This bothers me quite a bit. I have tons of DSD music in my library which is 100% overlooked by Roon and it invariably picks Tidal versions of songs and completely overlooks my local library. So if Roon says that’s not true, the stats don’t suggest that. Similar to others users I have played hours of roon radio and not a single local track has been played.
The second problem is with regards to the quality of the track being played. Even when picking from only from Tidal it doesn’t do a proper selection based of audio quality. Just now it played Peter Frampton’s Show me the way in CD quality from tidal when tidal itself had better quality versions. So whatever AI engine powers Roon radio definitely makes a hash of understanding audio quality. And I don’t really buy the argument of it trying to find the best song and equivalence and other lingo which they throw at us in trying to justify this behaviour. It should definitely try to find the best match for the next song to be played, but then once it’s found it do a filtering based on quality. Why would it think a better quality version of a song is not the same song all things being equal is beyond my understanding. The AI behind Roon Radio is definitely not very intelligent IMO.
Will have to agree with your frustrations with roon radio @zenyatta80 . The radio is pretty good at selecting a track similar to the seed track. And with nearly 225,000 local tracks, it chooses many songs which are in my library. But 99% of the time roon radio picks the TIDAL or qobuz version over my copy.
Wish there was a way to tell roon radio to make local files the primary source when selecting songs from albums I own. Can only surmise that the reason may be due to the fact that roon members contribute to the algorithm and they too are thumbing up the streaming version since that is the version they are presented.
@jb76 I do understand that and I am sure its trying to do the best in trying to figure out what the best next track should be. But once it has determined that, if it thinks a perfectly matched (all metadata populated) better quality version of the same song is NOT the same song, then something is amiss.
The second issue is about does it really always find music which really enhances the listening experience and music discovery. There are several threads on about how it always starts from the same artists/tracks when you start radio on a song at different times. Then there is also the question about repetitive music, same set of artists played over and over again. I am not much impressed with Roon Radio tbh. I hoped it would be improved with 1.8 but don’t think it has.
I’d like to point out that there’s a major user experience friction that this behavior induces:
when roon radio plays the tidal/quobuz version of your library track, and you want to either favorite it, tag it or add it to a playlist.
on ie windows client you’ll have to:
click the playing now thumbnail at the bottom
click the 3 dots
click go to “album name” (or click again on the album thumbnail on step 2)
click on “versions”
click the library version album thumbnail.
find the matching track that was currently playing.
click the heart on that track.
as opposed to (if it was properly playing the library version)
click the heart icon
I can’t think of any good reason why it would be preferable to play a track you own in your library from a streaming service.
It seems to come down to a shortcoming Roon has in establishing ‘equivalence’. Roon Radio is making a decision ‘this is the best track to play now’ and does not recognize there is something YOU would place the priority on. Even though you and I feel there is ‘equivalence’, Roon Radio doesn’t recognize it.
In my mind, there is a broader issue of how Roon views equivalence and how we do.
So, to your question, this is the reason. Whether it is good or not is subjective.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
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I personally do not buy the equivalence challenge as Roon described it. Roon Radio should simply play the track from the primary version of the album as selected by the user or at Roon’s default if the user has not specified.
The equivalence thing makes no sense. As the track is playing in Roon Radio, you can click on the album. You can then see all versions of the album, and see that Roon is NOT playing from the primary version. All Roon has to do is play from the primary version.
It’s a waste of bandwidth mostly, and secondarily, not the user’s chosen quality. But mostly it is just frustrating to watch something be broken when it need not be.
I don’t disagree, but Roon seems technically not able to make these distinctions. To extend your argument, you can look at an album’s “Versions” and see one version with 12 tracks and another album with 17 tracks. Roon calls them both versions. I don’t think they are the same album, but Roon does. There are then releases, which are the same music but ‘remastered’, etc.
I most certainly agree with the premise behind all of this, but there seems to be some technical/intellectual gap Roon can’t bridge to our satisfaction now. I have hope they’ll find a way to figure it out.
I just repeated this experiment in 1.8. I played or skipped a total of 27 tracks. While Roon Radio offered much more music that was new to me on this attempt, 9 tracks came from Tidal versions of albums that I have in my library.
Roon knows your music, and also how it relates to the rest of the music in the world. The collection you’ve built is always the starting point for exploration in Roon, and it becomes the lens through which you view the world of streaming.
That’s not my experience, when I have Tidal enabled.
Also, unless I should read this as “old favorites, but streamed”, I don’t agree with the first part of this sentence.
Powered by Valence recommendation technology, Roon lets you rediscover old favorites and find new ones
To be fair, the way Roon Radio is described matches my experience.
Choose a starting point, and Roon Radio will play a mix of recommended music from TIDAL and Qobuz.
What gripes the hell out of me is that I buy a service to organize and play MY LIBRARY, but when I select an Artist from MY LIBRARY…damn if it does not go straight to streaming!!! It will even select an album that is already in MY LIBRARY, but play the Qobuz album instead!!! WTH??? They are going to keep this up and I will quit Qobuz …it’s so irritating!!! Especially because I think my rips sound better than Qobuz!
Yep, been reported before as a serious bug / issue. Not sure wether there’s been any follow-up / comment from Roon on this one.
I got an album in library. Roon does’nt pick that, but a stream. In fact it recommends the some F++++ing album again. I have it in the library! I know it! No recommendation needed !!
The switch was added in 1.6 when Radio switched to the new AI driven processes. As such, enabling that switch will force Roon to use the pre-1.6 Radio logic.
Thanks RoonUser!!!..Why doesn’t Roon management tell us about that feature? I can assure Danny that Roon does in fact favor streaming…even over the same album I have in my own library!!!
For me, Roon radio plays the streaming version of a song even when I have it in my library. For this reason, I have requested to be able to heart streaming songs so that it will heart the version in my library already. For songs that aren’t in my library, then hearting a song would put it in a playlist or in a section in my Qobuz favorites. IF Roon can identify the matching Qobuz version to an album in my library, why can’t it match it when playing in Roon Radio. Makes no sense to me. tired of dealing with these stupid UI shortcoming where nothing can ever be simple and just do what it is supposed to
Good discussion here. I’ve always wondered why Roon plays only Tidal tracks (even those which I have in my own library in higher quality) with Roon radio but never gave it further thought. I can confirm that Roon pretty much never picks the local track with Roon radio. It would be nice if the radio could mix local stuff with new content on streaming platforms.
I remember that more than 1 year ago it worked pretty well balancing local and streaming files, then after some updates it became streaming only.
Roon team is aware of this very well for a long time now but apparently they don’t want or are not able to tackle it…just wait when Spotify HIFI will be available and lots of people will move there and throw their NUCs out of the window
This is clearly a problem. The notion that Roon management/development does not think that Roon will stream an identical track even when you have it in your library already is almost unbelievable. It’s clearly the case, happens all the time, and is a real problem. For two important reasons: it potentially costs their customers money (bandwidth caps) and it for sure costs their partners money (Tidal and Qobuz have to pay artists when they stream a track after all.)
