magister said Roon has a beautiful interface and many other good features but is useless because it ignores my tags.Are you aware that in the import settings for Roon (Library/Import Settings), you can select where Roon gets its metadata (either from Roon, or from the actual file)? This can be set at both the album and track level.
[Post edited to remove massive quote. Please trim your quotes to only that which is needed. I removed everything but the sentence you had highlighted with bold.]
I strongly agree with Magister, Octave must be able to work with usersā existing tags. This includes transferring a given user tag to a completely new user created category, reassigning tags, etc.
Some additional intelligence would be nice as well, such as an option to deal with typos, such as spacing. For example, understanding Bach, J.S. is actually the same as Bach,J.S. and offering the choice as to which to use.
I was originally going to send this long winded text to Paul instead of posting. But, why not put my thoughts out into the wild? Iām only referencing Roon because I only have experience with that and FooBar. Iām sure people using other major packages will have insights based on those. Iāll leave creating a new thread up to moderators. There should definitely be a separate thread for feedback if PSA puts a beta out for user input. Happy Holidaze!!
My top wish is a broad concept, user configurability/choice
Apple has inspired some wrong thinking in the software industry. Many IT folks want to make things simple by coming up with the āperfectā design, controlling every variable, and making everyone live with it that way. But, why is Roon suddenly showing two rows instead of three?? I have no idea. Whatever the answer, I should be able to set how many rows to display. More broadly, there can be more than one way to do some things. If your team has two good ideas for how to let users do something, maybe both should be options. Obviously, this is more dev work, meaning more time and cost, so there are limits. Sometimes it will involve minimal effort, like when designing navigation.
Viewing the Collection:
Genres
Roon breaks things down into too many categories for me. Personally, I consider a lot of these to be sub-categories.
I want to see my artists in large groups like: rock, blues, jazz, classical, and maybe R&B and Rap too.
Itās ok to have sub-cats, but let users merge the Genres into broader categories (instead of assigning artists to a million different narrow categories). Going back to configurability, let users define or at least select the genres to be used. When I tell Roon to show my all Pop/Rock artists, it shows 16!! There should be hundreds. See the part about mass editing. As things are, I think itās a big failing of Roon that I canāt easily view all of my rock artists without having everything else mixed in.
Singles:
Does Roon even have anything for this?? It shows more broadly that software designers can be too limited when they, even unconsciously, stick to concepts like āalbum.ā Octave should definitely allow showing singles directly under artist, and not force a square file into a round placeholder. I supposedly have 47 Richard Thompson albums because many of these only have one track. Just show me that track instead of making me click on a meaningless āalbumā name!
Compilations:
I donāt have the perfect solution in mind. But, Iād like to have compilations in one place under each genre if Iām viewing by genre. Maybe all in one place when viewing by artist. Again, you could give users the option of having them grouped like this.
Library Views:
I wasnāt going into the complexities of classical music because I donāt listen to it as much as many others here. But, Roonās organization is such a huge miss, it leaves lots of low hanging fruit here. And, if Roon can handle it better, the software should make it much more obvious. Blame the software, not the user!
The power of having software organizing music files is that weāre not tied to shuffling albums around on a shelf. The same things can be accessed in different ways simultaneously. Itās crazy to me that we have to choose between artist, composer, composition in Roon.
When viewing classical music, I think I should be able to view a listing that shows all of the following at once. Better yet, let the user decide which of these groupings they want:
Composer, Orchestra/ensemble, Conductor, Soloist, Composition?, Label??, solo instrument?? I canāt really imagine using Composition myself.
Thus, when I select to see everything in the classical genre, Iād see:
Yes, I was born in Chicago and still live here.
Importing/showing music correctly:
I wonāt speak to leveraging third party databases, which I understand is a huge part of this.
Assuming they are used, file info and directory structure can be referenced as a fallback where things donāt align perfectly. Donāt choose between the source of info, use all of them.
Itās easy enough for you to compile the most standard file naming patterns that people use. Developers can leverage that to fill in blanks far better than Roon does.
I wonāt bother going into the details, but we know what characters and patterns are often used to divide artist, album, cd#, track#, and title in a file name.
Also, we know how people may (or may not) group albums by artist etc.
User Editing:
Things to make easier:
Merge duplicate listings of the same artist and album.
Move tracks into the correct album.
Easier way to do mass updates: There should be an easy way to move a bunch of things at once, such as assigning artists to a genre or other grouping. Far too painful to do this one at a time. Whenever addressing updating, think about people with huge libraries, where itās too big an undertaking to do things by artist let alone by album.
Shaft234, many of your thoughts go in my direction of thinking.
I come from Jriver and my main concern with Roon was, that it is very user friendly for the beginner, but too little efficient and flexible for those with large collections and a need of quick and efficient access rather than the āexplore my own collection for the first timeā approach.
I need way too many clicks in Roon to display my search results or tree navigation needs and the GUI, as nice as it is, takes too much space for too little info imo.
I donāt worry Octave wonāt be user friendly, wouldnāt do its best to optimize tags and respect user tags. Iām quite sure it will be the best in this regard at the end. The only thing I worry about is, that itās possibly too similar to Roon GUI-wiseā¦but I also see that many like this.
The kinds of intelligence that Elk mentions would also be very useful.
shaft234 makes some very good points also, in particular:
ātrying to force all users to do things one way instead of giving them choices is bad. I think Paul & Co. have already gotten this message, but never hurts to reinforce it.
āhaving dozens and dozens of genres is not helpful; keep genres for large categories and let users define (or choose to view) subgenres; thatās how I do it with my own tagging
Paul, if your programmers have not already taken a serious look at MinimServer, they really ā and I mean really ā should. It lets users redefine tags and control the display of information in a way that I have not seen in any other software. Just to give one example: If you store names of artists, conductors etc. as āLastname, Firstnameā thatās how they will look when you browse a list of artists (thatās how I prefer it). But on a Now Playing screen you can tell MinimServer to display the names as āFirstname Lastnameā which is nicer when shown under the album art. There is also a command to redefine the display of the Artist tag. For a symphony my Artist is (for instance) āBoston Symphony Orchestraā, but on the Now Playing screen I have it set to display the artist followed by a slash then the conductor, so I see āBoston Symphony Orchestra / Seiji Ozawaā (remembering that the latter is actually stored as Ozawa, Seiji). If there is no conductor, MinimServer displays only the artist. Pretty darn slick!
catastrofe saidIt's been a few months since I looked carefully at Roon's options, so I will recheck when I have a chance. I think I had read this somewhere but IIUC Roon still only uses a few predefined tags (of course it's better to display what the user has entered for those tags, if desired, than use only what Roon finds in its own metadata).Are you aware that in the import settings for Roon (Library/Import Settings), you can select where Roon gets its metadata (either from Roon, or from the actual file)? This can be set at both the album and track level.
Nice to hear that many people struggle with tagging choices. I had the strategy to ask first: how do you choose your music? āNow I really want to listen toā¦ā. Could be a 1) composer, 2) artist (performer, soloist), 3) could be orchestra, could be 4) dsd or other hirez. For me what worked in classical music is composer first. āI really want to listen to Bach nowā. Priority is: 1) composer (Bach, J.S.), 2) piece of music (English suites), 3. Performer (Gould), 4. Format. Sometimes 3 and 4 switch in priority.
So, I labelled my music:
Artist: = composer: Bach. J.S. (1685-1750) or for popular music it is the performer or band.
Album one to one connected to the artist. Do that for albums connected to one artist. In the album name I add the performer and in case of hirez also the format. Example: Album = āEnglish Suites (Gould) (dsd)ā. Sometimes it will be the conductor or the orchestra. Example: Album = Symphonie 8 (Haitink) (dsd).
For albums with multiple artists, I either split the album or add them to the special artists defined as for example soundtrack, various, classical. Example: Artist: classical, album: " Viennese Waltzes (conductor) (dsd)". You can add the composer information in the track info. 6. Strauss, Johan: Waltz 340 (conductor) (dsd).
For very special performers I label them as āArtistā. For example āMaria Callasā with all her recitals. In those choices, for me, the performer is first choice, before the composer. I have only a handful of those. If you want to start with the soloist first, I do it by memory. Gould, ok, Bach of course, but he did Mozart and Beethoven too. It is a pitty that I forget that he also played Schoenberg.
For popular artist I have chosen first names alphabetically. Artist=Paul Simon Ā§, but also Simon and Garfunkel (S)! Sometimes you hesitate. Was it Hall and Oates or Daryl Hall and John Oates? Sh*t happens. There is no fool proof tagging system!!
berlin
Edit: last remark: it really helps to merge multiple albums. Like all Beethoven symphonies. Now I have one album = Symphonies (1-9) (Haitink) (dsd). After your choice you of course also has the album art as information, orchestra or special soloist.
I suspect many of us tag popular music by first name. I do as well, such as Miles Davis, not Davis, Miles. I readily admit it makes no sense to treat these names differently than composers and performers of art music.
I do not keep track of resolution. I expect this would be of interest to many and should perhaps be a separate field.
adriaan saidWe have every intention of doing so. User tags are honored first.I have spend hundreds of hours on my tagging. For symphonic works I have a total of 11 tags including Album, Title, Tracknumber, Composer, Year, Label, Genre, Artist, Orchestra, Conductor and Comment (16/24/DSD).
I really would like to be able to use these tags (like Minimserver, thanks magister) in the new Bridge III!
Please PSA: give the users a choice to use the user defined tagsā¦
Hello Paul,
Have you considered optical network port for the Bridge III or music server ?
Additional or swappable with the usual copper ethernet oneā¦
Thanks in advance for the answer and all my wishes for a happy new year!
Charles
Berlin saidFor everybody who wants a jack of all trades, i can recomment an Oppo, or a Sonos. Nice for garden parties, with bbq.
berlin
The idea of a Bridgelll with both an Ethernet port and USB port controlled by Octave Lite software is brilliant. I do have questions about the hard drive connected by USB. Will a computer attached to Bridgelll via Ethernet āseeā the drive so that it can be backed up? If so, I presume new music could also be added to that drive through the Ethernet connection. That would be great.
Also, has any thought been given to a way to easily roll back a Bridge firmware update in case things go sideways in a customerās setup?
I know it is still early days yet, but perhaps Paul can weigh in on the current thinking.
Thanks
Is there an ETA now for the Bridge III?
I was considering a Bridge II late last year but held back for the Bridge III.
Thanks
Oh, weāre a long way off. I am not sure if weāll see a Bridge III this calendar year.
Will the bridge ll continued to be offered with Roon ready support if lll will not?
Roon is and will continue to lead in the music library category IMO. They are solely dedicated to software UI design, metadata, product integration and provide frequent monthly software updates.
Why exclude a larger group of potential customers?
Yes Paul mentioned a continued support of Bridge II for such reasons.
Although this means that for Bridge II he doesnāt get rid of what he aimed for to get rid of for Bridge III (support for third party DLNA interface), itās good news for those who might not fully switch to Octave in future. The only question is how long such customers are satisfied with DSD64 support only and a discontinued sonic improvement of this option.
jetsetter said Will the bridge ll continued to be offered with Roon ready support if lll will not? . . . Roon is and will continue to lead in the music library category IMO.Welcome, jetsetter!
This has been discussed in considerable detail, along with other aspects of Bridge III. PS Audio will be releasing its own library support program to compete with Roon.
Here are a couple of threads which may interest you:
Click again
Welcome to the forum. Paul has said that they may well include a Roon endpoint on Bridge III even though Bridge III will primarily be designed as an Octave server. He has also said that Bridge II will continue to support Roon. There are also a number of third-party devices with Roon endpoints that will work with the DS. Bridge III is another option that is being offered. Same for Octave. PS Audio thinks Octave will be better than Roon but nobody is being excluded from anything or being forced to use any software that they donāt want to or precluded from using their favorite software.
Jetsetter, if I read your question correctly, you are asking if Bridge II will still be offered for sale after Bridge III is released, is that correct? I donāt think Paul has specifically said one way or the other, but odds are the Bridge II would end production sometime around the introduction of Bridge III. Taking that one step further, itās highly likely that stock of Bridge II will still be available after Bridge III is released. Keep in mind that Paul has said Bridge III will not be released for many months, maybe not even in 2018, so no rush. Further, when it is released, I bet they will take Bridge II in trade so you could still get a used/refurbished one after new stock is sold out.