Ripping XLD to Synergy for Uniti 2

How are you controlling the playback?

Have you checked the metadata?

I am controlling it via the app on my ipad. Don't understand about metadata!

I will leave Huge to explain about metadata. I don't know XLD but I wonder whether this may alternatively be a file structure problem. Over to you Huge!

I suspect you have a metadata problem.

With DNLA playback, the physical location of a file on the NAS (i.e. the folder in which a file resides) is irrelevant (provided it's in one of the indexed Music media folders), what the player sees as an album is defined by the metadata.

The metadata are a set of property fields in a file describing the content of the file.  They are present in the file itself as a data block alongside the music signal data.

Typically you'll select an album using something like: Select the Artist, then from that artist's albums, select the Album you want to play.  When you do this the DLNA server (Synology Media Server) first looks through its index and finds all the names of all the Artists.  It can do this because the music files have a metadata 'tag' named 'Artist' which contains the artist's name.  So having selected an artist, using its index again it finds all the different 'Album' tags within those files.  When you select an album, it finds all the files with that Artist tag AND that Album tag.  That's how it produces the list for playback.

Now, when you playback an album ripped using XLD, does the current playlist in the app display all the tracks you want to have played or does it only display one?

Thanks David, leave me the hard ones! 

Huge

No problem.  You are better at answering those than I am!

Best

David

Thanks David and Hugo for your replies. I googled metadata and then fiddled around with a few settings I switched the Synology off and on again and the tracks are now forming a queue and playing. I have not had time to rip more, but I will try it again. If you don't mind I will come back to you if it doesn't work.

Regards

Peter

Why not use iTunes if that makes it easier? You do not have to use XLD to get better rips, iTunes is also bit perfect. I only use XLD for CDs that cannot be ripped by iTunes for some reason.

It has been tested, but the myths are hard to battle. XLD will not result in better rips than iTunes can do: http://designwsound.com/dwsblo...ping-for-mac-itunes/

I am a classical music listener and Apple is not very friendly for that. There is a lot of re-arranging to be done after you have ripped things to get them to be in the order you want. Another thing it does is re-arranges your music without asking you (no matter how many boxes you tick or untick)

However the most annoying thing it does is it keeps changing the location where the files are ripped to. It wants to rip them to the iTunes folder instead of to the NAS, so that you have to change the location of you files every time you switch on the Mac.

I have now had my iMac for 6 years and with lots of other odd things it does to boss you around, I am not sure I won't go back to a PC shortly. That would mean re-ripping all my cds to flac.

You don't need to re-rip everything, just the files you need to the PC, and the rest stay on the NAS.

You can either install a suitable codec to play them or use something like DBPoweramp to convert them to FLAC or Wave.

Peter, I'm a classical listener as well. None of the programs I have ever tried "gets it right" for labeling the files. iTunes, as do many other programs, use an external library where they pull the information from. Most of those libraries carry the same information.

So, when ripping a classical cd I have to change everything anyway. I have tried many tag editors, but for me iTunes does its job the best. What a lot of people do not know about iTunes is that you can select a couple of "songs", hit cmd+i and change the tags for all those songs in one go. 

Now, for the NAS, I just synchronize the iTunes music folder to the NAS. How the files are ordered on disk is of no significance anyway when you use the Naim app. The media server on the NAS uses the tags of the files to order and display the music.

If you want to have a say in how the files are stored on harddisk, then you do not use iTunes. iTunes works best if you let it do its thing. If you use a media server or iTunes to select and play music, the way the files are stored on disk doesn't matter anyway, and that's something that a lot of people do not understand.

And it is confusing, because for your Office documents the filename is everything, but for your music files the filename is actually unimportant.

But if the storage of files matters to you, I would recommend to look for another program than XLD. XLD is wonderful for file conversion, but its tag editing capabilities are seriously lacking in sophistication and getting the tags right is a very painful process in XLD.

Thanks for that very helpful info. the cmd+i will be very useful. Why do they keep these things secret?

Your next bit loses me somewhat. Where do you have your iTunes folder and how do you Synchronise it to the Synology? Sorry if that sounds naive, but I am new to this.

I use a piece of software to synchronize files from my Mac to my NAS: ChronoSync

http://www.econtechnologies.co...nosync/overview.html

The iTunes folder is the default folder. It is in your home folder, under Music ( Itunes stores its music standard in : (your home folder ) > music > iTunes > iTunes Music > music  

I synchronize it to the music folder on the NAS.