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Been using Roon for about a year now, its pretty good but seem very limited as far as supported Music services and Linux.
Besides these two, how would you improve RoonLabs software?
Follow Ups:
I've been irritated by Roon's tagging for sure. Frequently, Roon either doesn't recognize or fucks up certain eclectic cds in my itunes library. Even when I let the existing tags rule rather than Roon, it misses. If it didnt work so well otherwise, I'm sure I'd have an epic meltdown...
(jk)
.
"Confusion of goals and perfection of means seems to characterise our age." Albert Einstein
Hi,
My biggest gripe is that there is no way to make Roon use my Music Library's Folder structure for genres and instead uses the local tags in the files (which are often to my sensibilities wrong) or tags from Internet databases (which are often to my sensibilities wrong).
And I cannot face the task of re-doing all files new cleaned up tags by hand.
As the user-interface is otherwise not geared to give me my preferred option to just browse through my collection to find the hidden gems etc. I have just given up on roon.
Ciao T
At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to untolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?
I am fastidious about tagging when ripping my music collection, and about correcting the metadata on hi-res downloads. I've also created custom trees in Twonky for browsing my music in different ways.
The control point apps I normally use treat my local library as separate from Tidal. I can mix local and Tidal content in the same playlist, but when browsing you're either browsing the local library or Tidal. The local library is clean and organized and easy to browse (for me) but Tidal is a big mess due to inconsistent and/or incorrect metadata.
I've been hesitant about Roon since it tries to blur the line between local content and Tidal content, if not eliminate it altogether. I'm concerned that it would un-do all the effort I put into curating my library, and the nice browsing experience I enjoy now would get mucked up by bad internet-sourced metadata. Any comments on that?
Hi,
If you have your tags all set right, you can make roon behave as you like.
I'm more old-fashioned and tends to use folder structures and file names, as this is the lowest common denominator. Many of my older Rips are in Monkeys Audio and originated from EAC Beta 0.1...
Using folders and file names works with ANY format file, including DSD, ANY Playback software (even on my Android Phones and Tablets and all sorts of old streaming devices) I ever tried (except roon), works when I look at things in any file manager.
I guess as I have fairly good discipline in this assignment, I could get some bulk tag update software to re-tag everything based on file location and file name and then feed the result to Roon. But this again usually does not cover the whole raft of possible files and is a lot of work.
Ciao T
At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to untolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?
If you have a consistent logic attached to your filenames u can run bulk
conversions by converting filenames into tags.
BUT. I've neither seen anybody managing to come up with a consistent logic (without crippling the tag content), nor I've seen anybody who owns a 100% consistent collection.
What to do!?!?
First of all - get rid (store them somewhere else) of albums you'll never ever listen to.
My guess is that nobody would end up with a collection > 500 CDs.
From that point cleaning up tags becomes manageable.
I use puddletag under Linux to run the tagging job.
I also have my folder structures organised by genres.
Puddletag allows to apply very easily the same genre tag to all files underneath a folder.
So. You could do a "little" tweaking without spending too much time on it.
What I also run as a bulk job is - "remove all tags, but ....."
and that includes removing coverarts from files. That gets rid of a lot of junk.
Getting the coverarts in shape is a different project. It already starts with having the same filename for a coverart.
When it comes to file formats - I allow just a few file formats. Flac and MP3 and DSF. Everything else will be converted.
I do know from experience that people who told me to prefer handling by filenames, immediately switched to "tag" handling as soon as the tags were cleaned up.
All in all it takes me about 5 minutes per album. I think it's more then worth to spent that time. Spent just an hour a week and you'll be set "Once and Forever" next Christmas latest.
Enjoy.
The 80/20 rule seems to be applicable to many different situations...Music libraries are probably one of them too.
I'd be willing to bet 20% or less of peoples music collection gets 80% or more of the play time. I know I have lots of music that I not only don't listen too but will in all likelihood never listen to again.
I'd rather listen too and discover new music.
Either way, imo Roon can be too heavy handed when it comes to library management. In addition, being a software company they are in a loosing battle between constant code management [just to stay relevant] + constant code rework [updates and improvements] - [plateau of software sales + competition of free software] = no to little gains in revenue over time.
Hi,
> BUT. I've neither seen anybody managing to come up with
> a consistent logic (without crippling the tag content),
> nor I've seen anybody who owns a 100% consistent collection.
On the first, it works for me. I effectively ported the system I had for filing my Vinyl and my CD's back in the last Millennium, which in turn goes back to - oh well forever, probably my public library when I was 6 and could borrow LP's.
> First of all - get rid (store them somewhere else) of albums
> you'll never ever listen to.
If I do that I might as well -rm-rf them, because if I do that I WILL never listen to them.
> My guess is that nobody would end up with a collection > 500 CDs.
Used to have > 3,000 LP's, most are still in storage.
I know, I'm an anachrophile and latter day luddite. Now where is my hammer to smash up that newly fangled komputer maschine of yours?
> Getting the coverarts in shape is a different project. It
> already starts with having the same filename for a coverart.
Well, each Album is a separate Folder with a folder.jpg containing the cover art I want (in case I care about it) Double Albums naturally with suitable prefixes on the track number.
It works great for me. For example, using the Music Section in Media Portal I can choose to prefer folder.jpg for music and to browse the collection by "shares", read folder libraries... And it works browsing a network share from USB Audio Player Pro. And using any other player I have ever used.
> When it comes to file formats - I allow just a few file formats.
> Flac and MP3 and DSF. Everything else will be converted.
I leave the original where I can.
> All in all it takes me about 5 minutes per album. I think it's
> more then worth to spent that time. Spent just an hour a week
> and you'll be set "Once and Forever" next Christmas latest.
Or the week before armageddon.
My point is, I do not want to change my system, because it is nearly 20 Years old (on the computer side - overall more) and has grown organically over this time. And if a software that claims user friendliness as key goal and one of the reasons why we should pay subscription, then I expect it to be friendly to the three users called me, myself & I.
I know, selfish, luddite me.
Now where did I put that hammer again?
Ciao T
At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to untolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?
If you're 20 years into computer audio, you should know better.
You shouldn't expect anybody - no software, no family, no nothing,
- except you - to be able to cope with your "organic mess".
Enjoy your management by file.
Obviously you got stuck somewhere around somewhat 20 years ago.
Peace. ;)
Enjoy.
Hi,
Yet any software I ever used (and the number is legion) except roon does cope and well. So to me that makes roon the 'odd one out".
Heck, I use the same system for other digital media too and it works there fine as well...
Ciao T
At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to untolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?
This is a problem when you try to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes copying what works is the way to go....
Thanks.
One of the navigation trees I use is "By Folder", which is a nice fallback to have when I can't find something, usually because I missed a metadata error or made a mistake on rip.
It is nice to know that I can get Roon to stick to my metadata, at least for my own library (Tidal will still be a mess).
You could write a script to bulk update tags based on file name and path. Obviously, that will only set the few tags that can be inferred from your folder structure, but that will give you the same browsing ability you have now using players that ignore folder structure and pay attention to metadata only. Unfortunately, to really take advantage of metadata browsing, I think you have to either accept what the internet gives you or put the effort into a lot of manual tagging.
When I ripped my whole CD collection back in 2010, I used dBpoweramp with multiple internet metadata subscriptions. That saved me a ton of effort, although I still had to make a lot of corrections and enter a lot of data. Classical music was the biggest pain, because I tag album, composer, conductor, orchestra, label, soloist, year, genre, and period, and most of my classical CDs were either missing from online databases or the data was wrong.
What you need is a program that can use the combined wisdom of the various online metadata providers to retroactively tag already-ripped files. I don't know what that would be. The dBpoweramp ripper I used relies on recognizing the CD in order to do the metadata lookup.
" I'm concerned that it would un-do all the effort I put into curating my library, and the nice browsing experience I enjoy now would get mucked up by bad internet-sourced metadata."
What does your music library reside on now and what do you use for your 'nice browsing experience'?
Roon Settings > Library > Import Settings gives you a lot of flexibility on whether it pulls metadata from its service or uses your own metadata in your Library.
You can always backup your Library and keep it on a separate disk while playing with a Roon FREE trial on your main Library. If it does something you don't like, just restore your backup. I assume everyone keeps a tested and working backup of their music library. ;-)
Thanks a lot for the screenshots Abe. It is good to see that you can configure Roon to either use the metadata I've already got or the internet, or a mix of the two.
I use YouTube a lot for discovering new music, because I find that it does a good job of offering up suggestions that are related in different ways to what I'm playing. But I don't like the inconvenience of switching back and forth between using YouTube over AirPlay and using another app for local library or Tidal playback. So my main interest in Roon is having a single interface that I can use for both, relying on its metadata-based browsing capabilities to make those connections.
To answer your question, my library is on a NAS running Twonky server. I've configured Twonky with over a dozen different navigation trees to browse the library in different ways. Album artist followed by album is the one I use most often. Genre first, followed by album artist and album is another one I use a lot. Genre followed by year followed by album is an example of one I use less often. Classical can be browsed by composer first, or conductor first, or period, or soloist. And so on. I can also browse by folder structure on disk. For browsing the library and controlling playback, I usually use Lumin's app when I have a tablet handy, otherwise I use Linn Kazoo or BubbleDS.
Thoresten summed up my objections very well. I want an application to work for me, not the other way around. I still find that JRiver served me better than anything else that I have tried.
RD
I'm new to Roon, but so far can't find a way to minimize the Roon screen on my Windows tablet so that I can toggle to other apps while listening to music. The Roon app must be closed to get to another app. The music plays on and Roon must be reopened to stop it. That's a kludge.
Dave Garretson: I'm trialing Roon and had the same problem. After doing a search on Roon's forum, it appears that the PC's display needs to be set at a 125% scaling level or less. I had my Surface Pro 3 set at 150%, so I encountered a problem similar to yours.
Also, I found I could minimize Roon by going to the main menu and clicking on the minimize symbol in the upper right corner. This took me out of the full-screen mode and there, I could see my Windows minimize symbol (minus sign) which obviously took me out of Roon without shutting it down.
BTW, I'm finding Roon much to my liking....
Dave Garretson: You might also try Roon's Keyboard Shortcut "F11" to minimize full screen mode.
A list of Roon's Keyboard Shortcut's can be found: Menu/Settings -- a hyperlink to the list of Keyboard Shortcuts can be seen in the upper right of the Settings menu....
I don't use a Windows tablet but perhaps there's a way to 'background' Roon while you bring up another App. I can do this on the iPad just fine. As with any App on the iPad you simply double-press on the home button to toggle between Apps.
Not sure if that's what you had in mind.
I've tried Roon a couple of times, but found the interface not as Friendly and powerful as LMS .... So, Ive always gone back to LMS..... I'm not really into the Metadata stuff, so Roon has not been a big draw for me.
Cut-Throat
IMO the interface is both too busy with information I don't want and too sparse of information I do want.
Granted they put a lot of work and effort into meta-data, but I think the whole thing needs to be re-visited.
I too find myself going back to LMS, if only because of the availability of music services.
I did not mention this as you did in your original Post.
Cut-Throat
Make it cheaper. To me it is not worth the cost
Alan
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