Various Artists on Compilation Albums

[mville]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

I shouldn't need to use something other than iTunes given how ubiquitous it is.

Don't be fooled by the fact that it is widely used. It is very buggy and has been for many years. Considering Apple's history with pro audio/video software, iTunes is an extremely poor piece of software in my opinion.

Having said that however, I still respect it's your choice to use iTunes. Good luck with that.

[garym]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

So if I open up one of my compilations in dbPoweramp / mp3Tag will I spot some missing information that iTunes did not fill in?

Is there some sort of batch process whereby I can "fix" all my compilations or will I have to go through each file and do it the hard way?

dbpa is for the ripping from CD. the mp3tag was suggested for tag editing (and there is an mp3tag forum that is helpful as well). Open mp3tag, load up some files, select them, right click and select "extended tags" and you'll see every field that 's in the tag. and mp3tag has lots of flexibility in doing things in batch method. CONVERT tag to tag, can easily take info in ARTIST tag and put in ALBUM ARTIST tag, etc. There is a bit of a learning curve.
You can filter on all files that have COMPILATION =1 or ARTIST = VARIOUS, etc. then do batch actions on them.
Download from here:

http://download.mp3tag.de/mp3tagv261asetup.exe

[simes_pep]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

Thank you, garym for explaining this, following my earlier post. dbpa is great at ripping and converting formats, applying resampling, etc. but mp3tag is still my tool of choice for managing the metadata of my music collection both in my \Music folder as seen by Asset UPnP running on the RPi serving my Naim streamer and an \iTunes folder which is iTunes for my various iDevices I use, carrying music for on the bike, in the car etc.
Simon.

[garym]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

It's probably buried in this thread, but explain again what exactly you'd like to modify/add/remove from your tags and I'm sure we can help you with more specific instructions on options to make it happen.

[JeffBDVS]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

I'm having this same issue with my FLAC files that were tagged by either Foobar2000, dBpoweramp Batch Converter or Mp3tag. When played on my Marantz SR7007, any album whose album artist is "Various" or "Various Artist" or "Various Artists", Asset shows me the album artist instead of the track artist. By way of comparison, using the same tracks from the same albums that exist as M4A files in my iTunes Library, tagged by iTunes and/or Mp3tag, and played on the Marantz, iHomeServer properly shows me the track artist instead of the album artist. To add to my confusion, if I use Asset to play back the FLAC files on my Oppo BDP-103, the Oppo properly shows me the track artist instead of the album artist.

My analysis is as follows:
1. Asset and the Oppo understand each other.
2. Asset and the Marantz don't.
3. iHomeServer plays nice with both devices.
Conclusion: iHomeServer is sending more or different information than Asset out to the control point, increasing its compatibility with various devices.
Request: Please see if Asset can be made more Marantz (and by inference, Denon) friendly.

EDIT: I rip both FLAC and ALAC when I rip a CD, and I exclude the ALAC M4A files from Asset. I re-enabled the ALAC files, re-scanned my entire lossless library, and tried to play the M4A files on the Marantz using Asset. The M4A files were tagged by the same program at the same time as the FLAC files. Asset properly showed me the track artist instead of the album artist for my files that have "Various..." as an album artist. So this is definitely an issue that is isolated to FLAC files.

[Spoon]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

>album artist is "Various" or "Various Artist" or "Various Artists"

Album artist should not be used for these, instead set compilation=1 and remove the album artist.

[wilro15]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

So I experimented a little last night...

I tried Logitech Media Server first; it correctly shows the Track Artist instead of Album Artist - but sadly none of the files would play and no album artwork either! So I uninstalled Logitech and tried Linn Kazoo Media Server; tilhis seems to work perfectly - I no longer see "Various Artists" against every track in a compation. Yay!

I will keep testing it to make sure it is stable but Kazoo seems to work better with Naim than what Asset does. This has saved me having to re-tag all my files or switch away from iTunes.

In reply to Spoon - I have set Compilation to TRUE (a tick box in iTunes) already. Some of my compilations have the Album Artist flag set to "Various Artists" while some are blank - either way I still see "Various Artists" as the artist of every track on my Naim hardware/software.

I did also try other UPnP apps on my iPad and they show the same thing as n-Stream. So from my experiments, it seems Asset is at fault.

[JeffBDVS]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

>album artist is "Various" or "Various Artist" or "Various Artists"

Album artist should not be used for these, instead set compilation=1 and remove the album artist.

Thank you, Spoon! Setting compilation=1 and removing the album artist tag worked. I tried compilation=1 before with no joy, but I didn't remove the album artist tag. Both steps are necessary, as you pointed out. I'm off to re-tag. Batching shouldn't take very long at all.

Cheers,
Jeff

[sjbabbey]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

Jeff,

If you find that you still have a few 'rogue' albums after your batch conversion with mp3tag I found that even though I had a blank 'Album Artist' in the mp3tag edit view pane that there was still a problem. You may need to check to see if there is still an Album Artist tag in the extended tags and delete this.

[mville]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

>album artist is "Various" or "Various Artist" or "Various Artists"

Album artist should not be used for these, instead set compilation=1 and remove the album artist.

I'm not sure we should be removing a standard tag like Album Artist, just to make sure files are served correctly in Asset.

Remember, users will use their libraries with different software. It seems right to me, that Title, Artist, Album Artist and Compilation tags should be all be populated as necessary.

[JeffBDVS]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

Jeff,

If you find that you still have a few 'rogue' albums after your batch conversion with mp3tag I found that even though I had a blank 'Album Artist' in the mp3tag edit view pane that there was still a problem. You may need to check to see if there is still an Album Artist tag in the extended tags and delete this.

Thanks for the tip; I'll check out my compilations' extended tags if an album misbehaves. As an aside, it looks like dBpoweramp's Edit ID-Tag module show all tags at once, including the extended tags. I know I double-checked many of the albums with Edit ID-Tag, so hopefully there won't be any surprises!

Cheers,
Jeff

[JeffBDVS]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

I'm not sure we should be removing a standard tag like Album Artist, just to make sure files are served correctly in Asset.

Remember, users will use their libraries with different software. It seems right to me, that Title, Artist, Album Artist and Compilation tags should be all be populated as necessary.

That's a fair point. What makes it OK for me to do that is that I'm only removing the Album Artist tags that were essentially worthless anyway. "Various" isn't any more useful for me as a search or a sort item than Compilation is. Either one will work.

The only reason I ever filed and tagged my files as Various was so that I could sync my old Blackberry with my iTunes library, and I haven't used a Blackberry in years. The last time I used the Blackberry software, it choked on the Compilation tag when syncing. There were also "fix iTunes artwork" programs that I tried that didn't like the Compilation tag. So there are examples of software that require certain tags yet reject other perfectly legitimate tags. I overhauled my music library back then to comply, and I just didn't want to have to do it again here. But with the tools I have today, it wasn't very painful at all.

If Asset UPnP needs Compilations=1 and an empty Album Artist tag to display FLAC correctly, or if other software contains built-in workarounds so that both fields can be populated, then I won't lose any sleep over it because I have an option that works.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Spoon]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

The whole issue here is that Asset is being compared to other software which potentially does not use Album Artist at all (Kaazo?), we use it as it was designed to be used, yet we accept that on some libraries this tag has been miss-used, so we will see what can be done in future versions of Asset (note we will not drop album artist in its entirety).

[mville]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

The whole issue here is that Asset is being compared to other software which potentially does not use Album Artist at all (Kaazo?), we use it as it was designed to be used, yet we accept that on some libraries this tag has been miss-used, so we will see what can be done in future versions of Asset (note we will not drop album artist in its entirety).

When media server/client applications are involved, it is important that some sort of standard is adhered to and I applaud Illustrate's attempts to conform to the standards set out by id3.org, xiph.org etc.

I would be disappointed if Illustrate took a different approach and is one reason I am so supportive (and not so supportive of the likes of Apple) as end users tend to use servers/clients/players from different developers.

In my opinion, end users need to tag their files according to these standards. If client/player firmware/software does not support the standard, this should be taken up with the developers of the client/player firmware/software, otherwise we will all be going round in circles and none of the applications will work together correctly.

Having said all that, I suppose a few options in Asset to override certain standards would help overcome any limitations imposed by reluctant developers and so help end users to get their media server/client applications working as desired.

[wilro15]

Re: Various Artists on Compilation Albums

Well it turns out that Linn Kazoo Server has issues too - which I won't go into here.

So I have gone back to Asset to try and solve my Various Artist problem. I have installed a tagging application called Yate. I chose a compilation, ticked the "Compilation" checkbox and cleared the Album Artist flag. I then played that compilation using two different iOS apps called mconnect and 8player. Still, it shows the track artist as "Various Artists" - so there is nothing Naim involved here.