Synology Nas into Unitiserve

The UPnP server on your Synology is using the tag information to index the files - you could retag the files (there are a number of tagging programs that will retag files using the folder and file names as source data) or use a UPnP server that allows browsing your music as a folder / file structure (such as Asset UPnP).

Cheers

Phil

Hi Phil

thanks for the response but in what format should I retag the files so that the albums group together but I keep the individual artist names because that is the part I am getting stuck on. At the moment the only option I can currently see is to get rid of all the individual artist names to replace by 1 single name which is not something I want to do.

cheers

Andrew

Hi Asset can view on a folder structure basis, but it is an obscure nested navigation option by default. Asset will however allow you to display your media as you wish, within reason, on your Nstream. So you can group all your albums alphabetically, or group all your albums under a genre, artist, or even principle instrument like Piano, Pipe Organ, Cello etc. and combine these different options.

All this is independent of the physical directory structure of your media which really bears little to the Nstream navigation structure.

Simon

Are there any plans to improve Naim's software so that albums can be grouped in the same way as every other music databases ie by artist and album artist as at the moment for something so expensive it seems incredibly poor at handling music unless it is ripped directly to it 

Hi,

We use the tagging information within the files to group tracks into albums ... if the tags on your files show different artists then our server - in this case as the tracks are tagged as being by different artists then we will use that information to group them as albums by different artists.

The two options here are to either set the artist tag to "Various Artists" (which you've said isn't something that you want to do) or to use a UPnP server that allows you to browse your music as a folder structure ...

Phil

Hi Phil

I understand you use the tagging information in the file but you only recognise the artist and not the album artist which is a standard id tag and therefore the system is unable to group albums together by album artist whilst maintaining the underlying artists and that is what I find very strange. I don't understand why I need to start running background programs to manage what seems like a very basic bit of functionality that is missing from something that is meant to be a high-end product.

cheers

Andrew

No - Asset won't run on a Synology NAS - Windows and OSX only.

Phil

Hi Andrew,

I'm not a software dev with access to that code so I'm not able to comment with any authority on how we do structure the sorting acording to tags but as far as I'm aware we do take both artist and album artist tags into acount - I can check with the devs tomorrow as to how the sorting does actually work but my understanding is that we should be taking "Album Artist" over "Artist" when it is present.

Phil

Ive been too embarrassed to bring up the fact that I can't seem to properly tag compilations on my UnitiServe.  For something like the Concert for Bangladesh, I want to see one album (two cd's).  If I leave the artist info in there for individual tracks (George Harrison on some, Ravi Shankar on some, etc.), I get results in nStream that I just don't like -- multiple appearances of the album; one appearance per artist.

Am I doing something wrong?  I hope so!

Hi Phil

Did you manage to find out from the devs how sorting actually works?

cheers

Andrew

The Album Artist issue has to be solved.

In iTunes it's done easily.

For example, if you have a compilation, and it's under VARIOUS ARTIST ( as Album Artist) - you can have the different Artists/performers for each track but these will not appear in the iTunes Artists list in the main window