Vinyl Collection Catalogue - adding to Roon?

This may sound like sacrilige, but in addition to a large digital music collection I have close to 5,000 vinyl albums that I have painstakingly added to Discogs over the years. I am new to Roon, but it is by far and away the best Music ‘Organization’ software I have discovered. I would love to have my entire Music collection in one program, thus, the ability to import my Discogs Vinyl catalogue into Roon. I could then search my entire collection in one place. If this has been raised in the past, apologies. If it has not, does this suggestion have any ‘legs’???

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Roon indexes an actual library as opposed to creating a listing of albums it doesn’t have access to. If you use Tidal you may consider adding those titles via Tidal. Can’t think there’s another way to get the albums into Roon short of making needle drops of 5,000 albums.

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This isn’t an acceptable idea. A Discogs to Roon pathway is. Discogs has an accurate online database that is larger than any other vinyl database. One of the reasons we own vinyl is that the album has not been ported in one way or another to CD, or sounds better on vinyl.

If the value proposition of Roon is to make connections in our music collections, then it follows that failure to have a way to add vinyl that may not happen to be on Tidal is equivalent to a prefrontal lobotomy.

@Paul_Grandfield is 100% correct. I’m on a few music blogs and there are many vinyl users that also use Roon.

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Roon works on the basis of audio files it can play back, not a virtual library. If you’ve made needle-droppings you could manually identify the albums in Roon if it doesn’t automatically find a match.

The OP is not going to needle drop 5,000 albums. I’ve got a mere 400, and I needle dropped all of mine, and it took FOREVER.

The OP’s suggestion is one I made when Roon first came out. And it appears to have been ignored. Having my entire music library all in one place is important to me (and clearly the OP wants it too). I suspect many people out there with Roon and also a large vinyl library wishes there was some way to get Roon to include their vinyl in their Roon library, even if it was not playable (and would not be short of a version being in Tidal, or having a needle drop recording).

I know how Roon works

I was talking about it’s value proposition. They are missing a bet here. The value is the interconnection. I don’t care that Roon can’t play my vinyl. I have a VPI Prime Scout for that. I would like Roon to know more about my tastes, what I have in my music library, and to have it suggest things that I can play. I would also like to be able to see what my choices of duplicates might be. Streaming, CD that I have ripped, or vinyl, and which editions.

I know from doing product development that for every person that may bring up something like this to be considered, there are hundreds who didn’t bother but would welcome the enhancement.

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Please don’t implement this, spend the time doing things to digital files. I’ve got hundreds of vinyl but don’t want it or expect it to be in roon.

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While I have, occasionally made “needle drops” – by which I assume you mean a conversion of audio from a record into a digital format – it was done only to preserve something that was not replaceable. When I want to listen to vinyl, I prefer to listen to vinyl. I do occasionally upgrade my analog chain. I don’t want to capture the limitations of an older turntable or electronics forever. My ability to RIP to a high-quality lossless format is better now than it used to be, but my analog playback chain is qualitatively different than my digital ones.

And my album collection is in-between size. Under 1000 albums, but more than I’d care to needle drop.

+1 on this. I’d like to see my entire catalog in one place. Meshing my discogs catalog with Roon would be ideal. I don’t think this would be a big priority for Roon. But I’d honestly buy the lifetime subscription if they did.

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This suggestion seems riddled with problems and has little benefit for those committed to digital music. I’m sure those with modest vinyl collections would do what was suggested by @evand.

Foremost, Roon acquires Meta data when media is added to the library, i.e. a rip of physical media, a digital download or a streaming media. To add vinyl without the media breaks this model and would require a signifiant departure from this approach.

And then what happens with playback, radio, analysis etc. when there is no media in the library. After all, Roon is primarily a music player not a cataloguing system.

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While it would be far more elegant for Roon to have an extension library that would accept data imports - up to the user to massage that data - this could be implemented with a local archive of short silent audio files to which metadata tags can be anchored.

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Roon appears to be the elephant surrounded by blind men. Yes it has a music player component. And it has a database component. The idea of music discovery is why I put up my money for a year to try it out. And it already found “Rock Steady with Flo & Eddie” from the limited information it had on my tastes.

I was attracted to the Roon transport, and it is nice to be able to use Roon to select specific DAC I want to use, or send to SONOS zones. But TIDAL now works with SONOS, and SONOS works with a bunch of services, so Roon is hardly the only game in town when it comes to a music player.

I agree that there are significant problems to solve with any integration, not least of which is that Discogs while extensive, is not nearly as well curated as Roon. But it’s what is out there.

As far as being dedicated to digital music — my favorite experiences are live performances.

I’d say I think there is a rationale for it, but it’s just that the Roon team has a full plate working to get all the digital stuff fully fleshed out. I’m sure mobile and quobuz integration are big projects.

I can see some sort of add-on module that manages a vinyl library simply to draw connections thru metadata.

Or maybe even better, just the option with any album that is actually in the library, a toggle to set flags for analog copies in collection: R2R, vinyl, cassette, etc. So then if you have a digital copy, or it’s in Tidal, you can just set it to tell you there’s an analog copy - you could have a cool icon for each type of media. This would probably be a simpler dev project.

It’s probably not too complicated for an existing vinyl collection if

  • one has a .csv of some sort with all the necessary metadata (album, artists, tracks, track lengths, etc.) - ideally with external cover pictures and the path to the picture within the .csv
  • one knows how to create a batch script :thinking: using this .csv to
    • create the folder structure required and fill it
    • by feeding ffmpeg
      (create a silent audio file of track length,
      add metadata to this track;
      not to forget the ROONRADIOBAN tag)

5 min ogg compressed silence go for 34,000 bytes. Other compression formats may need a bit more. For the advanced user the first track of every album could even contain a short note like “go get the record out of the sleeve…” or something. :wink:

The result should then have it’s own storage location in Roon … it will be easy to tag this with some Roon tags like: Offline Vinyl :stuck_out_tongue: and it can be switched on / off.

Update: adding “LP” or something to the version tag in metadata would even give an overlay.

Once the initial script is there I suppose something for updates won’t be too difficult either.

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No. You want Roon to be something that it is not. Roon is a music player for music lovers just as the main Roon web site home page says. Roon is not cataloging software for your vinyl music library. Roon is very specific about it being for digital media. Roon does not intend to be all things for all people. If you want software to manage your vinyl library, Roon is not for you and Roon should and doesn’t have to apologize for that.

I would be quite unhappy if I found out Roon was spending time figuring out how to manage vinyl considering that have not fleshed out all the issues related to digital.

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Maybe this can help you: https://www.collectorz.com/

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“Roon looks at your music and finds photos, bios, reviews, lyrics, and concert dates, and makes connections between artists, composers, performers, conductors, and producers.

What you get is a searchable, surfable magazine about your music.”

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The above is from the website - just below the music player comments.
I’m buying the magazine with my dues. Maybe you’re buying the music player. I’ll use the music player when it’s convenient. But I’m hardly asking for Roon to be what it is not. I’m asking for something to be on the list as an extension of what it IS.

I recognize that Roon, like any product, must make decisions about where to spend scarce resources. And that each group of users may have their own priorities. We should all be respectful of any legitimate development request. I was the product manager for a global product in the past. And ran a help desk. Not as big as Roon, but respectable. The point of my comments has been to point out that the Roon magazine about my music could be improved if there was a way to inform it not only of my digital files, but of my music that is presently inaccessible to Roon.

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I would value the Discogs look up to ID my digital files starting with CDs and if that helps with digitized analog sources like vinyl records and tape that would be even better. I have many needle drops and some digitized tape.

I am happy using Collectorz software to inventory my physical items (records, CDs and tapes) and like that software to be tuned for inventory and notes.

Maybe someday the two could be merged in a way that allows toggling off all the virtual items but I wouldn’t want to compromise either product to accommodate both. I want each to be strong at it’s role (playing vs. cataloging).

The key here is that the Roon folks are talking about your digital music. But hey, you know that. Again, Roon is not cataloging software even though you want it to be.

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I have a small vinyl collection thst will be larger in the future. I have the unit to rip the vinyl to digital files, and i will do thar, i think i have around 50/60 vinyls ripped right now:)

Thats the way i do it:)