Various Artists Album Listing in nStream

I'm no expert here, but seeing as no one else has replied yet, I might as well. The issue will relate to a combination of your file structure and tags, plus how they are served by your NAS and read by NStream. I use Vortexbox, so have no experience of DBPoweramp and Itunes, but I had a similar issue to contend with.

Hi Gavin

I use a Synology NAS and i had this problem. I use MP3Tag, a free app, which will let you edit the tags on most files, except WAV i think.

You can then set the "album" and "album Artist" the same. Not done one for a while but sure that fixed it.

You can do this in dbp when ripping

I'm also struggling with Various Artists via Asset onto nStream. The issue is definately with how Asset handles them, as I get the same issue with all uPnP directory viewing apps on my iPad ( Goodplayer & Kinsky ) and also a utility on my PC called uPnP Inspector. The albums have the compilation flag set, and the album artist tag is set to Various Artists, but I still get the track artists appearing in the main artist listing which just bloats it.

I can't see any obvious settings in Asset to change this behaviour? It was so easy with Squeezebox Server...

Well they are individual artists on a compilation, would you not expect them to show individually in the artist listing?

The only way I can see to fix this is to manually change the tags of all the songs to the name of the album or something, but then you won't know who the artist is, (unless its adam and the ants, thats dead easy)

Just make sure tat all of the files in your compilation have ametatag field called 'Compilation'  which is set to the value 1.  This should cure your problem.  I found this ot the hard way and had to edit LOTS of tags to cure exactly the problem you describe.

The file structure on the NAS appears to be correct.  For example it has a folder \ Various Artists \ Absolute 80s  - and that has the expected 20 tracks in it.

I'm happy for the 'single track albums' to appear under the Artist listing, but not that it appears as 20 separate albums under the Albums listing.

I'd suspect it's the compilation tags too.  What's the best way to edit them?

Gavin

I'm going to have to modify what I said.  I have both Twonky and Asset.  If I use Twonky, then what I said is correct, but with the modifier that if you search under Artist/Album, then you will only be presented with the tracks on each album by that particular artist, irrespective of what you have put in the album artist metatag.  To see (and play) the whole album, then you have to find the album in ALBUM (if you know what I mean!).

This used to be the case for Asset as well.  However, I now find that since the n-Stream update, this no longer works like that.  Now, the whole album is ONLY shown if the album is found in this new abortion of an online database.  If it doesn't find it, then tough, there doesn't now appear to be any way of playing the whole album using Asset!

As an example, 1958 British Hit Parade Compilation CD rips are in the online database and play correctly.  My own digitised copy of my Elgar The Music Makers/ Parry Blest Pair of Sirens (Boult), which is not in the database, appears as 2 separate albums in Asset.   Not at all pleased by this discovery. 

I do not work with the compilation tag at all.

I tag every track with its ARTIST tag and put "Various Artists" in the ALBUMARTIST tag. This is for FLAC and AAC files. For MP3 files this tag is called ALBUM ARTIST.

This works perfectly for me. If I now browse my albums I will only see this album once under "Various Artists".

If I browse thought the artists, I will also see the compilation albums in which this artists is contained. If I click on this album, there will only be the tracks of this particular artist within this compilation album.

Interesting.  The reason I started adding the Compilation Tag was that Twonky on my QNAP NAS was showing multiple albums for each compilation album.  Since then I have acquired Asset, and also applied the Twonky update to the QNAP.  I still occasionally use Twonky for listening while using my laptop with Audacity and/or Audiogate.

I've just deleted the Compilation tags frrom 2 albums, one of which does not seem to appear in the online database, and one which does.  Both now display correctly in Asset and Twonky (i.e. just one album for each compilation).  Obviously something has changed with n-Stream's interaction with Asset, and I cannot but feel that it has something to do with the online database (which I would love to be able to disable for vairous reasons as I have stated in the wish list thread - mainly because it doesn't seem to allow display of all the metatag data)

My only thought now is :

What is the point of the Compilation Tag field if it just makes Asset display compilation albums incorrectly?

Ahhh the delights of tagging.... never as simple as you might wish.

What I am trying to acheive is the suppression of artists that only appear on compilation albums from the artist/album listing. Why you might ask? Well, I rarely buy compilation albums, but my wife and daughter do. I like to rip their stuff as occasionally there is a track that I want to listen to, but I don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry off Now xx or the like, contaminating my artist listing. On the Squeezebox server / streamer it's possible to configure this behaviour. It ends up grouping all these under Various Artists, and nowhere else.

Is it possible to acheive this with Asset / nStream?

The blunt instrument will be to retag with 'Various Artists' in the Artist tag, and add the real artist to the track name as AllenB suggests above. Surely there's a better way...???

Dave,

what happens if you use SBS as your UPnP server? Will nStream then adopt the various artists setting for not appearing in the album artist list?

Hi Dave, yes if when you rip using dbpoweramp you ensure the compilation tick box is checked (it usually is correctly set with the meta retrieval) and within Asset you don't disable 'compilation in various artists' in Asset's advanced settings, the Asset / nStream will index albums under various artists as an entire album.

My only complaint is that Nstream appears to use and display the album artist for a compilation track, rather than the track artist, which means artist of 'various artists' for a compilation track being played is shown which is not that helpful. It would be good if this was configurable in Nstream.

Simon

Simon, that's exactly what I need, but I can't see the setting anywhere in Asset. I'm using V4 Premium Registered. I look in the General Settings list on the Advanced screen, but can't see this?

Problem solved!

dbPoweramp's batch convertor has many options, most of which I don't understand, including one that allows bulk setting of tags.  I used to to set the Compilation tag to 1 (as advised by Dungassin above) and everything seems fine now.

Now I just need to figure out nStream a little better.

Simon, any chance you could point me in the right direction to find the setting you mentioned above?

Thanks!