ROON

[f1eng]

Copying your example, if you had say 10 CDs containing multiple performances of the same "work" by different orchestras, and by the same orchestra but with different conductors and/or soloists, how would you find them?  And how would you find all of Mahler's work, or all the CDs featuring a certain soloist?  I can only assume its a combination of being in the owners head, and scouring the shelves to find all the discs....

Yes, that's about right.  At least, that's how I used to do it  It helps if you're a bit fussy about keeping them in some kind of order; once in the general area I tended to find the right CD partly by knowing "it's an EMI recording with a red spine on the CD case" and that kind of thing.

The problem I find with computer-based searches is that they tend to let you find things by (e.g) Composer (Mahler) or artist (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (or it it CBSO?)) but not usually a combination of both.  One way to handle this is to make the album title something like "Mahler: Symphony No. 2 [CBSO]" which then generally allows you to search based on album title, but doesn't work very well if you have limited space for displaying titles (e.g. on an iPhone/iPod, should you be interested in listening to classical music on one).

That is about what I do. I have always filed my CDs by band/performer for pop and composer surname for classical. That requires re-tagging for the CDs to show up in any library in an obvious findable location. Most people have tagged their classical CDs with performer name list which differ from track to track, meaning a search of a soloist won't necessarily show up the whole CD. iTunes used to be much better for this than now, where I am at a loss to understand why it is the way it is.
It used to be easy to rip a CD, name a playlist with a sensible title (Mahler 2 Rattle for example) then drag and drop the ripped tracks into it. That doesn't work any more and I find the way to do it now is obtuse and crass. I hate software where updates are downgrades.
The worst system I have used is the Sooloos, which is the father of Roon, iiuc, where starting the performance of a Mahler symphony I wanted to listen to played the first movement I had started, then the first movement of one of the other recordings and would, if I hadn't switched it off and got the CD out, have played all the recordings in some bizarre, if logical by some measure presumably, order completely useless for classical music.
I can go to a CD I want to play on my racks in 10 to 15 secs so spending 30 minutes re-tagging it so it plays properly doesn't make sense, I would have to instantly find it and play it 120 times before the tagging would cease to be a waste of time, ie never.
True not bothering to put things away properly would mean it is impossible (so is forgetting you have lent it to somebody...) but I, normally a very untidy person, learned to put LPs away carefully to avoid them being ruined and I continued with CDs.
So pop on computer, plus a tiny number of high res files, the rest stay on CD, LP apart from the classical ones I ripped years ago when travelling and easily put in playlists when I still could.

So if Roon tagged and ordered classical music in a logical and useful (to me) way I would buy it, otherwise not.