Question for Naim - Sorting albums chronologically in Artist view on Naim App

I think right now your only option is to 'play' with the album title to get a custom sorting. The sorting doesn't look at different fields like f.i. year of release.

I believe this is primarily a function of the UPnP media server.

Synology has Year/Artist/Album function in its Advanced browsing style,  but its not at all reliable, missing albums, albums in the year they were ripped,  re-releases/re-masters stored in a mix of original or re-release dates  .....  

I looked at it & played with metadata to test the fix on one album & gave up,   I know what artist/album I want & alphabetical does it all for me.

Same here, but I never realised that I'd always rigidly enforced a physical sorting system by year ( and then found it so easy to abandon ). It's got me thinking on good ways to maybe 'fudge' metadata to allow this, I'm running Twonky so used to lots of fudge!

I share some of your frustration, but I think in my case it's even more fundamental. I file my physical albums and CDs by genre and then alphabetically by surname of the artist. CDs ripped to the NS01 are filed by the artist's first name which can be frustrating. This is particularly so when it happens with classical recordings, where I sometimes cannot remember the composer's first name. Occasionally classical albums are filed by artist name and in the case of some opera recordings this can be either by the name of the conductor or any of the lead singers. I know these things can be addressed by editing in n-serve, but with so many discs ripped, the time taken would be quite considerable. My approach is to search for the album by using the search function in n-serve and then switch to n-stream to play it. The only problem with this is when I forget I'm in n-serve and press 'play' in that application rather than n-stream as this then requires me to switch on my PC and use the DTC to clear the play function.

This all seemed weird to me when I ripped my albums. Now I just let the server software do its thing. Using minim I go into a genre and then artist, them album. Or just show all albums in the genre for a browse. The one tweak I made is to get 'the' put at the end, otherwise The Clash, The Stranglers and The Smiths are all shown under T. 

Just go with the flow, resistance is futile. 

As said above this is all down to your UPnP / DLNA server. If you use asset you can get close to what you desire.

This is achieved by setting up the folder browse view for advanced search the following way

so in the Naim app, I choose, 1. advanced search -> 2. Artist Album/album -> 3. [B} -> 4. select or search for Bruce. -> 5. choose album by release. to get the reverse chronological listing.

There may be other and better ways of achieving this through the software, which others can add hopefully.

SJB

There is a quicker way, set up the following in the browse tree:

so when you choose the artist you get choice of  2 views, one is the chronological and the other the alphabetical.

SJB

Thanks all, I am taking the "rip it once, rip it right approach" and as a result, of the 900 albums i've ripped so far, I don't think there is one that I haven't had to edit one one way or another.  Plus as you go along you realise that some rules just aren't practical and you need to be flexible (for e.g.I have started dropping 'The' from artist names).  

In my mind there should be a fairly simple solution to the chronological conundrum especially as the data is already there.  It's not really an issue where you only have a few albums by an artist but for the likes of Dylan, Van Morrison etc. where we are talking twenty plus then chronological order start to make a lot of sense.  Often I won't necessarily know what I feel like listening to and would browse through my physical collection instead of looking for a particular album and it is at this point that the digital library experience starts falling a little flat for me.

Sloop John B - I have started adding the year at the beginning of the album title and my folders are starting to look like your example.  However I would be interested to know if there is a way to add the 'Album By Release" or straightforward "Album" by alphabetical order options to a Synology NAS that is linked to my UnitiServe-SSD? I just assumed that UnitiServe was managing the UPnP side of things or is that not the case?

As an aside I notice that in your example your releases are (A) listed in reverse chronological order, so would be good to know if they can be done in ascending as opposed to descending order? and (B) that 'The Essential Bruce Springsteen' appears under 1979, 1983 and again above Tom Joad. Does this mean that asset has given each of the three discs in this set a different release date when it should just be 2003 for all three discs?

Thanks

First off I don't have a Unitiserve, I run assest on my NAS (QNAP) to talk to my Naim Streamers.

using the configuration above when I select an artist i get the choucle to view their albums

1. alphabetically
2. chronologically (reverse!)

I don't know how the dates for the compilation album was chosen, it's not the date of the first track on the album or the first track alphabetically. I have asked spoon on the dbPoweramp forum so will let you know if I get the answer to that little conundrum.

I think we are still waiting for a fully functional UPnP server software, Asset is certainly my favourite at the moment.

SJB

Thanks SJB, 

Hopefully Phil or someone else from naim will chip in specifically about the UnitiServe  when the working week starts.

Cheers

KS

If you have a Mac, you can sort by release date, ascending or descending, using the nServe Mac programme. You could browse your collection on nServe, in the customary manner, then switch to the Naim app for playback. It would be great to have the functionality added to the Naim app, so perhaps if enough noise is made here...

The trouble is if the discs don't have the correct details to start with you're snookered.  The compilation album probably was just that. Three discs compiled with different dates on them. No server is going to be able to correct that automatically. And while it may seem easy to get chronology it would involve a change to the inherent alphabetical selection. If that's not what most people want then you would need multiple folder structure options. That would be messy. You'd end up like itunes with more duplicated entries than enough. Would be nice to have but given the often poor original metadata on reissues and compilations it's a major piece of work.

Andy

Thanks Jan-Erik, that is precisely what i'm getting at.  I have a Mac and have been using n-Serve to edit my metadata while ripping all on my UnitiServe.  However the Serve and Mac are in the study and the system is in the lounge so I use the iPad to browse my library while I am in the lounge listening to music.  I'm not that keen on going into the study and browsing the Mac every time I want to choose some music.  I used to have to do that with my CD collection, this was supposed to be easier and more convenient.

So Naim, how about adding this functionality to the Naim app? 

I'm guessing Naim aren't really interested in answering this one then...