I routinely edit the WORK/PART tags of my files with an external tag editor, and Roon uses them without issue (import settings are set to prefer file data). I have done this for hundreds of albums. However for this one album, Roon decided to ignore my WORK tags, grab the work name from somewhere out on the internet and then proceed to apply the same work name to ALL works in the album. See screenshot below… you can see only 3 but there are 12 of them!
Note that the part names are correctly taken from the file tags.
I understand that the external metadata provider may have wrong info, however I’m asking Roon to use my tags and it’s not honoring that request. How can I force Roon to use my WORK tags? (Again, settings are configured to always prefer file data over Roon data.)
Also, identifying the album or forcing Roon to “unidentify” it by choosing “None of these look right” doesn’t make any difference.
I assume you’ve set Roon to prefer Multi-part grouping from file. Since it’s at times difficult to present works which are structured on more than two levels within a two-lovel-only hierarchy your option here would to accept the multi-part grouping Roon provides. Unluckily that doesn’t give you the structure you probably expect because the work in Roon’s point of view are the 12 sonatas; usually Roon goes down the hierarchy from the top:
First: work … here those would be the collection of the 12 sonatas
Second: part … the last level part Roon can find (like a Preludio in your case)
All structure in between cannot be displayed hierarchically.
If you want to see the structure as you want you could try to unidentify the album. But that has side effects.
To illustrate (Roon multi-part grouping; track titles from file):
Thanks, u_gee. Yes, I have the multi-part grouping from file selected. I tried every option for that setting and it doesn’t make a difference, and unidentifying the album doesn’t help either.
We can argue whether the collection of 12 sonatas is really the WORK or each individual sonata is; however that’s more of a philosophical discussion better left for another day My issue is why Roon sticks with its own metadata when I’m asking it to use my file tags.
For the record, I have countless albums with collections of works - sonatas, sinfonias, concertos… I never had an issue having Roon use my file tags to show works/parts. It’s just being stubborn with this particular album. I’m wondering what’s different and how to fix it.
That doesn’t work with identified multi-part compositions - Roon will stick to the composition name it has identified. It will only show your file tag work title when it hasn’t made the link to the composition. A switch “Prefer work title from file” is missing for what you want.
That’s a bummer… Is it a bug? As you can see above, Roon thinks that there’s 12 performances of the same composition (even though the parts are different) so it’s all kinds of wrong Thanks u_gee for all your insight!
I wonder if we can hear the official word from @support on this?
I had the same going on with Symphony 3 from Beethoven. I’ve got 7 different versions of it. All are identified, but one would not appear with that composition, no matter what i tried. At the end I solved it to identify it as another album (discset from the same performer) and finally it showed up. Same with Complete String quartettes from Beethoven by Takács String quartet. It would only grouped correct together after identifying it as another version (also a discset). Very strang behavior, but glad it now is fixed (sort of)
Well, gang, one year and 8 months later, I’m back to my own topic to post the solution, which I found fortuitously. Turns out my “Work” tags had the “Op. XX” and “No. YY” bits in the reverse order (as in “No. 1 Op. 2”) and that was confusing the heck out of Roon. I updated all the tags to read “Op. XX No. YY” and voilà… the whole 2 disc album is now correctly identified, with each individual sonata as a separate work.
My issue is why Roon sticks with its own metadata when I’m asking it to use my file tags.
