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In Reply to: RE: Roon Review posted by Mercman on July 03, 2015 at 11:36:16
Thanks for the review. You guys covered many points of interest.
For metadata & library management, classical music may be the biggest challenge with its need for multiple fields for conductors, soloists, chorus masters, organists, orchestras and so forth. Any thoughts on how well Roon might perform there?
Also does it handle older recordings which may out of print? And what about recordings from labels that no longer exist?
Just curious about how deep they are able to go with this...
Follow Ups:
I agree that classical is a huge challenge. Having created and tagged over 2,500 hi rez discs in my own library of Mch classical, I am well aware of the tagging problems. But, mine is all done in JRiver with only the continuing trickle of new entries to deal with.
The user interface of Roon looks nice, but it is really pretty good also with my touch screen JRemote interface to JRiver. So, I do not know what Roon could add at this point to my experience. JRemote searching is pretty easy and it meets my needs. Yes, JRiver's learning curve amid its huge feature set is a bitch, but I am already well past that.
And, I am somewhat frustrated at understanding certain things about how Roon works, exactly what formats it does or does not support, etc. For example, multichannel support is crucial to me, as are support for video formats like BD-A and BD-V. I understand it is still early in the game, and that my format preferences are in a tiny, minority niche.
But, here is a really big issue I do not see an answer to. Where and how exactly does Roon store the tagging information once acquired? For CD, SACD, FLAC, but not the BD formats, JRiver at least can store the tags, even after editing and with any of my custom classical fields, within the media file itself in standard IDV3 format. So, if someday, I migrate to a different library tool, if it supports that standard, all my tagging efforts will be preserved in the transition to the new tool.
No tool is guaranteed to last forever, and Roon at this point is especially iffy with too many unanswered questions.
Incidentally, I have not used it because it does not support SACD, but a friend has for his over 2,000 CDs. There is a tool called MusiChi that comes with a huge database of classical works by composer, from which tagging info is easily copied into your library to build consistent tagging across all tracks. It can also store the tags in the media files in standard format. It has a learning curve, too, but it is not as daunting as JRiver.
Also, as a footnote, JRiver's features have allowed me to completely eliminate the preamp/Mch processor from my system. It is my playback control center and library feeding my external DAC from the PC. JRiver also plays videos and even TV via an Ethernet cable card device. These capabilities are clearly well beyond Roon at this point, so Roon does not appear to be in my future.
I am testing Roon to see if it can manage my classical libarary of a bit under 2,000 albums.
I posted about the positives at the link below.
But since then I started learning about the negatives. My understanding is that Roon has a large database of albums and rich metadata related to them, describing artists, composers, and even individual works. If an album from your library is identified correctly by Roon, you are in haven and all the positives apply. If it is not, you may have a small problem if something in your or Roon's description of the album is wrong, say one track was lost. You can fix it manually, but the interface is not user friendly and it takes a ton of time.
But if your album is simply not in the Roon's database, you have a big problem. I could not find a way to link a missing album to cross-album metadata. E.g. I have about 300 albums where the composer is "Ludwig van Beethoven", correctly identified with all the nice additional info and ways to browse, and about 200 albums with "Beethoven" who is treated as a different and entirely unknown composer. These albums are kind of "dead" for Roon database management.
I think 90+% of my collection is on major labels, so I am dissapointed that Roon failed to identify correctly so many albums.
Overall, I would say that for a classical music lover Roon is a work in progress. A lot of fun for early adopters, but far from ready as your main library management tool.
Thanks, this is the kind of the thing I was wondering about. Having struggled with this, I'm not surprised that it is a work in progress.
I honestly need more time to check these things out since the software was only released in May.
My system is completely taken down now for house remodeling. I probably won't be back up for another 2-3 weeks.
The Roon Labs forum is a great place to discuss this stuff.
I am looking forward to exploring my collection with Roon.
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