Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

[Spymaster]

In my ongoing attempt to tidy up my artist database, I've been slowly dividing multiple "album artists" and "track artists" with a semi-colon "; " rather than a ", " or "&".

This works brilliantly when searching for, or browsing artists with Hi-Fi Cast and Cambridge Audio's StreamMagic. But, to my dismay, when tracks are actually PLAYING, StreamMagic only displays the first artist. By extension, the panel on the front of the Cambridge CXNv2 displays the same thing. So "When You Believe" by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston (equally billed artists) suddenly becomes Mariah Carey only. I have thousands of similar tracks.

Hi-Fi cast displays all artists perfectly.

I've raised this with Cambridge but it's like banging my head against a wall. They're grudgingly treating it like a "nice to have" new feature request rather than a significant flaw in their design.

I have 2 questions:

1. Is there a clever setting hidden away in Asset that would force these devices to display multiple artists correctly?

2. Could dbpoweramp liaise with these companies to ensure that the best possible experience is available to customers - that the data provided by Asset is received, interpreted and displayed fully?

[schmidj]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

What happens if you use artist 1; artist 2 (in dBpa) or artist1\\artist2 (in mp3tag) in the artist sort tag, but use a single entry artist1, artist2 (with a comma) in the artist tag?

The original multiple artist entry was so searches would pick either artist, not for display completeness.

Another possibility is artist1; artist2; artist1, artist2 in the artist tag, with no artist sort tag.??

[Spymaster]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

What happens if you use artist 1; artist 2 (in dBpa) or artist1\\artist2 (in mp3tag) in the artist sort tag, but use a single entry artist1, artist2 (with a comma) in the artist tag?

The original multiple artist entry was so searches would pick either artist, not for display completeness.

That doesn't work unfortunately. The display shows "Artist1 & Artist2" as a single entity but, despite separating them in the artist sort tag as "Artist1; Artist2", only one artist entity has been created, which is "Artist 1 & Artist". So the artist sort tag appears to make no difference in this case.

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

My buddy has a Cambridge 851N which shares the firmware with CXNv2 I believe. Same story, it also only displays a single ARTIST. But there's an odd twist or two:

If transcoding to wav or mp3 it does display multiple ARTISTs - unless the track also has ALBUM ARTIST, which is then displayed...!

So dropping ALBUM ARTIST & transcoding to wav would probably give you multiple ARTISTs - but way too awkward and non-standard of course.

I wonder what's going on whilst transcoding? Either Asset sends the metadata differently (I really don't think so), or Cambridge streamers are crappy at reading it. I strongly suspect that the latter is the case here.

Could @Spoon or @Peter confirm that metadata is formatted & sent uniformly by Asset - transcoding or not?

[Spoon]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

When transcoding no metadata is sent in file

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

Great idea to use preformat for testing. We setup this

preformat:=album artist:=[album artist]-aa-
preformat:=artist:=[artist]-a-

and the 851N showed the following on its display whilst playing:

AS IS
artist read from flac file

WAV TRANSCODING
if album artist is present: -aa-
if album artist is absent: -a-

So the 851N normally likes to read directly from the flac files, but when transcoding it's getting the preformatted values from Asset.

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

transcoding to WAV (I do it to apply ReplayGain).

Why transcoding when applying ReplayGain, I'd think "as is" is sufficient?

[SimpleArtist]

Yes I already tried that but it didn't work:
AS IS: No difference (=single artist still pulled by 851N from flac file)
TRANSCODING: "Unknown Artist" was displayed

And even if [SimpleArtist] gets fixed the 851N probably won't obey...

(By the way the links are almost invisible on my display, perhaps underlining or something would help to make links stand out more?)

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

And another oddity we discovered: When playing aiff files streamed "as is" the 851N displayed multiple ALBUM ARTISTs whilst playing - as opposed to single ARTISTs when playing flac files.

How can this be made to work for multiples too?
preformat:=artist:=[artist]-a-

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

My streamer doesn't apply ReplayGain so I have my server apply it for me. In AssetUPnP:
"Only tracks which are streamed (in a format other than 'as is') would have replaygain applied."

I don't use RG (yet) so I hadn't read that part in the manual... But the settings could be clearer about the need for transcoding. Also, "in a format other than 'as is'" could also make 'as is single' sufficient for RG, so that could be clearer too.

why would you think it wouldn't work now?

Sorry, that sentence was a lapsus/error on my part. I cut down a longer rambling text about the 851N not obeying/conforming to UPnP, and mixed it up when I pasted it, didn't notice that.

It's probably because how ID3v2.4 stores multi-value tags, I bet you'd see the same with MP3 files.

No, for flac & mp3 it's the same, and aiff differs.

There are a LOT of dumb controllers out there :-)

Indeed... Considering the price tag and the fact that 851N was Cambridge's flagship model a few years ago, the tag handling is really subpar. And the StreamMagic firmware is shared among Cambridge streamers, so one wonders why they don't care to fix this.


My buddy who owns the 851N says he's fed up with testing for now, so testing BubbleUPnP Server has to wait. Hoping for the [SimpleArtist] update, but he would need transcoding as well, which he thinks he shouldn't have to do just for correcting one tag on his flagship model... Cambridge, are you reading...? Probably not.

Btw, the link is clearly seen now, and also thanks for your support and ideas.

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

The result from our testing of the 851N:

FORMAT    STREAM    AA present    AA absent

FLAC/MP3  AS IS     single A *    single A *
           WAV       multi AA      multi A

AIFF      AS IS      multi AA      multi A
           WAV       multi AA      multi A


* not from Asset, pulled from source file

ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 didn't matter for MP3/AIFF

Multiple ARTISTs present in all files

AA present = multiple ALBUM ARTISTs tagged

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

He's correct in thinking that he shouldn't need to do anything, but it doesn't look like that's an option.

What's frustrating is that just like the OP, my buddy has requested this very basic bugfix from Cambridge. Judging by their response, they seem genuinely uninterested.

And from your last test we know it's because it can't get tags from the AIFF format; so a simple fix is to convert everything to AIFF ;-)

Haha, it's a tempting move but I see your wink - it's impractical of course and would disguise lossy mp3 in a lossless format.

Transcoding has a similar disadvantage, since the original file format is disguised - flac & mp3 are both displayed as pcm.

But that got me thinking about this:

When transcoding no metadata is sent in file

Could "no metadata is sent in file" also be achieved for "as is", like in a "no tag" option?

I.e. selecting "no tag" (or similar name) would not touch the audio, only strip the file from tags.

Thus hindering dumb control points from pulling tags off the audio files.


Or as a General setting e.g. "Don't send metadata in files"

Or as a Control Point Specific setting e.g. [NoFileMetadata]

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

By stripping the files from tags I don't mean by decoding / encoding, I mean just removing the tags, keeping the original audio untouched.

I think it would be better than transcoding when you don't really need/want transcoding, only stripping of tags.

I'd prefer to have untouched audio sent to the renderer if possible. Playing the original files gives you a hint of the source when you have various file types and it's great to see whether you play lossy or lossless.

[mville]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

What's frustrating is that just like the OP, my buddy has requested this very basic bugfix from Cambridge. Judging by their response, they seem genuinely uninterested

Hmmm, yes, it's a shame, but don't hold your breath here.

I was a big fan of the UPnP/DLNA protocol (10 years ago), and although Asset UPnP works very well, getting hi-fi hardware manufacturers to implement firmware that works reasonably OR as hoped, in my experience does not happen.

Yes, you'll be able to stream audio ok, but handling ALL the possible metadata/artwork formats well, is another matter.

You either accept the manufacturers limitations OR you look for another solution... as I did.

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

You either accept the manufacturers limitations OR you look for another solution... as I did.

... OR you humbly request new server features. I'm not expecting Asset to solve every problem with misbehaving control points and renderers, but Asset is a great server and already does some tricks in that respect. So I ask and hope for the best. If the Illustrate team thinks it's worth the effort, I'll be happy, if not I understand.

The alternatives don't look better to me. I like the power and customization a music server offers. I like having a streamer on top of my amplifier, and often use it without the app, only the remote control. Then the display on the unit is the only place where I can see track info - so it's nice when it's accurate. Other times I use the app, browsing the album covers. Nice to have choices, depending on your mood.

[vilsen]

Re: Cambridge Audio / StreamMagic only displaying first artist

Sorry, best to ignore my last reply it was an absolute mess, missing characters and even words!

No problem, I've seen much much worse, by myself too

Yes I do understand that you'd want to leave the audio untouched, but the one example we have of such processing in the current product is with MP3, using "as MP3", where it does decode and encode.

It's obviously possible, although whether it's worth the investment for Illustrate I don't know.

That one example does not leave the audio untouched, as re-encoding mp3 is a lossy process, even with the highest bitrate. I'd prefer if the tags could be removed without re-encoding the audio.

So I'm not sure what you mean, maybe I'm not reading you right. When you say "It's obviously possible", are you referring to "decode and encode"? Cause that's not what I'm after.