I like the improvements that have been made to playlists in 1.3, and it certainly makes sense from an editing perspective. My only comment would be on the Playlist overview screen. I’m a fan of white space, but I feel that there is too much on this screen (see screenshot below), and the mosaics are being lost a bit. Have you considered something more akin to the original view or the artists view, with big bold blocks of content?
Peter
Couple of ideas in terms of short cuts. Would be nice to be able to remove a track from a playlist without having to open the playlist,. So, for example, if I want to remove the Prelude from the English Countryside Playlist, if I could left click and remove it without having to leave this screen that would be cool.
Because genres don’t seem to work so well with classical in terms of using it as a listening tool, I am totally focused on curating and using playlists. That said, it would be great to treat playlists like personal radio stations. If we could use a customized image that fills the screen for playlists, that would be awesome. When I used Media Monkey I developed a few playlists over years, adding and subtracting, and creating new sub-playlists from those.
There’s a very good book called “How to DJ Right” by Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster who argue that playlists can ascend to the level of art. They aren’t just lists. So, if Roon could lean toward playlists as something more website than spreadsheet, that would be very cool.
+1 on this suggestion to make it easier to remove a track from a playlist. Is there any way currently to remove a track from a playlist? I haven’t found a way to do it.
Select the playlist find the track to remove long press on the track and select remove at the top right of the window?
Russ
Thanks, Ratbert
In the column section allow sorting by any metadata field associated with a playlist. Allow one to select which of these fields are displayed. If I’m updating things then I’d like to see it sorted by “Last Modified”. Other fields I use in other programs are “last played”, “number of plays”, by source (Tidal, iTunes, Roon). If there are a lot of playlists maybe even a rating so I can easily find my favorites.
The ability to update Tidal and iTunes playlists from within Roon. When you select “add to playlist” and you get the playlist names I’d ideally like to see the ability to select either “iTunes, Roon, Tidal”.
A smart playlist (similar to what Roon does with Radio) that take advantage of Tidal library, i.e. not limited to only tracks that I’ve tagged as favourites on Tidal, but really opening up and going to its library to search for other tracks that is similar to what I am currently listening to, that’d be awesome!
You can focus on mp3 in Focus/Inspector/Format and on added in last 3 months with Focus/Added. The combination of the two can be bookmarked.
OK thanks, so that bookmark can then be exported to a car or dap, as I thought it was only playlist that could get exported, when they are fixed that is.
You can organise the tracks in playlists by date of release, dynamic range etc. but I can’t see a way to then play them in this order.
I may be missing something but if not this would be a nice added function.
I’m just making my first BIG playlist to try and have a collection that will effectively be my radio in the kitchen.
.sjb
Re: Playlists -
I use Playlists a lot. First, I struggled with figuring out how to shuffle a playlist (first must select a song, then go to the song on a different screen(!), then select shuffle). Most times across a wide number of players I’ve used there are Shuffle and Repeat icons right next to the PLAY button above the playlist. Just select the Shuffle icon and hit Play! The system will select a song at random, and shuffle through all songs (without repeating any( until the playlist is exhausted. I hope you will consider that “simple” and far more user friendly architecture OR better yet, tell me its already there and I’ve not seeing things clearly.
Playlists and overall – You’ve created a lot of nice ways to present the song content. Those content and presentation alternatives change somewhat from section to section. For me, it would be helpful to have a View or Display tab that would give me the core, alternative ways I can look at the libraries and content in each of the major sections (where applicable). Forget my sample nomenclature below, but I hope you’ll get the idea.
Easy presentation of the different Screen Views would make life so much easier, particularly because I pretty much always am Mirroring the Roon iPad screen to my TV/Monitor to make it easy for me to see, and everyone else for either serious listening or great parties!
Hi,
I trialled Roon a year or so ago and still wanted to use iTunes for a lot of library functions. At that time you could import iTunes playlists to Roon - Static>Static and Smart>Static.
But there was no way (at least that I could see) to have playlist changes made in Roon sync back to your iTunes playlists. I’ve searched a bit in this forum but couldn’t fine the answer - Has this changed since then? Is there now any way, or still not?
Thanks
It would be interesting to see data on triallers of roon who do not convert, and at what point in the trial they stop using roon…
A lot of the answers to questions here are “you can do that today using focus…”. Focus is a very powerful feature - but the fact that it has to be pointed out all the time says something. Does a trialler come here, ask a question, get the answer and then go try it? Or try something once, can’t do it, and say “roon can’t do it…”. Trial software these days has made it very easy to go online, download 3 products in short succession, try them for a short while and abandon them if they don’t make sense. Downloadable software has also made it harder to ensure the users are getting a level of training. Focus isn’t a term or concept they’ll be familiar with because it isn’t in other products - so do they invest the time finding something they don’t expect to find? Maybe have things that link to it - like a “recently added” to the library section of the menu… that takes them to focus and to the timeline. They click on something they expect (recently added) and discover something way more powerful than they thought…
There are also a lot of comments about playlists and queues and bookmarks and… Are these things that different from one another? Some folks use playlists. Some just add to the queue and listen to albums. But what is the practical difference between them? A DJ on a radio show creates a playlist. A band has a setlist. You can call it what you want. The point? It is a collection of tracks - either in the context of the album or not - but it is a collection of tracks. Make it very easy to move from one to the other (I don’t think we can make them synonymous with them, but I do think the terminology is somewhat irrelevant)…
I find an album on roon. Click “play this album”. By the third track I’m thinking “Hey, I really like this.”. I start exploring - other albums by the artist, track credits… I find someone on the album (or maybe via appearances) that I recognise, so I go look at their albums. I see one that grabs my attention. At this point the option I have is to play that album - either now, or add to the queue (or play next). It sounds good too. At this point I may want to start creating a playlist from my queue. Except…
While on the queue management - can we add the circle around the small play icon in the queue (or move it from the left)? Why? Because the number of times I’ve hit it thinking it is a disclosure arrow to twirl down to see the “other performances” or “movements within”. Having something that looks like an arrow on the far left makes me think “twirl to see details…”
I guess the question asked of my workflow is “would you want to create a playlist of 2 albums?” possibly not. But if I use roon for discovery then while listening I may add 5 albums (today I do this - I listen on Tidal and then “add to library”). Put on volume levelling, hit shuffle and off I go (the nature of discovery, the albums are probably similar - hence why I discovered them using the links).
Erm, they are listed in your History… And you can select them from there and turn them into a playlist. There is just the niggle, which I pointed out a long time ago, that a playlist thus created from contiguous tracks will play them back in the reverse order from what you originally listened to. Roon really should automatically invert the order of such tracks…
Is the team still looking at ideas for playlists or are you in “doing something” mode where further information is grist for the next version of playlist changes?
Hi,
An interesting discussion …
I think short training videos could help users, this @HBz Hans Beekhuyzen Channel - Roon Introduction one is quite good, but maybe Roon should commission their own and publicise it from within the products help system…
I think for the time being at least with current UI there is need to differentiate these aspects of Roon as their functionality is quite distinct.
I don’t think Roon’s UI will stand still, so I’d expect to further development in these areas as the product evolves.
It’s not on the [play] queue per se, but I agree adding a circle would make it consistent with the main Play/Pause icon. (I see a filled circle whilst hovering with mouse, but on touch screen that does not help).
I do hope that this aspect of Roon will evolve over time, I’m not a fan of the button (way to destructive for my use).
Thanks Geoff,
I guess to me it feels like being told I have to leave the room. Now sometimes I get that - you’d like me to go to the bathroom because you’d rather I didn’t pee on your sofa. But I don’t get why I have to go to the kitchen to ask you if you have plans for the weekend…
I can hit play on a playlist - and it moves it, seamlessly (maybe too seamlessly with the destructive nature!) to the queue. But I can’t turn a queue into a playlist. And to my mental model it is the queue that I have been interacting with when I’ve been clicking “Play now” or “Add to queue”. I don’t think of “Add to queue” as “Add to history”. Also add to history seems to add songs I’ve played whereas I’ll be halfway through an album, be browsing the links and finding another album and adding it. I’d have to listen to the entire queue (it seems) for it to appear as history.
It feels kinda artificial to me. Like being told to go to the kitchen. What do you reckon?
Thanks Carl for the feedback,
To me those two are “fairly” synonymous. One is for immediate recall, one is for later recall. I know we need both - but do we need to treat them differently conceptually (because every other player does)? To me you should be able to go from one to the other easily (I can go from playlist to queue easily by pressing play). As you say, roon isn’t standing still, so we watch this space 
The play icon - I do wish there was a way to “preview” a track without adding it to the queue. Especially for things like Tidal where I know the music in my library but not the music on Tidal. Often I am listening to something, and someone posts here in “What are you listening to?” and I figure it looks interesting so I go find it. Play it, and… well you know the rest.
Thanks for the training video link. Roon tries to do a decent job of onboarding with the flourishes on screen when you’re getting started. I do think that the real power of roon is hidden away in screens the user may not see because they don’t know what they’re looking at or for. The search for the familiar (dull) functionality (like “Recently added”) and don’t find it. The smarts of roon need to be front and centre from the go for a trialler so they see the power and say “hmmm. That is cool. I wonder if [ ] can do that?”. Play to the strengths and set the agenda rather than it being set by the chasing pack
Thanks for the response and discussion.
history is your play history… if you didnt play the song, it doesnt go into the history. Not only is it like Last.fm’s AudioScrobbler, but we also Scrobble the track if you have last.fm integration turned on in your profile.
