Is this content from local files, TIDAL, or Qobuz?
Local
Screenshot of import settings
Have tried using using both prefer Roon and prefer file. No difference in how Roon identifies the album.
Description of the issue
Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini is split into 3 sections (works) in Roon. Should be a single work. Album was purchased from Qobuz and the metadata in Qobuz app appears to be correct in identifying “Rhapsody” as a single work. The album purchase information on the Qobuz site also appears to be correct and identify “Rhapsody” as a single work. I can’t edit tracks in Roon to fix the issue.
@Bob_Worley , presumably @Lorenzo_De_Carli edited a local copy of this release with a tag editor to update the metadata, specifically the Work and Part tags. that is one way to do. I am not aware of any method of updating the Composition directly in Roon
I’ve been using MP3Tag for what seems like forever. Yate seems very popular around these parts, I’ve also noticed the developer of SongKong is quite active on the forums here. Depending on your OS any of the 3 could get you what you need to get started. As to whether it’s intuitive, I am not sure I can answer that since I’ve been updating tags for years, in addition to having a job in data management. I can say this guide is extremely useful in helping get you started
One thing I think Roon could of a better job of is emphasizing that the user experience is greatly enhanced with user managed, standardized metadata. If you have local files I believe your experience will improve if you apply the same tags to all your releases (classical vs pop/jazz/rock being an exception). That’s a large commitment though and understandably not everyone wants to do that, but good metadata prevents the type of issues your post has brought up, @Bob_Worley.
there are several metadata editors in circulation and each user uses them according to their needs.
In this particular case, the process is quite simple:
I have a digital copy of the album with the audio tracks in the correct order on my local computer
I import the tracks into Yate
In the menu, I choose the MusicBrainz Wizard option
I copy/paste the album ID from the MusicBrainz database
Yate automatically imports all metadata
I save the tracks and import the album into my music library
This is the basic way Yate works, but the other editors work in the same way.
“Intuitive”? Well, let’s say they become intuitive after a while.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any direct experience of streaming from Qobuz. I only have experience of downloading from Qobuz and I have noticed that the metadata quality is good, and it can be an alternative to Roon metadata.
One last thing. To understand the relationship between the metadata of my music library and the work done by Roon, this article was very helpful to me:
Unfortunately, the metadata added to MusicBrainz are not correct. Specifically:
Track 20 – where the split occurs – has no associated work.
Further, although the variations are numbered contiguously, the tempo in the track title of Variation 10 should be Poco marcato, not L’istesso tempo. I’m seeing this in both TIDAL and Qobuz metadata at source, so it must be coming from the label.
Yate is an amazing piece of software. It’s essential for tagging files - in as many ways as you might ever want. (Technical) support is outstanding. It’s accurate and robust, updated at just the right regularity and has ‘Actions’ to automate almost everything (Find and Replace, split into Work and Part etc).
I’ve imported and opened up the album folder in “Yate” and changed the name of “Track 20” which to be the track causing the difficulties in my Roon display.
How do I save these changes back to the original album folder so I can re-import back to Roon?
Sorry to say that I couldn’t figure out how to navigate the tagging apps (yes, I tried two) to get the files saved to Roon so “Rhapsody” appears as a single composition.
Joel, is this metadata situation something you work on on your end?
Thanks for everybody’s help. I just couldn’t figure out how to make the software do what I wanted to do.
My workflow fixes most things , I am using Win 10 and JRiver to edit metadata. Most albums just import OK so this is an exception case.
If the album has already been imported , it helps to move it out to another folder as Roon will start a lookup at every change and then do a Settings> Library > Library Maintenance clean up to remove old references before adding back
I use a “working folder” copy album into it
Correct [Composition] = “xxx”
Set [Movement] = “yyy”
Make sure [Album Name] is consistent across all tracks
Make sure [Aritst] & [AlbumArtist] is consistent across all tracks
Now import back into the watched folder
Once Imported go Edit>Metadata preferences "Mulitipart Work Grouping: PREFER FILE
As Joel has already mentioned, the problem seems to be the a non-existent %WORK% tag and inconsistent track naming making it impossible for roon to recognize the Op. 43 composition for one of the movements (No. 10 or track 20 in this case).
If the track naming is consistent, roon might have a chance to extract the Op. number from the track names and understand about the multi-part composition.
With MP3tag, you have to upload the files in MP3tag, mark all those which you want to be having in one and the same multi-part composition, and then use the manual editor View > Extended Tags, adding a %WORK% tag to all of them (and saving the edits, subsequently). The WORK field should be identical for all tracks, bearing the correct composer´s name as a separated tag and ideally follow the syntax roon is understanding, with (in your case) “in a minor, Op. 43” as the last thing (or in my current case of Mendelssohn, the MWV #).
Okay, even though this looks like a screw up at Deutsche Grammophon, I’ll make an edit to the Mbz data to add the correct work reference. This will fix the composition grouping.
It will then take up to a week to be approved in the Mbz system and up to a week for the data to then be pulled into your Libraries.
