Album sorting based on pure album name alone

[misha0209]

Hello,

i really like how asset sounds on my setup, especially if i live transcode stuff to WAV.
and i like that DSD is presented correctly.
so i plan to buy it.

but before that, i really want to know if i can achieve what i want.
i made this dumb album called !random_tracks! where i just dumped all the songs i did not want to get the whole album for.
the purpose being having them all in one place, easy to find... and a replacement for unknown album, because i wanted my list to start with it.

so somehow asset is displaying the !random_tracks! albums tens of times, each time with one song. i saw that on the presentation page as a feature..
can i have the DUMB behavior to just group all the tracs with same album name under one entity?? does not matter what the artist or cd number or whatever is. i just want to through a bunch of tracks in one easy to spot bucket.

also, can i change where i start in the tree? for example if i want to be taken directly to all albums when i select the dlna server?

thank you !

[Spoon]

Tracks are grouped by the Album ID tag not the folder. So give all the files in that folder a unique album name.

[misha0209]

hi,
thanks for the feedback.
i went ahead and bought it, in my settup it just sounds too damn good. figured the rest is just nit picking..

back to yhe topic.
that is what i did, i edited the tags, and used the same name in the album field. files are NOT in the same folder though.
still i see a lot of entries.. i think it correlates with artist name, and makes a new entry for each different artis id3 tag entry.
i also have albums with tracks numbers split in 2, with tracks 1,3,4,5 on one album, and 2,6,7,8 on another.. strange...
again in album grouping, i would just like it to process the album id3 tag, and group all the files with same value under same entry.

[Spoon]

"files are NOT in the same folder though."

That is an option in Asset, Album defined by folder, as well as the tag.

[misha0209]

you mean this?

setting it to no seems to merge the unknown album tracks, but not the random tracks album items, those are still split.

[misha0209]

interesting i have a random tracks lossy, and here, except 2 items they are all under one instance.

so in the image, entry 1 and 3 of random tracks lossy are each one song. whike entry 2 holds many songs.

there are still multiple random tracks entries, but, some are now grouped! so there are ebtries now with more than one song. but most hold a single song...

[misha0209]

on another app it now has a commend that says folder trance, folder rock, etc...
is it now grouping by genre? it seems to.be doing it's best to tell items with same album tag apart. can i not disable this behavior? and just have it dumb down and group by album name tag alone?

[simbun]

Most servers use the AlbumArtist and Album tags to group Albums. Have you tried setting Albumartist to "Various Artists"?

[misha0209]

soo.. i need to.set 2 tags?
can i not configure it to.use just the album name tag for the grouping? or make my own rule?

[misha0209]

i installed this on my rpi4b, to replace the minidlna ssrver i was using and that thing did not care, it just lumped things with album names together.
the twonky server on my nas was doing the same, so i assumed this was the "normal" behaviour.
i can see how this would be a problem if you actually have 2 albums with the same
name that are actually different...

still would like to achieve the same grouping, without having to edit more tags on multiple songs.

can this be done? or are the tags my only chance?

[simbun]

i installed this on my rpi4b, to replace the minidlna ssrver i was using and that thing did not care, it just lumped things with album names together.
the twonky server on my nas was doing the same, so i assumed this was the "normal" behaviour.
i can see how this would be a problem if you actually have 2 albums with the same name that are actually different...

It's definitely not normal. I have a number of Greatest Hits albums from different artists and in MiniDLNA (the albums index) they're all merged into a single album.

still would like to achieve the same grouping, without having to edit more tags on multiple songs.

can this be done? or are the tags my only chance?

I converted a couple of compilation albums leaving just the basic tags (Album, Tracknumber, Title, Artist and Date) and processed them in a new Asset instance. The albums were correctly grouped - though the first track artist was displayed as albumartist in the control point - so I'm not sure why we're seeing different behaviour.


EDIT: I missed the bit where you said they're not in the same folder as that does split them up. I'll test some config changes.

EDIT2: Changing 'Album Defined by Folder' to 'No' fixed the split.

[Spoon]

Album Artist is used also to group albums, it would have to be consistent across tracks, either the same value or no value.

[misha0209]

ok, thank you so much for the ideas.
cannot try them out now since i am at work. but will give them a go later this evening.

to answer simbun yes, initially i had an entry for each track, and after setting the 'Album Defined by Folder' to 'No' i have had albums merged. the Unknown album entries for example are all merged under a single entry. but my random tracks are partially merged, meaning i have multiple entries, but now i have entries that have more than one song.

i will check and set all album artist entries to nothing for those files to see if that changes anything later today. will report back.

I also saw there is an entry called additional, that holds for example the browse by folder structure. this brings me to ask, can i make my own tree entry? where i define rules? you know what i mean, make my own DumbAlbumSort entry where i can specify what fields are to be used? i do not necessarily want to make the album entry act the way i want, if i can make another entry, even if it can only fall under the additional branch. thank you again !