Music file organisation

[Womaz]

Hi
Not sure if anyone on here can help me with this, but I have an annoying issue that I cant seem to fix.
All of my music is in FLAC, either downloaded or ripped from CD.
There are over 2000 albums and they are all in the correct files on my Melco. However on the apps, both Kinsky and Lumin, some albums group together. For example a Greatest Hits album all gets grouped together sometimes and one folder on the app will contain a lot of different albums. As I say on my PC they are all in the correct folder.
Hope I have explained that sufficiently.
Is there anything i can do about this or is this an issue with most apps?

[thumb5]

It sounds to me like it might be a metadata problem.  The control point software is probably using ID3 tags (Album, Artist, etc.) to group the music files into albums, rather than the location of the files on disc.

Might be worth taking a look with one of the many tag editors available, to see whether that sheds any light on it... (I'm afraid I don't know what are good tag editors on a Windows PC as I do all my tagging on a Mac).

[Cylob]

MP3Tag is my favorite tagger. But also in foobar you can do fast editing of flac's.
You might wanna make sure that fields for ALBUM ARTIST / Albumartist are empty.
Usually those fields will be used to group albums like you describe.

Always make a copy of a few folders to do some testing before you do your whole collection!

[Womaz]

Thanks for the replies guys. I am still a little unsure what I would do with an MP3 tagger?
Like I say my files are ok on the PC i use. The actual music is on my Melco hard drive.

I very rarely buy a CD now, mainly buy FLAC and high res downloads.

What would an MP3 tagger actually be doing?

[thumb5]

Let me make sure I understand your set-up...from what you've said, it sounds to me as though:

• your music files are stored on a disc in your Melco streamer
  
• you can see (and play?) the files on your PC using a Windows program, pointed to the drive corresponding to the disc in your Melco (mounted via a network connection?)
  
• the PC-based player shows the tracks grouped into albums as you want them
  
• the control points you use to play music by streaming it to the Devialet show the tracks grouped into albums differently, and not as you want them
  

Is that about right?

If so, it seems that the PC-based player and the control point software are using different methods to decide how to group the individual music files (tracks) into albums.  For example, you might have your PC-based music player configured to organise by folders, but the control points are likely to use ID3 tags.

A tagger would allow you to examine the metadata (tags) in the music files to discover why the control point software is organising them differently.  You could then change them as needed to re-organise the way the control point software groups them.

As Cylob said, you might want to tread carefully to be sure you don't do anything you later regret...  First of all, it can take some time if you have a large collection and want to get everything just so.  (There are ways of automating this process, for example Bliss.)  Secondly, I'd want to be sure I had a good back-up of my music collection before modifying it, whether by hand using a tagger or automatically by some more complicated software.

[Womaz]

Let me make sure I understand your set-up...from what you've said, it sounds to me as though:

• your music files are stored on a disc in your Melco streamer
  
• you can see (and play?) the files on your PC using a Windows program, pointed to the drive corresponding to the disc in your Melco (mounted via a network connection?)
  
• the PC-based player shows the tracks grouped into albums as you want them
  
• the control points you use to play music by streaming it to the Devialet show the tracks grouped into albums differently, and not as you want them
  

Is that about right?

If so, it seems that the PC-based player and the control point software are using different methods to decide how to group the individual music files (tracks) into albums.  For example, you might have your PC-based music player configured to organise by folders, but the control points are likely to use ID3 tags.

A tagger would allow you to examine the metadata (tags) in the music files to discover why the control point software is organising them differently.  You could then change them as needed to re-organise the way the control point software groups them.

As Cylob said, you might want to tread carefully to be sure you don't do anything you later regret...  First of all, it can take some time if you have a large collection and want to get everything just so.  (There are ways of automating this process, for example Bliss.)  Secondly, I'd want to be sure I had a good back-up of my music collection before modifying it, whether by hand using a tagger or automatically by some more complicated software.

Thank you for your excellent reply. You have it about right. I think the conclusion I have come to is that I could cause even more problems if I am not careful so I will probably just have to grin and bear it.
The Melco has two hard drives from what I remember so I have two copies of my Music. I also back up every couple of weeks to a WD My Passport back up drive.
I use DBPoweramp to rip my CD purchases so it may be just this I have the issues with. If I am buying a FLAC file from a provider then I have always assumed this would be filed correctly? From what I understand it may not be the filing of the music that is the problem.
Without knowing how a tagger really works I feel it may be best leaving it alone, although its annoying to have music in the incorrect folders ......especially when I am trying to impress my pals with my 200

[ogs]

Without knowing how a tagger really works I feel it may be best leaving it alone, although its annoying to have music in the incorrect folders ......especially when I am trying to impress my pals with my 200    

I never got past the rather steep learning curve of MP3tag so I use Tag&Rename. I know MP3tag is very flexible, but also complicated. I prefer the simplicity of Tag&Rename.
Copy a small subset of your files to a different folder and do your testing there. That way you'll avoid making mistakes.

[alandbush]

Hi Womaz,
Do you have a Windows or IOS pc?
Either way, DBPoweramp may work similarly.

On a Windows pc, a simple change to view tag data is to change the properties of the Music library.
Right click the Music library and select Properties and change the section 'Optimize this library for:' to Music.
When you open an Album folder to view the track files, the columns should be Music oriented.  You can choose which columns you would like to be displayed.  The values are taken from the the Music tags.

Alternately, right click a track file and select the properties and a number of tabs will be displayed.
Hopefully, there should be one for Audio Properties and one for ID-Tag, both of these created by DBPoweramp.
Selecting the latter will show the available tags with their values.

This should give you a good idea of the information stored with each track file.
If you feel brave, you can change these values and check what effect they have on the control apps, but as others have said make any changes to a copy.

[Tremayne]

Hi Womaz,
I've had similar problems, but with a different set-up. My music files are stored on a NAS and I use Exact Audio Copy, JRiver and JRemote.
I make sure that there are no duplicate album titles. To album titles such as Greatest Hits, The Best Of etc I add the artist's name.
I have many Beatles albums, so adding the mono boxed set duplicated a lot of album titles. For this boxed set I changed the artist to "Beatles, In Mono" and added a full stop after each album title.
It may not be an elegant solution, but I'm happy with the result. I've no idea if this can be applied to your situation though.

[Womaz]

Thanks for the replies guys. Some interesting tips. I must admit I will tread with caution, it appears that I could create an even bigger issue than I currently have. I have over 2000 albums and maybe less than 10 are shown incorrectly in the apps.
With my lack of knowledge and luck I could do even more damage, if I get this wrong.
When I have some more time I will google to see if there are any videos that will point me in the right direction.
All the help and suggestions very much appreciated.