Organizing your music collection

amirm · Jan 19, 2016

Fitzcaraldo215 said:
So, all my JS Bach will be together with exactly the same spelling for composer name, and after the first time I entered it into the composer field, the amount of typing I had to do was minimal. This is what I referred to as "smart tagging". It works exactly the same way with all other tagging fields. So, as you build your library, tagging gets easier and easier. You do more picking and clicking and less complete typing of composer names or other field values.

Please help me understand this

. I tried what you said in Roon. Here is me doing a search for Bach:

I then hit the return key without selecting any of the suggestions:

I am giving different categories where this keyword is seen, followed by list of albums, followed by list of tracks (not shown). What should it do instead?

Also, Roon has unlimited tagging. You can make any custom tag you want. They are actually kept distinct from official ones it has. I can for example have "Jazz" as my tag and be different from Jazz that Roon has as pre-created tag. Not being a heavy classical user yet (!), I am not understanding what needs to be there.

amirm · Jan 19, 2016

Vincent Kars said:
The big problem is that media players and internet databases are designed with pop music in mind.
Today the situation has improved as support for the composer tag has become common.

Roon not only has a tag for composer but also has that in the top level user interface (look under Collection):

That said, I often have to help it along by providing pictures of the composer.

edorr · Jan 19, 2016

In Jriver, can custom define any hierarchy structure you want. It requires a bit of a programmer mindset, but it is very powerful.

Fitzcaraldo215 · Jan 19, 2016

Amir - I was describing my experience with JRiver, not Roon. I do not use Roon and I have heard numerous knocks on it with classical libraries. But, in JRiver, I use a Composer tag field and when I search for a composer, it is only looking at the Composer field. In your example, Roon has looked at many fields concurrently including album name for a match to "Bach". And, there are apparently also several different spellings of JS Bach that Roon has come up with in the database somehow, possibly via its automatic search for metadata on the Internet, in addition to the Bach sons, of course. Tag data has to be carefully edited for consistency, especially with classical. Not so much with pop, etc.

I still think Roon is at best still a work in progress for classical. One of my gripes is that nowhere could I find anything about how it stores tags internally. Are they IDV3 compatible or not? Are they stored back in the media file after editing or not? Apparently it can read IDV3 tags from the media you load into it. But, if you spend a lot of time and effort editing and enhancing your media tags in Roon, could you ever switch to a different tool, moving your tag data along with you? With JRiver or MusiChi, you can, because the tags are in standard IDV3 format, and they can be stored inside the media file. With Roon, who knows?

amirm · Jan 19, 2016

You have a choice for every tag to use what is in the file and what comes from Roon's own database. I plan to be buried with Roon so I use its default which is to use Roon metadata over what is in the file in the case of conflicts. You are right that if you make edits this way, it will be roon specific.

Vincent Kars · Jan 19, 2016

Fitzcaraldo215 said:
With JRiver or MusiChi, you can, because the tags are in standard IDV3 format, and they can be stored inside the media file. With Roon, who knows?

The first part is not correct, technically. IDV3 is the standard used in MP3. FLAC uses OGG/Vorbis comments, etc.
Each audio format simply has its own standard.

The second part is more important, allows the media player you to control what is stored inside the header of the audio file.
I have seen some dramatic post of people spending a lot of time on tagging only to find out all this work was lost when they moved their audio files to a new computer.
Yep, library only (custom tags in WMP)

I don't expect Roon to solve classical soon if we talk about a structured database.
The internet databases and the tags as supplied by the record companies (assuming they populate the downloads) are a big unstructured mess.

Fitzcaraldo215 · Jan 20, 2016

Thanks for the correction, Vincent, about ID3.

Yes, for classical, tag info supplied with the media by disc authors is a big, unstructured mess. That's why one must do a lot of manual tag editing to get something consistent and smoothly useable. I am not sure that Roon could ever solve this problem via purely automatic means, although they seem to do pretty well with pop music. Independent reviews of Roon also tend to just duck this whole classical tagging issue. Maybe Roon should talk to MusiChi and use access to that extensive database to control Roon's classical tagging.

Tidal also seems to have a similar messy problem with classical. But, classical is a small niche in the market, so mass market services like Roon, Tidal, ITunes, etc. just do not seem that interested in solving classical's unique cataloging and metadata problems. People with large computer libraries just have to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves. But, a well tagged classical library is well worth the effort. It is awesome when I just want to sit down and listen to music.

amirm · Jan 20, 2016

Guys, you left me hanging

. Give me an example of what you like to do with classical music that is not possible with Roon. I am genuinely asking. As I build my library of classical, I like to know what I should be doing. Or point me to a link that says what is wrong with it in this regard.

Fitzcaraldo215 · Jan 20, 2016

amirm said:
Guys, you left me hanging . Give me an example of what you like to do with classical music that is not possible with Roon. I am genuinely asking. As I build my library of classical, I like to know what I should be doing. Or point me to a link that says what is wrong with it in this regard.

I do not know what is or is not possible with Roon. But, here is what I would want for classical:

First, I would want to start by limiting my search to classical only, not commingling with pop, jazz, etc.
List of all composers alphabetically by last name in my library - pick one, maybe with a preliminary choice of first letter of the name.
List of compositions on file by that composer - pick one
List of albums/artists for that composition - pick one and it plays through all movements(tracks)

There would have to be consistency in composer names, composition names, etc. so that alternative spellings or misspellings do not give multiple false entries in the lists presented to me. Personally, I like to have an intermediate Subgenre level - Symphony, Concerto, Orchestral, Piano, Chamber, etc. right after the Composer level and right before the Composition level. But, it is not 100% necessary.

I also need a similar view starting by Artist, understanding that there are often multiple artists on any classical recording.

Do you get the idea?

amirm · Jan 20, 2016

Fitzcaraldo215 said:
I do not know what is or is not possible with Roon. But, here is what I would want for classical:

First, I would want to start by limiting my search to classical only, not commingling with pop, jazz, etc.
List of all composers alphabetically by last name in my library - pick one, maybe with a preliminary choice of first letter of the name.
List of compositions on file by that composer - pick one
List of albums/artists for that composition - pick one and it plays through all movements(tracks)

There would have to be consistency in composer names, composition names, etc. so that alternative spellings or misspellings do not give multiple false entries in the lists presented to me. Personally, I like to have an intermediate Subgenre level - Symphony, Concerto, Orchestral, Piano, Chamber, etc. right after the Composer level and right before the Composition level. But, it is not 100% necessary.

I also need a similar view starting by Artist, understanding that there are often multiple artists on any classical recording.

Do you get the idea?

You take me for someone much smarter when you ask the last question

. But I know more than I did before.

Let me show you the Composer tab and drill down into it by hitting the Focus button:

Here it does the wrong thing as you say by mixing all music together. But that is easily remedied. Just click on that pie chart and you can sub select any genre. Here I do classical and further click on Period:

I select Baroque and it gives me this:

Now I can type anything and as I do, the list of albums shrinks above in real-time.

Note the ease with which I can override these filters by simply clicking on the X in the line up of them.

And here is the cool part. You can bookmark where you are in this path and then with a single click be brought back to here without having to type a thing. You can have a full custom album view of your Bach different than your Jazz selection.

Roon also at all times gives you the number of performances for any track in any album. So if there are multiple compositions, and many times I do not know, it will say "3 performances." Click on that and you see all the variations.

So how does this look?

Vincent Kars · Jan 20, 2016

Say one has (happened to me using FreeDB):

Sonate für Klavier und Violine F-dur Opus 24 [Frühling]
Sonata No. 5 "Frühlings - Sonate"
The Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major “Spring”, Op. 24

As these are the same compositions:
Does Roon know this to be the case?
If so can it unify e.g. Violin and Piano Sonata No.5 "Spring" Op.24 in F Major (1801)
Can Roon supply instrumentation, key, opus/catalog year and nickname?

Does Roon knows the difference between an Album and a Composition?
Can it handle a custom tag like composition?

Etc

edorr · Jan 20, 2016

Vincent Kars said:
Say one has (happened to me using FreeDB):

Sonate für Klavier und Violine F-dur Opus 24 [Frühling]
Sonata No. 5 "Frühlings - Sonate"
The Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major “Spring”, Op. 24

As these are the same compositions:
Does Roon know this to be the case?
If so can it unify e.g. Violin and Piano Sonata No.5 "Spring" Op.24 in F Major (1801)
Can Roon supply instrumentation, key, opus/catalog year and nickname?

Does Roon knows the difference between an Album and a Composition?
Can it handle a custom tag like composition?

Etc

Forget Roon. You need IBM Watson to figure this out, which means you're on your own.

amirm · Jan 20, 2016

Vincent Kars said:
Say one has (happened to me using FreeDB):

Sonate für Klavier und Violine F-dur Opus 24 [Frühling]
Sonata No. 5 "Frühlings - Sonate"
The Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major “Spring”, Op. 24

As these are the same compositions:
Does Roon know this to be the case?
If so can it unify e.g. Violin and Piano Sonata No.5 "Spring" Op.24 in F Major (1801)
Can Roon supply instrumentation, key, opus/catalog year and nickname?

Does Roon knows the difference between an Album and a Composition?
Can it handle a custom tag like composition?

Etc

Let me start from the top. I don't understand half the stuff you are asking.

Seriously the key thing here is that Roon does NOT rip. You do your ripping elsewhere and choose whatever metadata source you want to stuff tags in the files. You put that in a shared library and Roon then analyzes the title. Either it knows about it or not. If it knows about it, it will shower you with far more metadata/reviews than any ripping database provides. In some cases it recognizes the title but does not have a ton more info. What it does have is high resolution album art that it can use for very nice screen savers and browsing. At the extreme, it doesn't know the title so what is in the file when you ripped rules.

Now in the cases that it does recognize the title, on a field by field basis, you can tell it to use its metadata or what is in the file. You can also add any information you want and choose that instead of what is in the file or Roon. For a lot of rare recordings, I provide my own images or the talent for example.

In other words, you have to review what goes in and clean up like you would with any other method. And the starting point for Roon is whatever you use today to rip.

What I love about Roon is unification. I bought downloads from a dozen sources each with radically different file structure, naming, etc. Room completely takes care of showing me the same view for all. I just create directories and dump the files in there.

And yes, you can tell Roon to merge albums and it provides a pretty fancy UI for doing this. You can also search for multiple versions of your recording and it will then analyze and tell you how close its metadata is as compared to what the file says.

For me, it is a lot faster to have a bunch of choices show up and I hit one and play than spending ours making sure only one hit comes up. The UI is fast and responsive with touch input.

On tags, it is incredibly flexible. As I said, you can have your own "Jazz" tag that is different than its internal "Jazz" tag. So you can make your own composer tag to mean whatever commonality you want it to mean.

asiufy · Jan 20, 2016

Keith_W said:
No Alex, I and other classical listeners just believe in listening to music properly. I have ZERO need, and ZERO desire, to create a "playlist" comprising of randomly selected tracks. Why? Because my attention span is longer than the typical 3 minutes that listeners of other types of "music" typically have.

I believe you don't know what a "playlist" is. Mind you, I have a playlist called "Beethoven 5th". Guess what's in it? Yes, every version of Beethoven's Fifth. The whole thing, all movements. Not "randomly selected tracks". I also have one called "Beethoven 9th", "Mahler 4th", and so on... Every time I add a new version of one of those works in my collection, I add it to the playlist. And when I feel like listening to one of those particular pieces, I have every single version in my collection (+ Tidal's) at my disposal. Without having to dig through a number of folders, in a tool that wasn't made for that particular purpose.

edorr · Jan 20, 2016

I'm guilty of listening to single movements of classical works..... Not randomly, but I I can easily have a Beethoven string quartet session zapping through the slow movements of different quartets. I don't think the Maestro hiimself would mind, but who knows - he was notoriously short tempered.

asiufy · Jan 20, 2016

Yes, the classical God forbids us from ever wanting to listen to a single movement

Sometimes I just want to compare different performances for SQ, or for impact... It's *very* handy having every single performance of a given work, in the same screen!

edorr · Jan 20, 2016

asiufy said:
Yes, the classical God forbids us from ever wanting to listen to a single movement Sometimes I just want to compare different performances for SQ, or for impact... It's *very* handy having every single performance of a given work, in the same screen!

I guess we are both classical music barbarians knocking at the gate.

NorthStar · Jan 20, 2016

I think you're tough classical customers...and it's normal for that musical genre. :b

When I used to search for classical music in the aisles of some music stores in my town(s), it was the toughest music genre to go through..explore...so many variations. Blues was right next after that. ...And finally the Jazz section.

The easiest music to search for are: Easy listening, Pop, RAP, Rock, Classic Rock, Metal, Heavy Metal, Punk, Alternative, New Age, International, Reggae, Hip Hop and Country.

:b ...But true, Classical music is the most complex and from various composers and with the most names and number of people playing and of all world's regions and directions that a map is not enough to find your way around... The people usually working in that section are the highest IQ level calibrated people with extremely high patience and relaxed attitude to handle the complexity and variation of their customers. They are special people. They are from a different breed, not like the rest.

Some of my best friends are . . . the Classical music lovers.

Keith_W · Jan 21, 2016

amirm said:
Let me start from the top. I don't understand half the stuff you are asking.

As he said: the three names that he gave, are ALL the same composition. "Frühling" is German for "Spring":

Sonate für Klavier und Violine F-dur Opus 24 [Frühling] Translation: "Sonata for Piano and Violin in F Major Opus 24 [Spring]
Sonata No. 5 "Frühlings - Sonate" Translation: Sonata No. 5 "Spring Sonata"
The Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major “Spring”, Op. 24

BTW, searching for composer is useless for me. If I search for "Bach", in my music collection, it will turn up thousands of tracks - literally. If I want something specific, e.g. the above mentioned "Spring Sonata" by Beethoven, then I have to remember if the one I want was called "Frühling-Sonate" (with or without the umlaut, since Roon doesn't recognize umlaut), or "Spring Sonata", or "Printemps Sonate".

Much easier if I decide where it should be filed when I add the album, and just chuck it there. Like my CD collection. I buy a CD, then I decide where I am going to file it.

Can Roon replicate the directory structure that I showed, a few posts back?

NorthStar · Jan 21, 2016

When I'm looking @ a Classical album to purchase, a particular selection, my usual place to go is www.allmusic.com *
But I admit; some classical selections are so varied and numerous that it could be an almost impossible challenge @ times.
I've seen pages and pages of classical titles entered with the most info that I can provide and still it could be a very large task.
With any other music genre no problem.

But it's normal; classical music is the largest repertoire in music history...I think. ...Beats Pop, Rock, Jazz, Blues, ...all. In sheer number of variations; different composers, players, performances @ different times extended over the course of ages, etc. ...And of course the names of the albums, the languages, ...

* Right @ this moment, the site is a little broken...allmusic.

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