Album Artist grouping
Posted by: Woodsman on 20 April 2013
Hi all, not sure if this will make sense but here goes....is there a way, when performing an artist search via n-stream that sorts the results into albums not individual tracks that are alphabetically listed. i'll be honest i cant remember the names of all the albums by a particular artist, it would make sense to me that albums are grouped together not just a string of all the tracks. hope that's clear?
What you see in nStream is governed by your uPnP server. I use Twonky which has some useful default search options. One of them is Artist/Album which appears to be exactly what you are after. Another even better one is Genre/Artist which works just like Artist/Album, but you will see only artists in the genre category that you choose.
I tried Logitech Media Server briefly but it's default search options are much less comprehensive than Twonky. I understand there is a plug in that you can buy which allows you to create your own music tree, but I just cannot be bothered to spend time and money on this.
Peter,
in how far is LMS less comprehensive than Twonky? I don't know Twonky, so I have no comparison. But I am actually very happy with LMS and it also has all the features the OP is asking for.
I use a free app called MP3Tag to edit my flac files. I put the artist name in front of the album name in the form "artist - album". When i use n-stream to search on album they are displayed in artist order and all albums by that artist are grouped together.
Hope that makes sense and is of use. You can also get MP3Tag to run routines to put the artist in front of the album name automatically.
PinkHamster
By default Twonky's advance music tree has these that I don't remember seeing in LMS which I have used only very briefly:
Genre/Artist
Genre/Album
Genre/Song
I wish Twonky offers Genre/Composer and Composer/Artist. These will make searching classical music much easier.
As I have mentioned, some say LMS plus plugin will allow user to create the music tree he prefers. Perhaps LMS users can confirm this.
In the standard config LMS has:
Albumartist / Album / Title
Album / Title
Genre / Artist / Album / Title
Year / Album / Title
New Music / Album / Title
via CustomBrowse I have added:
Composers / Albums / Title
Genre / Album / Title
Your combination of Genre / Composer and Composer / Artist would also be possible in LMS.
Just re-enabled LMS again on my QNAP NAS. I see only these:
Albums
Artists
Genre
Music Folder
New Music
Years
How do I customize the music tree?
Peter, what you see is the standard configuration which I have also listed above. The tree hirachy is as in my listig. So Genre will drill down to Artist, from there to Albums and lastly to the Titles. These trees you cannot change.
In order to be able to add further menu items you need to install CustomBrowse.
I use Asset as my server. Have tried enabling Artist / Album in the advanced tree, doesn't seem to make any difference. I've posted a similar question on the Asset forum and I've been told its the way n-stream serves up the search.
The answer you got from the Asset forum seems a bit odd. Asset should work fine with n-Stream (many in this forum seems to use it). How have you tagged your files?