How can I best handle metadata for such sets? One obvious example - Grateful Dead Records Collection from 2017. It’s a ‘box set’ (I actually own the digital download) of 4 classic Dead albums remastered in 2017. The Roon metadata matcher wants them in one “album” of 4 discs called “Grateful Dead Records Collection” with generic cover art. But when organized that way, the names of the individual albums are lost. It’s just 4 discs of tracks . . . with no identification of the individual albums.
Right now I have them split up into individual albums, which of course Roon won’t match to anything in their database and so they are “unidentified.”
Obviously I can leave them “unidentified” – any better solution?? (NB - I did try adding “work” tagging with each album being a ‘work,’ but it doesn’t show up in the Roon client.
I think you understand correctly . . . in this case Roon doesn’t recognize them as individual albums.
I’m having no luck identifying them as individual albums within Roon. Roon recognizes the box set but not the indiv. albums. And within the box set, Roon labels them merely disc 1, disc 2, etc. I can’t seem to identify them by name within Roon.
(Obviously I can go fully manual, and tag them individually and let Roon treat them as “unidentified” but I was trying to give Roon a chance and to work within the Roon structure.)
The newish Steve Wilson remixes of the Yes albums are the same way. Roon recognizes it (only) as a set, but then I just end up with 4 discs, unnamed, within that set. So I keep them separated and “unidentified” by Roon.
Roon uses its own metadata by default, but you can optionally tell it to use your own metadata added to the file if you prefer. Perhaps you can edit the metadata in the albums to suit your needs, so that you can then set Roon to use that metadata instead of its own. I’m not 100% sure you can get it to show up in the way you want, but maybe worth a try?
It’s an issue for which I’ve not found a decent workaround. It’s specially complicated when you sets such ‘The Complete ABC recordings’ on which you would have extra tracks and the CDs are neatly organised as the originals were - ie on one disc you have most of an album and half another. You can, of course, manually do the work, create new CDs and so on, but then they will appear as individual CDs.
On the Roon wishlist, I asked for the ability to tag individual tracks or write notes/comments. This way one would be able to add the original album where this came from manually, and perhaps search/group them. Others liked the suggestion, so let’s see if Roon puts that on their list. Not holding my breath though…
The main advantage, to me, for having box sets handled well is that they then take up way less space on the UI. The Grateful Dead’s “Complete Europe 72” box set is - I don’t know - 10 or 15 concerts. Id rather not have 10-15 individual icons and concerts on the UI; I’d rather just ‘drill down’ in the box set. But if one cannot drill down in a meaningful way, and see what’s what other than “disc X of Y,” it’s pretty useless.