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?

[simbun]

I don't think AssetUPnP can do this currently.

I primarily use MinimServer which I believe can achieve what you want - although without access to the app or streamer I can't be absolutely sure.

I believe for AssetUPnP to mimic this behaviour they'd need to enhance their Settings Override functionality, adding the ability to present the artist tag as a single concatenated string instead of individual tag elements e.g. instead of:

Artist 1
Artist 2
Artist 3

the control point would be sent:

Artist 1, Artist 2, Artist 3

[schmidj]

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]

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]

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?

[simbun]

Interesting. I wonder if it's getting the tags from the file rather than using the metadata provided by AssetUPnP, and falling back on AssetUPnP when there aren't any tags (when it's being transcoded)? This assumes there's something wrong with how it extracts the tags from the file.

One way you could test is to use the following in the User Rename List (assuming you're on the latest version):

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

With this in affect, all Artists and AlbumArtists should end with '---'. If they don't end with '---' in the CXNv2 display then it's pulling from the file itself.

[Spoon]

When transcoding no metadata is sent in file

[vilsen]

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.

[simbun]

Depending on the files you're serving (sample rate) there's probably no noticeable overhead in transcoding to WAV (I do it to apply ReplayGain).

That just leaves removing the AlbumArtist tag, which I think you can do by using [SimpleArtist] in the Settings Override - if it gets fixed (post *4).

Another "fun" option to investigate in the meantime, would be to have BubbleUPnP Server proxy AssetUPnP. BubbleUPnP Server aims to make renderers and servers more compatible, in this instance it will change the order of how the artist tags are presented to the device, so that the album artist tag comes below the normal "track" artist tag, and if the CXN/851N is simply taking the first you should see it appear correctly.

[vilsen]

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]

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-

[simbun]

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

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."

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

"AS IS" isn't transcoding, so the 851N will be pulling tags from the file.
[SimpleArtist] is currently removing ALL artist tags which is why you saw "Unknown Artist".

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

My assumption is that the 851N is just pulling the first <upnp:artist> tag which for Asset is AlbumArtist, when that's removed it should pull the track artist (as it'll be the first). You'd previously said that it showed track artist when there wasn't an album artist, why would you think it wouldn't work now?

[simbun]

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.

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

ALBUMARTIST: Artist 1
ALBUMARTIST: Artist 2

whereas ID3v2.4 stores them as a single field separated by a delimiter e.g.

ALBUMARTIST: Artist1NULArtist2

Again it's just taking the first. There are a LOT of dumb controllers out there :-)

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

Good point I hadn't noticed that. Looks like a bug, or an unplanned usage of the feature.

[simbun]

TRANSCODING: "Unknown Artist" was displayed

PeterP is going to modify the [SimpleArtist] override, until then there's probably not a lot you can try except maybe to proxy Asset in BubbleUPnP Server to see if the 851N really does just take the first one, and therefore the [SimpleArtist] modification will work for you.

[vilsen]

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.