Admittedly, I use a different definition of “Compilations” than Roon does. I like to define Compilations as recordings by various artists around a central genre, theme, or subject, such as the great Beg, Scream & Shout: the Big Ol’ Box of ‘60’s Soul, The Cosimo Matassa Story, Cuba: I Am Time, all the MOJO magazine samplers, or Goodbye, Babylon. For me, the Muddy Waters or Howling Wolf Chess box sets are better found under the Artist name than as Compilations, even though I recognize in the Roon sense they have tracks from various times, sessions, and styles.
I have successfully gotten around this by creating a Bookmark called “Compilations” into which I put all the albums with Artist = “Various Artists.” As I add albums, I ensure the Primary Artist = “Various Artists” and everything works.
Long prologue, now the problem: ARC doesn’t recognize Bookmarks at present, so I need another work-around to find compilations. The interesting quirk I’ve run up against is that “Various Artists” doesn’t show up under Artists in ARC. I’ve also tried creating a Tag for various artists, and that doesn’t work either. Both of these mean I can’t create a Smart Playlist focusing on all albums where Artist = Various Artists.
Anyone have suggestions for how to create a Smart Playlist like this for ARC, or some other way to quickly access my compilations on-the-go?
As an interim suggestion for Roon I’d make Bookmarks available as a “read-only” feature in ARC, so you create them on desktop Roon but can access them in ARC.
A Various Artists compilation is defined by ALBUMARTIST, so a Muddy Waters compilation, would have ALBUMARTIST=“Muddy Waters” whereas a Mojo CD would use ALBUMARTIST=“Various Artists”.
Agreed, but an artist compilation also gets listed under “Compilations”, and so gets the included with all the others. This means you have to scroll through all the artists’ compilations along with the “Various Artists” ones.
Addressing the tag name - I’m not sure why the name makes any difference. You choose an album and add it to a tag or create one. The tag could be called “Elephants” or “New Stuff” and it wouldn’t make any difference.
mjw
(Father! Father! Resist not! Let us destroy the core! Set us free!)
5
Do yoi mean Focus > Compilations? This would be correct.
If I want to list all various artist compilations, I’d filter on Various Artists, and then either create a tag or bookmark.
Focus doesn’t have a “Various Artists” choice under Performers, and nothing appears if I type it into the Search bar. Back to my original post: I have created a Various Artists Bookmark on Roon desktop which I titled Compilations. It works well, but bookmarks are not supported in ARC. I’m trying to find a workaround to do the same thing in ARC.
mjw
(Father! Father! Resist not! Let us destroy the core! Set us free!)
7
Filtering (the magnifying glass) for “Various Artists” works on desktop Roon, but not on ARC. When I filter for that on ARC, it finds a band named The Various Artists and a few random things, but not all the compilation albums. I’ve tried it with at the home page, with Artists, and with Albums, same result.
mjw
(Father! Father! Resist not! Let us destroy the core! Set us free!)
9
I know, which is why I suggested using the Roon desktop to create a bookmark as this is dynamic, and create a tag for ARC.
That said, Various Artists should work as a filter in ARC. It may be that you are not following conventional wisdom when tagging your music (as in metadata FLAC tags).
Confirm that it works as a filter in ARC. You can then access them all or hit the 3 dots and shuffle if you want to shuffle them as if they were a (smart) playlist.
