Browsing for Old Folks

[Steven Krowiak]

My music files are held on a hard drive plugged into my NDX2. This works perfectly until I add new music to my collection at which time I have to unplug the drive, connect it to my Mac, update with the new content and plug back into my streamer.

To get round this faff I decided to use the duplicate library on the headless Mac Mini I use for streaming to all the HomePods we have around the house. I installed Asset UPnP and it works well, but the way it asks you to browse is not to my taste. I’ve tried to tinker with the browse tree, but I’m an old, impatient technophobe.

The Naim app does a good job of displaying the library I have on its local hard drive. Albums are sorted alphabetically first by artist (so you get all of ABBA’s albums first, then all of AC/DC’s). Apple Music refines this by displaying each artist’s albums in chronological order.

How can I replicate this with Asset? I don’t want to go through submenus of artist, then album, then year - I just want them displayed in the neat and logical way I’ve described.

Any and all help gratefully received.

[vilsen]

You want to display your whole collection of albums at once, sorted primarily by artist (alphabetically) and secondly by album (chronologically)? If so you could use the sorting tag ALBUM SORT. Tag each album like this:

ALBUM SORT=[artist] [year]

ALBUM SORT=ABBA 1973
ALBUM SORT=ABBA 1980
ALBUM SORT=AC/DC 1975
ALBUM SORT=AC/DC 1979

If an artist has released multiple albums within the same year, you could use the full release date instead, in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Or if you don't know the release dates, simply use 1978-01, 1978-02 etc, or 1978a, 1978b.

Also make sure that the sorting option in the preferences is selected.

But why not get accustomed to browsing and searching your library? That's the great advantage of having a server. Scrolling through all of your albums isn't very practical IMHO.

[simbun]

You want to display your whole collection of albums at once, sorted primarily by artist (alphabetically) and secondly by album (chronologically)? If so you could use the sorting tag ALBUM SORT. Tag each album like this:

ALBUM SORT=[artist] [year]

ALBUM SORT=ABBA 1973
ALBUM SORT=ABBA 1980
ALBUM SORT=AC/DC 1975
ALBUM SORT=AC/DC 1979

If an artist has released multiple albums within the same year, you could use the full release date instead, in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Or if you don't know the release dates, simply use 1978-01, 1978-02 etc, or 1978a, 1978b.

All of which could be achieved with Preformats of course:

preformat:=album:=[GRAB]1,4,[year][] - [album]
preformat:=albumsort:=[album artist] - [year]

I use ORIGINALDATE which would look something like:

preformat:=album:=[GRAB]1,4,[tag]originaldate[][] - [album]
preformat:=albumsort:=[album artist] - [tag]originaldate[]