Asset upnp and your own compilations

Posted by: Dungassin on 14 June 2012

Just come across something that wasn't obvious to me from the Asset help files.

 

I'm currently transferring some of my favourite LPs to digital format for use with the NDX in my study AV system (alas, there is no way I can fit a turntable in here!).  So I've been adding these files to my multimedia directory on the NAS.  This means entering all the tags manually (tedious, but that's the way it goes)

 

I had just been playing them with Twonky while adding more, but earlier today I got round to actually playing some of these added files using Asset.  No problem with single artist albums, but I noticed that compliation albums were not displaying correctly when using album as the search field.  Every artist on a compilation was coming up as a separate album!  In Twonky, the albums appeared correctly.

 

After a little bit of thought I looked at the tags for the compilation albums, and realised that the COMPILATION tag wasn't there.  So ... I added it, set the parameter to 1, and all is now well.

 

Just thought this info might be useful for any other newbie doing the same thing. 

Posted on: 15 June 2012 by Geoff P

Thanks. I use a different approach which also works.

 

With Asset it depends how you organise your music storage on your NAS. I decided early on to divide my music into genre based subfolders so for example I have 'Jazz' and in there sub folders for different Jazz types, such as 'Mainstream', 'Piano' etc. I also have 'Classical' and in there 'By composer' and 'By artist' and 'Compilations'. There are several other folders and of course one of them is 'LPs' where all my ripped LPs reside.

 

I don't bother with comprehensive tags for LPs I just file by Album title under Album Artist in the 'LPs' subfolder and label the tracks 01 ....10 etc. with track titles

 

I set Asset to browse by 'Folders and Filenenames'. In this mode compilations appear in a subfolder i created called 'Compilations' so they don't show up as individual albums per artist included. This works well and because I know what music subfolder to look in narrows down location so I don't need either 'Album' or 'Album/Artist' as a search function and don't suffer the multiple listing problem.

 

regards

Geoff

Posted on: 15 June 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Dungassin.. Absolutely.. When ripping ensure the compilation option is ticked for that particular CD. If using dBpoweramp this is visible in the top of the window

Simon

 

Posted on: 16 June 2012 by Dungassin

Simon,

 

I'm not talking about ripping from CD, but what happens when you record an analogue source onto your digital recorder.  I am currently doing this using a Denon CD recorder (wth CDRW discs), although I am contemplating getting something like the Korg MR2.  Each LP side is one track, and I rip this to my PC and then do the track spltting using Audacity, and save each individual track as FLAC.  When I do this, I have to enter the ID tags manually (hardly surprising, eh!?).  Audacity by default at this stage does not present me with the tags for Disc (useful for multivolume sets) or Compilation, and I have to add these manually.  All a bit of a faff, but if I want to be able to play some of my favourite LP tracks for the times when SWMBO has claimed the living room (where the LP12 lives) to watch her soaps etc.  Of course, I could in some ways simplify it by just writing each album out to an audio CD and then ripping that in dBpoweramp, but it would take longer, and possibly introduce errors.

 

John

Posted on: 16 June 2012 by mrspoon

>"In Twonky, the albums appeared correctly."


Twonky presents albums on album name alone, so if you have:

 

Queen - Greatest Hits

New Order - Greatest Hits

 

These would be blended together as a single album.

 

Now Asset is smarter, in that it looks for artist name and will keep the albums separate, but as you have seen if you have multiple artists on the same album and nothing to tell Asset they should be together (compilation, or album artist set), Asset would split them.

 

Asset R4.1 (which is in beta) is the best of both worlds, it can self detect compilations which are not tagged correctly and keep the tracks together.

Posted on: 16 June 2012 by Dungassin
Originally Posted by mrspoon:

>"In Twonky, the albums appeared correctly."


Twonky presents albums on album name alone, so if you have:

 

Queen - Greatest Hits

New Order - Greatest Hits

 

These would be blended together as a single album.

 

Now Asset is smarter, in that it looks for artist name and will keep the albums separate, but as you have seen if you have multiple artists on the same album and nothing to tell Asset they should be together (compilation, or album artist set), Asset would split them.

 

Asset R4.1 (which is in beta) is the best of both worlds, it can self detect compilations which are not tagged correctly and keep the tracks together.

Thanks, but I knew this already (except the Asset beta bit), so prior to getting Asset, I was giving each compilation album a unique name, which of course meant renaming CD albums prior to ripping.

 

Incidentally, many thanks for your helpful replies on the Illustrate forums (I assume that was you?)

Posted on: 16 June 2012 by mrspoon

It is, yes.