folders. Just stick to using Watched Folders - these are folders that Roon will read the content of for analysis and building up its database, but will never change or add to the content of the Watched Folders in any way.
Roon is NOT intended to be a tagging tool, that will edit the metadata content of your FLAC files, and this will remain the case in the upcoming version 1.3 of Roon. Use a third-party tool to edit track metadata in your Watched Folders.
I use Watched Folders (containing mostly FLAC files) and Roon and Plex are happily coexisting on my system without any problems whatsoever.
I understand Roon’s principle. It’s just too bad that
Roon is not meant for tagging, nor is Roon meant for browsing by folder structure (in a separate thread.)
I don’t use “organized folders”, the use was meant for experimentation to see if file names get changed, wlll Plex recognize it easily. The answer was no.
I know Roon is not meant for tagging, that’s why I was hoping it could be provided as an option.
If these option were provided, I will live in the Roon world when playing music. With these features lacking, I have to use other software to browse, tag, play music.
I hope one company one day will be able to provide such immersive complete user experience.
OK. Roon is sufficient as a complete immersive experience for me.
Personally, I see no point in wanting to browse by folder. That’s down at a nuts and bolts level from my point of view. It strikes me as wanting to keep horse reins and a buggy whip when you drive a car (auto). But, to each their own…
I access my music collection from both ROON and MinimServer (I have Astell&Kern DAP that supports OpenHome) and I wish I could use ROON metadata for tagging my files.
There is lots of excellent software for tagging - foobar, mp3tag, tag&rename to name just a few plus there are heavyweights like jrivers mediacenter. I feel there is absolutely no need to add tagging to roon. In fact that would mean bloating the product and loosing focus on the main purpose, which is exploring and discovery of music and relations between music and musicians.
Having said that it might be an option to call third party software so execute tasks like tagging. Allowing this one could use applications optimized for a task at hand.
It’s useful for tidying things and getting consistency in your library. Great at finding missing stuff like year, artwork etc., spurious genres and so on.
Yes, and one of the most awesome aspects of Roon is that it preserves the original metadata and any edits that one makes get stored in the Roon database, not in the file tags. But nevertheless, there are times when the Roon data is superior to what is in the tags (and sometimes the files might be completely untagged), so it would be awesome if one could, on a case by case basis, explicitly cause the metadata as currently displayed in Roon, to be written back to the file’s tags. I had thought that Export would do this, but it doesn’t seem to do that for me. All that happens is that I get a copy of my files in the export destination with the metadata untouched. Is there a way to capture the Roon data in my files? And what, exactly does Export do?
I agree with Robert. One of Roon’s most powerful features is the promise that we don’t have to work at filling in all the tags. For me, this is not yet true for classical music, but they are clearly working to achieve it.
I appreciate that Roonlabs isn’t eager for us to use Roon to fill in tags, then flee to another program as our standard player. But most of us play some music on phones, iPods, or other portable systems. That’s where an export function that does populate the tags would really help.
[quote=“Esskay, post:12, topic:6888, full:true”]
I appreciate that Roonlabs isn’t eager for us to use Roon to fill in tags, then flee to another program as our standard player. [/quote]
I doubt very much that this is a valid assumption. It’s much more likely to be that Roon is focusing its limited developer resource on what are seen as the key product differentiators of Roon.
Roon becoming yet another ID3 tag editor is not the best use of that resource.
Geoff,
Agreed. But an export option that maps its metadata into tags wouldn’t make Roon another tag editor. It would make Roon a more complete music management system. I think Roon should try to make tag editors irrelevant for its users.
After identifying the albums, and after (a little) editing by the user, Roon has the information to properly tag the files. Why should we have to do that manually in order to properly use the music on portable systems?
Is there something specific you’re looking for that the current export functionality doesn’t do?
The biggest issue I’m aware of is with how multiple versions of the same album are handled, meaning multiple copies end up in the same folder. We have a ticket open to get that resolved.
There are also times where the subtlety of Roon’s metadata can’t easily be expressed in file tags. Other than that, basic Roon metadata should be written to tags on export.
Sounds good to me. I was relying on Robert’s post in which he said that export left tags untouched. I’m still setting up my audio system, so I haven’t yet tried exporting to a portable player.
I wasn’t talking about organized folders, but the “Export” feature. I thought that it was supposed to make a copy of the exported tracks with the metdata as shown in Roon. It doesn’t do that, at least in my system. Am I missing something? What I want to do is to (a) create a second version of my Roon library with metadata identical to what I currently see in Roon while eliminating all duplicate albums. This is to create a second Roon system in a second home. (b) Convert files created in (a), as necessary, to MP3 to play on my iPhone. For what it’s worth, although the Sooloos export system was really glitchy, when it worked, it had all the functionality I’m looking for.
Hey @rbienstock – can you be a little more specific about this:
Other than the issues I mentioned above, this seems to be working.
I just found an unidentified album in my library with a messy album title, exported it, fixed up the identification, and exported again to a different folder. The “before” and “after” exports reflect the updated metadata in Roon, but let me know what you’re seeing and we’ll take a look.
I’m away until next week when I’ll try to reproduce, but when I do, I’ll report back. It didn’t work for me when I tried it, but that was a good while ago, definitely before 1.2, so maybe this has been fixed. I had files that had been ripped from DVD Audio that had no metadata and the tracks were called “Title 1 Chapter 1,”, “Title 1 Chapter 2,” etc. When I exported, it fixed the file names, but the metadata was unchanged when I opened the files in dBPoweramp in order to convert to MP3. Does this mean that I could use export to make a copy of my entire Roon library by exporting to a new destination? I have lots of metadata that could use cleaning up.
