The Roon Diaries

[crwilli]

Nicely done Michael!!!

[nicoff]

I have been using Roon for a while now and appreciate your walk through the issues that you encountered.
Since I have walked a few more miles on the Roon road, let me add a few notes.
Roon does NOT use the file structure that you used in your hard drive. Roon develops its own.
They key is the metadata that is embedded in each file. If, for example, you use the tag "Christmas" as a Genre for your music, Roon will find ALL such labeled tracks from your library regardless of whether it is in a subdirectory or not.
Also, at first I did not bother with Tags and Focus. Today, those two features are most useful to me.
For example, I have a Tag for all my high resolution files. I also have Tags for all the ECM recordings in my library.
I also use Focus to identify all my MP3 and lower resolution recordings and hide them to keep me from playing them.
Tag is dynamic which means that if I add, say, a new ECM recording, it is automatically added to my tagged collection of ECM recordings.

[Antonmb]

Michael, awesome thread and great tips.

For what it’s worth, I struggled with what to do with tags for a while, but have since found a good use for them for me. Roon has no way of handling box sets - this is a subject of discussion in the forum, especially among classical fans. I finally landed on simply using tags to group box sets. I select the albums that belong to a box set, and add a tag for the box set name.

I’ve also found profiles and favorites to be very useful features. My wife has sometimes found it a bit difficult to find music she likes in the collection, simply because it’s fairly large and she isn’t as familiar with it as I am, especially the classical and jazz. She can find Willie Nelson and Keith Jarrett easily enough, but she may not remember Phil Cook, or “that classical piece you played the other day.” I’ve now set up separate profiles for her and me, and when she hears something she likes, she can simply add it to her favorites. Likewise if I’m playing something she likes, or think she might like, I can switch to her profile on my iPad and add it to her favorites. I also added a variety of albums and artists that I know she really likes when I first set up her profile. She can now open Roon on her iPad, select her favorites, and she has a much more focused and less daunting list to choose from - and she can always turn off favorites when she want to go exploring.

[Yamaki]

Thanks for the tips, guys!

I suppose I'll eventually find a use for Tags & Focus. For now, I am happy with the setup and the results.

[nicoff]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

.....
Roon has no way of handling box sets - this is a subject of discussion in the forum, especially among classical fans. I finally landed on simply using tags to group box sets. I select the albums that belong to a box set, and add a tag for the box set name.
....

Roon does have the capability of handling Box Sets.

Here is how to do it.

Let's say that you have a 3 disc box set.
1. Use a separate metadata software (I use MP3TAG and DBPoweramp).
2. In the field for Disc number you then enter 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 respectively. Note: this is the key! Do not label them 1, 2, and 3 because if you do then Roon will treat each disc as if each is a totally separate album.
3. Roon automatically will display the Box Set and will show three tabs one for each disc.

Similarly, if you have a 5 album box set, the discs must be named 1/5, .....5/5.

If you use this nomenclature, if you hit Play Albun, Roon will play each disc in the Box Set consecutively (unless you are in shuffle mode).

This is great for classical music and Opera where an opus may require multiple discs. You can now listen to Don Giovanni entirely by just pressing one button.

[Antonmb]

Originally Posted by nicoff

Roon does have the capability of handling Box Sets.

Here is how to do it.

Let's say that you have a 3 disc box set.
1. Use a separate metadata software (I use MP3TAG and DBPoweramp).
2. In the field for Disc number you then enter 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 respectively. Note: this is the key! Do not label them 1, 2, and 3 because if you do then Roon will treat each disc as if each is a totally separate album.
3. Roon automatically will display the Box Set and will show three tabs one for each disc.

Similarly, if you have a 5 album box set, the discs must be named 1/5, .....5/5.

If you use this nomenclature, if you hit Play Albun, Roon will play each disc in the Box Set consecutively (unless you are in shuffle mode).

This is great for classical music and Opera where an opus may require multiple discs. You can now listen to Don Giovanni entirely by just pressing one button.

That’s how I handle multi-disc albums, which for me is different from a box set. A multi-disc album has a single title and cover with 2 or more discs, whereas a box set has several discs each with a different title and cover. As an example, I have a box set “Decca Sound - The Analogue Years” which has 50 albums, each with a different cover and title. Within that set, there are some albums that are multi-disc, I.e. 2 discs in the album. Those are tagged as disc 1 of 2, disc 2 of 2, because they have the same album title and cover, but the whole box of 50 needs to be handled differently.

[nicoff]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

That’s how I handle multi-disc albums, which for me is different from a box set. A multi-disc album has a single title and cover with 2 or more discs, whereas a box set has several discs each with a different title and cover. As an example, I have a box set “Decca Sound - The Analogue Years” which has 50 albums, each with a different cover and title. Within that set, there are some albums that are multi-disc, I.e. 2 discs in the album. Those are tagged as disc 1 of 2, disc 2 of 2, because they have the same album title and cover, but the whole box of 50 needs to be handled differently.

Ah! I see what you mean by Box Set now. As you mentioned earlier, using Tags is indeed a good way of achieving that purpose.

I have a Mercury Living Presense Box Set that has dozens of CD by different artists. I added the CD number to each title to help me locate the entire collection easily. For example, MLP Disc 01, MLP Disc 02, etc.

[stev809]

I grenaded on the roon message boards today. My dealer sold me on the ease and plug and play capabilities of the nucleus and using to to stream tidal it worked fine, getting it to locate my music files another story.. to be continued.

[nicoff]

Originally Posted by steve59

I grenaded on the roon message boards today. My dealer sold me on the ease and plug and play capabilities of the nucleus and using to to stream tidal it worked fine, getting it to locate my music files another story.. to be continued.

I am sure that you will get assistance from the folks at that forum. Lots of knowledgeable and helpful folks there.

I recall having a bit of a hiccup locating the address of my music files the first time (the were located in an external NAS and I was using a MAC). But once that was resolved, it was smooth sailing from there.

[Formerly YB-2]

Eventually I'll get around to using all this great info.