Ripping in XLD

If you run Minim or Asset as the UPnP server, then you'll be able to configure a much broader range of search criteria than using Synology's default Media Server application.  This and marking them as compilation as Wat says, will allow you to use almost any logical arrangement you want to see.

I made a couple of profiles in XLD to handle the main cases: basic cd and compilation cd; the main difference is in the output file/directory naming convention so things don't get scattered into different folders, as you say. I rip rip to a local temp directory on my Mac mini, then drag over to the music folder on my synology.

In XLD -> preferences, under General I have: output format = FLAC, output directory = specify (and typed temp path on local drive). This is same for my "basic" and "compilation" profiles. The difference is just in the File Naming tab, where I have two different custom strings.

For basic i use: /%a - %T (%y)/%n -%t

this gives a directory called /Artist - Album Title (Year) with track file names as /Track number -Track Title.flac

For compilations, I change the directory to "Various": /Various - %T (%y)/%n - %t

This scheme keeps all album tracks in a single folder in the file system for convenience. If i rip a compilation using the basic profile, I get multiple folders (one for each artist) that contain only the tracks don by that/those artists. I assume you call this "scattered" and I don't like that either, so I just set to drop all tracks into one folder with "various" as the artist. I'm sure I could poke around and find the "album artist" tag abbreviation (turns out that it is the obvious "%A"!!) and that would be nice too.

/%A - %T (%y)/%n -%t

Before re ripping, choose Edit Metadata and double check that the fields are filled in (noting especially that Album Artist isn't always done for you,, if you go with %A for your folder name). It occurs to me now (I started this XLD ripping a while ago and never bothered to change my habit) that the %A would work for both basic and compilation discs! I think I failed at this originally since I was leaving the Album Artist tag blank...and got strange directories, so changed to /%a for track artist! which is always there.

Others have aver been focused on the Synology media serving side, or the nStream display side. I've talked only about the file and path aspects, as I think this is what you're after. At least I hope so...

Beat wishes and thanks for making me think this through again.

Regards alan

EDIT: you can see all the options for automatic substitutions by selecting the "custom" entryfield and hovering your mouse. Up will pop a summary as follows

%n - Track number

%D - Disc number

%t - Title

%a - Artist

%T - Album title

%A - Album artist

%c - Composer

%y - Year

%g - Genre

%f - Format

%i - ISRC

%m - MCN

%I - DiscID 

have at it...!

Alan thank you very much for such a detailed reply, this is something I've been struggling with for some time, can't wait to have a play now.

Thanks for the kind follow-up, John.

If you have any observations or thoughts to share or trade after you start the ripping with your friend, I'd be happy to hear from you. One last thing that many advise: rip a dozen albums and then take a look at what you see in nStream before going further... It's easier to correct metadata / tagging habits earlier rather than later.

My pitfalls have been with automatic filling in of genre (often more specific than I need: electric blues rather than just blues for example) and date (year/month/day rather than just year). Also, sometimes you get slightly different artist names for the same band (& vs and is a common one). These aren't deal breakers, but I have discovered that I like viewing by genre or artist or date, then hitting shuffle all albums (easy to do with the remote and most servers support this - including the Synology Media Station and the (excellent) MinimServer which is also available to install on Synology)...and it is nicer to have all the discs you expect to show up in your mini radio station list. 

Best set wishes and have fun. 

Regards alan