Quote Originally Posted by Supernaut View Post
Unfortunately I'm having trouble with my replies not appearing after I submit them.
I asked about this in the "Other Topics > General" forum, and Spoon kindly explained what was causing the problem:
Quote Originally Posted by Spoon View Post
If you post a link or @ then the thread goes into auto moderation.
So, I'll continue with what I was saying before about my playback software, which is called UAPP (USB Audio Player Pro). If I want to sort "The Beatles" under "B" and see it as "The Beatles" in my library (and not "Beatles, The"), I need to use the sort tags in CD Ripper and not rely on the independent settings in UAPP. Hopefully UAPP will support those tags, as if it does I will also install it on my other portable music player to work around the following problem.

On my other portable music player, there is no Album Artist category in the selection menu. Instead, the album artist is displayed when the Artist category is selected. This means that if I rip a compilation album and enter "Various Artists" in the Album Artist field, "Various Artists" is what I will see if I try and look up individual Artist data. Does that make sense? It's very poorly designed.

I can now see why someone might want to avoid entering Album Artist metadata, as garym suggested:
Quote Originally Posted by garym View Post
2. I have thousands of CDs ripped with ALBUM ARTIST blank. If artist=album artist, I don't use the ALBUM ARTIST tag.
I also now understand the reason for the "1" in the Compilations field, as it will put the album in the correct folder even with the Album Artist field left blank (and as long as the command is specified in the naming string).

This would solve the problem above. However, as I wrote a while back, the music player on my PC doesn't recognize albums unless they have a value entered in the Album Artist field, the tracks all appear listed individually! It's Catch-22!

As I said above, hopefully UAPP will read the appropriate sort tags which will make things work the way I want them to across my portable devices. For the PC, although I don't listen to music from it directly very often, I'm probably going to install foobar2000 to replace the pre-installed software. Then everything should play happily together! I'm just waiting until I've got all of this ripping process worked out before I start something else new.

Sorry if this is all a bit of a ramble, but posting on this forum is definitely helping to understand what is otherwise just spinning around in my head!