A Picture speaks a thousand words maybe
This is my Liszt Folder (internal drive in ROCK viewed in Windows 10)
Each Yellow Folder contains files that are the actual music files.
The Concept of Folder Browsing is to navigate your library using these folder trees and then at the audio file itself to set off a play sequence . Imagine your normal Windows Explorer or Mac Finder
This is opposed to using Roon’s built in navigation Process and Tools
Simply folder browsing requires YOU to organize the library , NOT Roon
A far better explanation (IMHO) and I suspect that a majority of people will already have this arrangement as part of the “structure” built during the ripping process.
Under the track “file info” Roon displays the path, in text format, for local library files giving the folder structure.
It makes some sense to have access to the folder structure for file administration rather than going to a separate app (File explorer or Finder) to inspect or edit the files.
Folders?
Folders (several layers displayed on Mac Finder in this case)!
I guess the need for folder browsing comes from some people having their own system of folder hierarchy while facing a situation with roon not recognizing a significant portion of their albums. If there is not proper metadata recognition by roon, such as composer, artist, track name, album and alike, it is difficult at times to find such unrecognized track.
If you do not have created a logical folder hierarchy and no problems with finding tracks from your library in roon > forget about folders!
I only hope that now that Harman has adquired Roon, they will respect users requests and both folders and focus/roon search system of finding music into your libraries will be implemented.
I own a very large library, and it could take months, years to tag all the files perfectly to be able to find what I want to listen. I own several albums repeated 20 times, by years, recording companies, special editions, remastered editions, etc, etc… and with actual Roon system it’s a headache to find the different editions of the same album.
Both systems of searching music must be implemented. And the question will finish and everybody will be happy
Completely agree - much of my organisation is thematic or various artists so getting those to play in Roon is impossible, it seems almost deliberately contrarian to not allow users to see their own folders, we have done this since Winamp.
It’s been said by Roon’s founders that Roon is opinionated software. Personally, I’m quite happy to have ditched folder browsing in favour of being able to slice and dice my collection in a multitude of dimensions to suit how I want to listen to my music at any particular moment in time.
I have no use for folder browsing either. I have no objection to it being added - as long as I don’t have to use it and its presence does not hinder my use of the filtered/sorted view of my library that I currently enjoy.
I have to wonder how a folder view would work for libraries with mixed local and streamed content. It seems to me that the folder browsing idea falls down completely as soon as you consider streamed content.
Just to add …
My first foray into digital music was without a network, it was a Cambridge Audio CXN with an attached USB drive so your navigation was via the folder structure of that drive
I couldn’t get away from it quick enough where do you put a multi composer classical disc , ah Miscellaneous of course
Just my way of working
And it has sucked since then and proven to be a woefully inadequate way of looking at music.
I disagree, as I can’t believe that music must be searched and founded following any restricted way. I think that depending of your library size and your taste in music, you can search following Roon system or any other system. And the matter is: if thousand of users are claming for folders search… are all of them crazy, or they have no idea about music, or must Roon search system the only one correct??? I can assure that I consider myself an expert in music in many ways, and I’ve been working with very large libraries since the beggining of music streaming (my first device was a Slim Device after known as Logitech Squeezebox) in 2000. My music collection has more than 180.000 albums including SACDs, DVD-A, Bluray Music and many others qualities, despite of High Res recordings by thousands… and if I want to take advantage of my collection I need the folders view, just to be able to find the exactly quality, the exactly edition of a concrete album or if it was done by Mobile Fidelity, Sony, RCA, EMI, or a vinil rip of the same album. Trying to find that with Roon is a headache
Let`s pray 
Exactly. But folders are static and they allow finding precisely in one way. Either you have folders by artist or by label or by year or by genre, etc., and that’s what you are stuck with.
Folders can be a worthwhile addition, but as the only way they suck. Libraries found out about this hundreds of years ago.
And that’s precisely how they’ll be used.
And that’s fine and by all means add folder browsing as long as it doesn’t get in my way, but the whole „they are great even Winamp had them“ makes no sense. The database UI exists precisely because folders were too restrictive.
Edit: and personally I wish the people who don’t like or use Roon used one of the 100 other options they have
Agreed, Geoff!
Correct me if I’m wrong - but isn’t the current implementation (Focus, filter, tag) the only way in which a work can (appear to) ‘be’ in more than one place at a time.
Again, to pick up from Mike’s example, tags etc allow Wilhelm Kempff to be:
- the pianist for Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage
- the pianist for the Beethoven sonatas
- a pianist, say, born in the C19th and died in the C20th
- a pianist born in Germany
- a musician who is thought not to have resisted Nazism
- a pianist who was also a composer
etc.
By the same token the Années de pèlerinage themselves can simultaneously (appear to) be in all these folders - by virtue of tagging etc. A work:
- composed in the middle of the C19th
- composed for solo piano
- composed by a Hungarian
- first played roughly at the same time as, say, Brahms first became famous - after Schumann’s career was drawing to an end and both Berlioz and Wagner became active again after having been eclipsed
- inspired by both literature and travel
- an ideal test of pianists’ virtuosity
etc
If they (the Années de pèlerinage) were just in one actual folder, none of the searches implied by those attributes would find them.
Like others here, I’m not opposed to the implementation of Folder Browsing. But - unless I’m missing something - I’m unlikely to use it.
Folders may be irrelevant to the sorting & search options offered by Roon. However, should the end user decide on a different application (for whatever reason) having an established & recognisable folder structure would, in principle, make migration to an alternative system more straight forward.
In terms of editing and correcting how Roon uses the metadata a recognisable folder structure is also helpful. On a number of occasions I have struggled to get Roon to present the correct metadata without success but a quick edit of the folder/track data has resolved the issue.
This obviously is not a requirement, currently. for streamed media but who knows what the future may bring.
Fortunately Roon & some subscribers see a potential need and the investigations have started.
Finally, I’m sure many subscribers don’t ever touch 60% of the available configuration options but having the option in the first place offers end users extra flexibility.
A Roon user is able to use whatever folder structure they like to store their music on their library storage device.
Wouldn’t folder browsing be by definition, limited to showing only your local files?