Thanks! I’ll check. It’s still early on the West Coast(PST)
*just signed up, hope I get in for the 9pm(EST) demo
Sounds promising. Do you think the new focus could give you something like all the versions of McCartney songs that Brad Mehldau has covered. Now that would be cool.
.sjb
Possibly. Each artist has a section for this very thing to show covers.
I have 3 gripes and in my usage it’s the weakest part.
- User interface and interaction.
If I want to enter an artist playing 3 instruments, I have to do this 3 times:
Add Credit > type name and pick artist > type and choose instrument > Done.
Instead of bringing the artist up once and checking off 3 instruments in one go.
In a larger ensemble, this is a lot of steps.
Having to enter the same or very similar stuff repeatedly. I know about multi-selection, but that works only for stuff in the library. If I enter 50 credits for one album of an artist, and the next month they release a new one with largely the same contributors, why can I not copy the credits over, instead of having to enter them all over again.
Lesser issue is that the editing list is limited in space, so is hard to get an overview to check things.
- Artist database handling
I search for an artist when entering credits and if it’s a common name, chances are that 3 artists appear, often all 3 being represented by a gray blob because picture is missing. Now I have to leave the whole editing interface and search for the artist name to choose which one I want. Then I have to edit the artist and add a picture or change the name so that I can recognize it in the edit interface. Back to the edit interface, complete, return to artist and maybe change name back.
Many times I imported a CD rip and start editing. It does not find the artist. I create it and add some info, like picture, country, birthdate. However, I cannot add info like “is member of”, , “aka” names, their webpage or whatever, all of which is often there for artists that Roon knows. Then the next day I rip a CD by the same artist and edit, but lo and behold Roon suddenly knows the artist on its own and now there are two! Luckily it is usually possible to merge them in this situation, but the work I did for my created one was wasted.
In many cases, Roon already has, on its own, several versions of the same artist. Sometimes they have slightly different names. It is not always possible to merge them. Sometimes it helps to add at least one album by the artists to the library, rename them to the same name and then you can often merge, but not always - I have no idea what the difference is.
(Sometimes they have different information attached to them, all of which is correct but is nowhere complete. If you merge them, only the info of the artist you chose as the merge target remains)
There are no practical aliases. An artist has one name and that’s what it appears as in every credit. This is not a good representation of reality - artists have aliases in real life, often several, and a birth name. When they are composers or engineers, etc., as well, in these roles they are usually credited with the birth name. It should be possible to use this as the credit where appropriate and when you click this credit link, it should take you to the artist page where you can see everything they did under all their names.
An issue with the Roon metadata is that for artists with more common names the attributions are often not correct. If there are 5 artists named X, the X1 artist that you are interested in may have credits for artist X2’s stuff listed on their artist page. To get rid of it, you would have to add these releases to the library and edit out the incorrect credits referring X1. Not much fun if you have no interest at all in X2.
- Edits are attached to release versions.
Say you rip a CD and edit lots of stuff, credits, tags, the works. Next day the hi-res version is released and you make it the primary version. Sadly, all your edits are now invisible and you have to explicitly go to the other version page to see them
All in all, the model that Discogs uses is way better
Don’t know about the metadata editing but as you can use focus across anything now your searching woes should be mostly addressed. It’s not limited to top level on albums or artists. You can use focus on any artist, genre to filter relevant things from it and this is across streaming and local.
No mention of any SQ improvement, right?
Seize the moment, and all that.
For mass market products the out-of-box upgrade experience for 1.7 to 1.8 has to be smooth and faultless for all the different types of environments. Getting that tested, so the majority of problem and corner cases are shaken out, is hard to do right and benefits with more bums on seats.
Yes indeed, I wanted to add this to my rant, but at the end I was exhausted The fact that focus searches all of Qobuz will hopefully mean an improvement of the artist finding.
I ripped 600 CDs within 2 months, it was a lot of entering of stuff that could have been easier. And yes, I have a lot of stuff that is important to me and that it does not know about. I suppose this is normal for people not from UK or US, other countries have lots of local bands and their metadata is often missing even if they were locally big. But I still love Roon because it takes care of so much else that it makes it possible for me to stuff those holes in the first place
They showed the new interface and how the new engine works to find and display things. This is not trivial for an upgrade at all in what they are doing it’s a compete reworking and would expect this from a new product. It’s like no other app now for this level of digging and filtering It still won’t appeal to some, but that’s their loss.
I thought I heard a 0.325% improvement is expected but I missed the demo so can’t be sure.
.sjb
email 3 of 5:
“Our real aspiration has always been to make the power and flexibility of Focus available in more contexts. To accomplish that goal, we redesigned Focus to combine multi-criteria filters with sort and text filter, creating a unified interface that’s available virtually everywhere in Roon. Now you can Focus on tracks on an album, artists in a genre, albums in an artist’s discography, or collaborations among artists.”
In all of Qobuz/Tidal of course.
Still not had any emails .
Dumb question but your profile does have the right address and your email program is picking up the email from there?
I have been in contact with their marketing people as was not they said they activated it but still nothing. Emails coming through for everything else Roon related.
Really nice impromptu demo! They’ve put a lot of work into 1.8. I’m looking forward to trying it out. Hopefully you’ll have a surprise email as well tomorrow(if you want it)
It was in no way a criticism Simon, I was simply impressed that you asked a question before he had chance to close the call and were thus able to get some 1:1 time with Head of Product, good job!
Anyone heard anything from Dylan @ Roon?
No, not yet. They said tomorrow (ie. today) but bearing in mind they could be anywhere between 5 and 8 hours behind us we probably wont hear anything until this afternoon I guess.
Nope.
To quote The Pointer Sister.
" I’m so excited."