Ahem… By this I suppose you mean suggesting the same ten albums over and over again and Roon radio choosing a batch of seven to ten loosely connected artists, always the same ones for every given artist used as a seed, ad nauseam.
If that’s having done the hard part, I really don’t hold any hope for improvement.
Can you give examples of seed albums or tracks that are not giving a satisfactory result ?
I gave a heart to the above post.
Lately, we like to start off our evening with “Piers” from Michael Damon Mitchell. Nice and mellow.
From there, the auto play function chooses Lui Collins, Tracy Smart, Dustbowl Revival (Yuch!) and other poor choices that have little to do with the album I selected. It does this pretty much every time I choose that album to start.
At that point, I have to choose a new seed.
Not all seeds give the same crappy results. Some choices are actually good enough to hang with all night.
I am also underwhelmed by radio.
As a a represenative example of what I see, I seeded with Lisa Hannigan, ‘O Sleep’. She could be fairly categorised as guitar accompanied female Indie/Folk and guitar accompanied female Indie/Folk with a couple of exceptions is exactly what I got. Laura Marling, Feist, Julia Stone, Lucy Stone, Bat for Lashes, Emilliana Torrina, Aldous Harding, Beth Orton, Cat Power, Daughter, Marissa Nadler, Lara Viers.
Radio then repeated with exactly the same artists (different tracks), in more or less the same order. It was then ‘broken up’ with 3 male Indie/Folk tracks (but very similar) from Bon Iver (contralto vocals?), Villagers (also Irish), Damien Price (with whom Lisa Hanninigan partnered).
It has subsequently gone back to Lisa Hannigan and the same group of Indie/Folk female vocalists although it is breaking it up infrequently with male vocalists like James Vincent McMorrow, Noah and the Whale, and Beirut.
What surprises me more than anything is that although all these picks are from Qobuz I have, so far, all of the artists locally and most of the albums. So not only is roon not really showing me anything new, it is not breaking up the play list with fast/slow, other related genres or artists not in my library. I rather suspect that the reason why I have all of the artists and most of the albums in the first place is that I have already added the gaps in my library from previous listening sessions. This may explain why there are so many mixed messages about roon radio. I for example, was initially thrilled with roon’s picks but with repeated exposure the novelty has certainly worn off as roon is not able to consistently repeat the trick of surprising me.
This is not necessarily a bad thing under certain circumstances. It is certainly setting a rather consistent (though monotonous) mood and this is probably why I tend to use radio when we have people over and I don’t want to think very much or for there to be any surprises. But in terms of ‘discovery’ radio isn’t really doing anything for me and I notice that I use it less and less.
Any (and I do mean any) mainstream artist from the seventies used as radio seed will yield Elton John (usually either Honky Chateau or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road), the Eagles, Bob Dylan and most times also Wings.
It’s debilitating.
Kind of an automated reversion-to-the-mean mechanism.
What is truly baffling is that the return-to-the-mean also occurs when I start with relative outliers like Patti Smith. From there to Elton John in two steps is kind of mind blowing. And not in a good way.
It works fine with Jazz though. Metal on thd other hand… Don’t get me started.
Personally I’ve given up hope as far as the radio function is concerned. I get satisfactory results by adding forty or fifty albums to the queue and hitting shuffle.
With jazz, the mean isn’t a bad place to be 
I’d love to pass some examples along to our team so we can use them to help make Roon Radio better. If you can share a screenshot of the starting point as well as the queue after some picks, along with a description of why you think the picks are bad, I’ll make sure it gets to the right team. We appreciate the feedback!
Valance has always been completely unsatisfactory for me. I never wanted it nor do I need it.
I wish I could turn it off. But of course I can’t.
What do you mean you can’t turn it off. You have to select it to start with I thought? As in use Radio.
i have found valence to be useful for music discovery.
sure, there seems to be some “center of gravity” which influences valence recommendations toward popular, well-known titles but there are also plenty of obscure, off-the-beaten-path titles that show up to keep me interested.
fwiw, i find valence to be way better than most other recommendation engines. both netflix and apple music are abysmal …ymmv
Nope. If you use a streaming service it is always there.
In what way?
I’ve got odd music tastes, and have found valence useful. I haven’t seen a reversion to the mean effect yet.
Valence and Roon Radio seem to work pretty well for me. I like to listen to an album and when it finishes, Roon starts playing tracks that make a lot of sense to me. I’ve discovered and rediscovered a lot of music that way.
It does seem to depend on the seed that you use. It can get stuck in a repetitive same few bands loop or can go off and lead you on a journey of discovery. Or for the really obscure either not work at all or make random choices.
But it is, for me, getting better and if it gets in the same rut I just give it a need seed track and off we go again.
I appreciate you trying to make an effort @dylan, but I have brought this problem up enough times already with examples in many a threax.
I really don’t feel like spending hours making screenshots.
Roon bragged like hell about how valence surpasses the competition. Well it doesn’t. Tidal itself does a better job.
Time for you guys to figure it out for yourselves or to stop bragging. It’s not the bad performance that irritates me, it’s the arrogance of Roon beating it’s own drum and not delivering.
I promised myself not to get caught up in this frustrating mess that is Roon and yet I fell in again.
Figure it out or not, I don’t care anymore.
ged, check this topic:
Oh ok I see not using it but seeing it.