One of the considerations is how we would migrate our existing libraries with various levels of user customized metadata to the new track level metadata Sooloos? would that require an export and re-import along with manual decisions on what metadata to retain or an alternative solution, not fishing for info (well maybe a little ) just highlighting a concern.
First of all, thanks to everyone for the warm welcome. During our early years I spent quite a lot of time with our dealers and end users and it's great to be back in touch.
As to Moods, we made a decision to eliminate the data because it seemed to lack the relevance and granularity we had always hoped for. My personal conviction is that while albums can readily be categorised by genre/subgenre, mood is more of a track-level notion, and unfortunately Rovi doesn't provide track-level mood as part of the AMG data set.
I'm genuinely interested to hear if anyone on the forums had strong feelings about Moods. If they were useful, in what context (browsing, Focus, etc.)? Is there another type of data or feature that might better produce the results you hoped Moods would provide?
Funny enough, that's exactly what we do. I moved to Bangkok from NYC in 2002, and Danny (Dulai, my co-founder and business partner) and I started Sooloos two years later, having worked on it as a hobby for years. Back then it was just the two of us, so we used the 12-hour time difference to do tag team development.
I just spent two great years in Cambridge, but my wife and I made the decision to return to Bangkok for the time being. The work rhythm is better for me, and I don't really have complaints about the food or climate either
This is actually a primary area of design focus for us at the moment. Our aim is to make this the best possible experience, both for users migrating from 2.1 and new users starting from a collection of files. We're very aware that users cover a spectrum -- from those who are happy to accept all the new metadata we can provide to those who want their own groomed data to take precedence -- and we need all those use cases covered with a minimum of manual poking around.
Beyond the obvious user-generated data like picks/bans, playlists, and tags, I'm curious what types of manual edits users make that they would like to see preserved on import (or migration). Everyone please feel free to share the kinds of customisations you make and how they improve your browsing/listening experience.
For those of you posting other questions, I'm not ignoring you! For now I'll just say that everything that has been mentioned has been given a great deal of attention in our development efforts.
My biggest wish was always for track level metadata, and considerably less manual grooming (if possible none at all!) so if you're already on the case with that, my wish list is good to go.
+1 on high resolution artwork, though, as I use retina screens on all the devices I access Sooloos with.
A minor thing, but in terms of 'set it up once, then leave it on auto', would it be possible to pre-select the type of credit which Sooloos populated by default? Credits like composer, conductor, guitar, bass, vocals, etc, I all find useful, and even engineer and the odd producer, but personally I couldn't give two hoots who the production assistant was, or who made the tea (probably the latter) and don't see relevance to Sooloos. If individual users could pick the credits relevant to them in advance (perhaps tick boxes) it would save a lot of time manually un-ticking what sometimes amount to a large number of redundant credits on an album-by-album basis.
A minor thing, but in terms of 'set it up once, then leave it on auto', would it be possible to pre-select the type of credit which Sooloos populated by default? Credits like composer, conductor, guitar, bass, vocals, etc, I all find useful, and even engineer and the odd producer, but personally I couldn't give two hoots who the production assistant was, or who made the tea (probably the latter) and don't see relevance to Sooloos. If individual users could pick the credits relevant to them in advance (perhaps tick boxes) it would save a lot of time manually un-ticking what sometimes amount to a large number of redundant credits on an album-by-album basis.
Would this be covered by, for example, the ability to hide non-performer credits?
I'm not sure that is granular enough. For example, I'd be interested in checking out a producer's other works (Quincy Jones and Phil Spector come to mind). They are, of course, also performers, song-writers, etc.
Roon Developer and ex-moderator of this Forum I am #25 in the HH1 photo of fame.
My primary custom tagging is changing the artist name to "Surname, Forename" and I set all classical music artist names to composer name. The actual performers of the piece I tag in the credits section. I know the Control unit allows artist display names to be reversed, but the iPad app doesn't (that I've found).
I try and find artwork at least 1200x1200, just to try and future-proof against any changes.
My biggest bugbear on metadata is finding a Barenboim (for example) CD where the sole credit is to the person who wrote the liner notes.
Sooloos, Roon, G series (with LPS upgrade), 800 series (with LPS upgrade), HD621, AC200, Prime and PS, DSPs old and new.