Can you alter which metadata tags are shown on NAC-N 272 display?

Yes.   But a question first - how do you rip CD's at the moment,  assuming you also have bought highres downloads,    & on what are they all stored on.  

You will need to get software such as dBpoweramp (purchase) or Mp3tag (open source)  then learn how to use it,  & then its easily editable using that software on a PC or Mac.   

Hi Mike,
All my CD rips are comprehensively tagged and served up by MinimServer from my Synology NAS. My question is purely about whether you can choose which tags are displayed by the 272.

BTW, I don't want to mess up the metadata stored in my FLAC files by putting Composer info in the Artist tag.

Its all doable,  & once you've learned how,  it's easy.    I don't use Minimserver, I have tried it, but I'm no expert.    However what the metadata displays & changing that is mostly outside Minimserver.  It can be done with dBpoweramp or maybe a touch easier is Mp3tag (open source - free - software)     I advise you copy a .flac album (to preserve the original) & paste it into a new folder thats has a 'temporary' name to differentiate it,  then use that file to experiment with tag editing.  Maybe a good idea to paste the new folder onto your PC or Mac for easier classroom learning. Once you become confident/competent you can edit all the others without the need to make a copy.   I always check & if required edit highres downloads before I upload to my Synology.

If Hungry Halibut see's this thread,  he is a Minimserver & classical > composer tag editing expert.   

Mike, I think you might be missing the OP's point slightly.  The way I understand it, he is completely happy with his tagging, and is actively averse to changing any tags.  Is that right, Haggis?

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no, you can't change what fields are displayed on the little green screen.  I just had a quick look on my 172 using the remote and the android app and couldn't see anything that'd help.  The iphone app may be different, but I doubt it.  

A minor niggle at most though, surely?  If you're happy with the way everything is presented in the app, that's the important bit.  Or is there a compelling reason?  Perhaps an email to Naim support would be in order if so.

I fully understand the process of tag editing, but you still haven't said how you can change what the 272 will display.

I suspect you are recommending that I alter my Artist tag to contain the composer's name, but if I do that then I would lose all the artist info that other systems are happy to display. Creating a modified duplicate version of all my music files just for the Naim 272 is also not an acceptable option.

Hi Dave,
Yes, you have understood my position correctly.

However, I'm not sure I follow what you say about the Naim app. Does the Playing Now page not just show the same limited metadata as the little green screen? I don't recollect ever seeing the composer listed on that page.

As far as I know my 272 - the answer is (without file manipulation like tagging, re-tagging, duplicating): no.

I can live with it, but I had hoped that Naim would have tried a little harder to accommodate the special needs of classical music.

If you are playing one of many symphonies in your collection, the composer's name is of primary importance (knowing the name of the orchestra doesn't help). The person who selected the music will probably remember this, but visitors or any other member of the family will be left in the dark, unless they know a lot about classical music.

OK I misunderstood the point about changing the 272 display.   The only way is with metadata - the 272 display & the app can only display the info in that.   But unless you are prepared to change metadata,  you won't display what you are looking for.  

The 272 always shows artist, album, track and bit rate. Given that the searching is done from the app, which with minim has comprehensive search facilities, such as composer, orchestra and so on, and that the 272 display is normally set to turn off after a few seconds, I don't really see why it's important to show other information in the display. 

I have chosen to leave my 272 display on while playing music. I gave my reasons for preferring to see the composers's name on this display (and on the app's Playing Now page) in my last post, but I accept that not everyone will feel the same.

haggis999 posted:

Hi Mike,
All my CD rips are comprehensively tagged and served up by MinimServer from my Synology NAS. My question is purely about whether you can choose which tags are displayed by the 272.

BTW, I don't want to mess up the metadata stored in my FLAC files by putting Composer info in the Artist tag.

Hi assuming the 272 is like the NDX - no you can't choose which meta data to display. I have previously suggested this as an enhancement but this functionality hasn't seen the light of day.. yet...  You also can't choose which meta data to display in the Naim app which is a shame.

S

After finding that Naim offered no solution, I had a feeling that MinimServer might have a neat trick for substituting Composer for Artist on the fly during the serving process. A post to the MinimServer forum received a very rapid and positive response from Simon Nash, the author of MinimServer.

I now have the Composer name appearing at the top of the 272 display and the Naim app's Playing Now page. Sorted  ;-)

Aha, I came back to reply that there might be a clever minimserver trick which could help, glad to see that indeed there was.

In case others would like to use the same trick, would copying the response from Simon Nash here be against forum rules?

However the minimserver approach is meta data substitution, as opposed to being able to control what meta data is shown... somewhat different requirements...

The MinimServer tweak is to configure the setting for tagFormat as Artist.displayFormat={$composer} in the MinimServer properties.

However, I agree with Simon-in-Suffolk that this solution is not as elegant as Naim providing the ability to configure what metadata is displayed. 

To expand on my last post, I would prefer that Naim update its app to allow four rows of metadata, and allow you to specify which tag is used on each row. That would allow me to put the composer's name on top, followed by the artist(s), album name and track name.

The display on the 272 could do the same thing if you could choose to avoid presenting the bit rate.

Nice solution,  I wish Synology's 'Media Server' could do the same.   But wait ... thinks ... that would mean I need to change the metadata edits I've already done.  Best leave it  !!!    But well played Haggis999.    

I would never want to deliberately put data in the wrong tag to fix the limitations of any player software. That just seems like such an inelegant solution, so I'm glad MinimServer stops me going down that route. As well as the on-the-fly substitution of Artist by Composer, my MinimServer configuration also substitutes Album with a custom tag I created, called 'Work'. This was set up two or three years ago and I can't quite remember which setting in MinimServer achieves this switch.

My 272 display now shows Composer, Work, Track.

For example:
   Mozart
   Cosi fan Tutte
   Act 1, Scene 4: Dove Son?

As regards reconfiguring your existing metadata, I'd be surprised if making bulk moves from one tag to another was much of problem for software such as JRiver Media Center. I have always found that it provides an excellent solution for all sorts of metadata editing. 

+1 for minimserver "real time" metadata "formulae". I do a concatenation of composer with artist which is especially useful in multi composer albums (e.g. French Piano Trios) where the composer of each track would not be shown in the Naim app.

Minimserver also supports composer master data "harmonization" mapping so as to display both e.g. "W.A. Mozart" and "Mozart, Wolfgang" as e.g. "W.A. Mozart".

But I would really like a utility where I could massively code such changes at the file level rather than at the display level (then they would work for other servers like Asset etc). If one knows how please share! I did something akin to that with genres in Foobar (consolidating albums with genre = "Symphony" and Genre = "Symphonic" into a single genre) but it was sill cumbersome 

Hi DrPo,
When I started the process of using dBpoweramp to rip my predominantly classical CD collection 4 years ago, I soon found that the various online sources for basic metadata were inconsistent, incomplete and unreliable. I got used to rewriting large chunks of the metadata for both accuracy and consistency. It was hard work, but I managed to rip about 850 CDs during a period of about 4 weeks. I did this in two stages; the first batch of about 100 CDs was a trial run to refine my process and the rest was ripped a few months later.

Taking such care up front enabled me to standardise most of the composer and genre names, but there were still quite a few loose ends to be tidied up. After experimenting with a variety of software, I found that JRiver Media Center was by far the most powerful tool for handling bulk changes to metadata. This app can do many clever things and it has a very active and helpful user forum. Merging your composer and genre variations and saving those changes back into your FLAC files would be quite an easy job for JRMC.

Thanks, will certainly have a look at it!