Tagging questions

[Robert]

I have a lot of classical music on iTunes, tagged there by composer, album (e.g.Symphony X), conductor, orchestra, soloists, individual movements, codec, etc. It all transferred to my Innuous hard drive and plays beautifully through MinimServer on a Naim Uniti controlled by the Naim app on an iPad. I filled in the recommended index tags for iTunes under server properties as follows: ©wrt, ©alb, ©con, ©ART, ©too. mergeFolder/Albums is set to true. Unbder Advanced I have set showExtras and StartupScan to true. Nothing else.

However, there are 2 problems:
1) the music is listed either by album (e.g. Symphony X) or by track (e.g. Allegro), not by composer. There is no Composer name even when I open and play the album.

2) individual tracks on albums are played at random, not in the correct order, even though the tracks are shown as numbered 1, 2, 3 etc.

Obviously I am doing something wrong. I imagine there may be other fields to be completed, but I can't see a simple "how to" instruction in the user guide. I hope I don't have to re-tag every piece of music--that would take a very long time.

[DavidHB]

MinimServer completely bypasses the iTunes library, and it (sensibly, IMO) maps iTunes and ID3 tags to Vorbis tags, as is explained in the Tag mappings section of this page of the User Guide (which, presumably, you have already seen). The point is that, for specifying MinimServer properties, you need to use the Vorbis tag names (so Composer rather than ©con).

If you do this, do you get a MinimServer 'top menu' display that includes Composer? If you don't, for example because the Naim app generates its own index and overrides the MinimServer 'tree', you might need to try another control point.

David

[Robert]

Thanks very much, David. That has fixed my first problem--all the music is now sorted by Composer and Album, so is very much easier to search. (Incidentally, for the benefit of any other readers, I discovered that it's necessary to rescan Minimserver after changing Properties for the changes to take effect. Momentary frustration when I found the same issue until I tried a rescan.)

Problem 2 is still there: after playing a track, the next track seems to be random rather than in the correct order. Track are shown in the correct numbered order, but the player jumps from (say) 1 to 12--in no apparent logical sequence. Any suggestions for fixing that?

[DavidHB]

(19-05-2016 14:50)Robert Wrote:  Thanks very much, David. That has fixed my first problem--all the music is now sorted by Composer and Album, so is very much easier to search.

Good. As I originally did not read your post carefully enough and mis-diagnosed your problem, I'm glad I corrected my post before submitting it.

(19-05-2016 14:50)Robert Wrote:  (Incidentally, for the benefit of any other readers, I discovered that it's necessary to rescan Minimserver after changing Properties for the changes to take effect. Momentary frustration when I found the same issue until I tried a rescan.)

Yes, that is something we all need to be reminded of from time to time. Simon has had an 'auto rescan' feature on his to do list for some time, but has made it clear that there are significant technical issues to deal with in implementing the feature. Having seen the hash that some media servers can make of the whole scanning process, I rather hope that Simon makes haste slowly on this one.

(19-05-2016 14:50)Robert Wrote:  Problem 2 is still there: after playing a track, the next track seems to be random rather than in the correct order. Track are shown in the correct numbered order, but the player jumps from (say) 1 to 12--in no apparent logical sequence. Any suggestions for fixing that?

Are the track number tags populated? Are the disc numbers either correct or not populated at all (in the case of single disc albums)? Have you noticed any particular order in which the tracks are played (alphabetical order of title, or of file name, for example)? This could also be a control point rather than a MinimServer issue. And it's always worth checking that you haven't accidentally set shuffle play on the control point ...

David

[simoncn]

(19-05-2016 14:50)Robert Wrote:  Thanks very much, David. That has fixed my first problem--all the music is now sorted by Composer and Album, so is very much easier to search. (Incidentally, for the benefit of any other readers, I discovered that it's necessary to rescan Minimserver after changing Properties for the changes to take effect. Momentary frustration when I found the same issue until I tried a rescan.)

A Rescan is only necessary when the library has changed. For changes to properties, a Restart is sufficient.

[simoncn]

(19-05-2016 15:38)DavidHB Wrote:  And it's always worth checking that you haven't accidentally set shuffle play on the control point ...

To check this, open the Play queue page and look near the bottom left of the screen for a symbol that looks like a pair of crossed arrows. If this symbol is bright white, touch it to make it dull grey.

[Robert]

Ah--a very useful reminder: never overlook the obvious. The Naim control point was set to shuffle. Now everything works perfectly.