Minimserver on a Melco with Lumin

[Donuk]

I am rather a newby to Minimserver, and do not understand much of the configuration on Minimwatch.
I get it up and running fine, but perhaps foolishly being tempted to fiddle around under the bonnet, I do not know the default settings.

Preferably, I would like to please be pointed to settings that particularly suit the Melco and Lumin. The main problem I have is the treatment of the "Beatles, the", "The Beatles" and the like. The result seems to be unpredictably random.

I am not interested in conductor or orchestra - most of my listening is jazz and old pop.

I use a Linn ADS/2.

Best still, can somebody come up with a set of configurations that I can just copy in, which best suits my system?

Sorry to be thick and double sorry if this is already on the forum somewhere. I have read the user manual, and find it a bit daunting (my bad).

Thanks in advance

Donuk, foggy downtown York.

[DavidHB]

Hi, Don

You've probably spotted that, on the Linn forum, there is a thread that invites folk to share their MinimServer properties (which I have done). Will it, or any thread like it, be of use to you? To some extent, but (I guess) not as much as you are hoping.

Fortunately, your use case as you described it is reasonably close to the MinimServer defaults, so my advice would be not to change anything except to remove a specific annoyance. Although the MinimServer User Guide looks daunting because it is so comprehensive, the trick is to skim read until you come to something that looks like a fix for the problem, and then read that bit carefully; you will find that it's very clearly written.

Of course, as with any server, you need to ensure that any tags of interest to you are fully and consistently populated. If your Paul Simon albums have ARTIST or ALBUMARTIST tags that variously contain 'Simon, Paul', 'Paul Simon', 'P. Simon' and so on, you will need to ensure that all the tags are consistent if you want to use them for selection. Likewise, if you want to order your Artist names by surname rather than first name, you should read up the reverseName Tag Option. If, for instance, you enter ARTIST as 'Simon, Paul', MinimServer can index it in that order but display it as 'Paul Simon'. A tag editor such as MP3Tag makes it almost trivially simple to amend large numbers of tags in one go, so putting tags in order is well worth the effort.

As regards the problem you have with 'The Beatles' etc., step 1 is to make sure that artist naming is consistent, and Step 2 is to include in your tagOptions property an entry such as

all.ignore.sort={The,A,An,Der,Die,Das,​Ein,Eine,Le,La,L',Les,Un,Une,Il,El}

which is the one I currently use. This will ensure that the definite and indefinite articles in English and several other languages are ignored when indexes are compiled, so that The Beatles are listed under 'B' and not under 'T'.

If you concentrate on one change at a time, and ask for specific advice as necessary, you will find that your confidence grows with each setting that you master. As you probably don't need to change all that much in any case, this shouldn't take too long.

David

[Donuk]

Thank you David, my friend; as ever the gentleman and scholar.
I am gradually getting my head around things. Some I understand, and some not.
Ive put your all.ignore.sort dialogue in.
I'll let you know how I get on.
Cheers
Don

[Donuk]

Having said that, I am still struggling and confused.
I no longer have a composer icon on Lumin and don't know what to enter where to get it back. (I do have Lumin settings set to "composer tab on".)

Also something Minimserver has always shown:

I check with mp3 tag that both Artist and Album Artist tags are set to "Beatles, The".
Similarly, all Beach Boys tags are set to "Beach Boys, The".

When I look under the artist setting in Lumin, under B in the alphabet comes "Beatles, The". But I have to scroll down to T to find something entered as "The, Beach Boys". I'm getting quite a number of these, that all have meta data entered the same way. E.g. "The, Allman Brothers Band" Can't believe that is all my stupidity.... I have always had this problem with Minimserver and have lived with it to date.

I have updated Minimserver. No change. I have uninstalled Lumin from my iPad, deleting all its previous data, and reinstalled. No change.
What is going on?

Now, if I use the Twonky, which is also installed on the Melco, I get exactly the same problem: "The, Beach Boys" but "Beatles, The" even though the metadata is entered in exactly the same way. I still also get "The, Doors", "The, Chiffons" &c. even though the Album Artist and Artist is entered as "Xxxx, The".
So there is nothing wrong with Minimserver it appears, per se.
But Twonky does give me a Composer icon which works.

Help please before I go mad. It is the season of good will.......

Donuk cold downtown York
PS the problem "The, Beach Boys" does not occur in Kazoo or Kinsky. It just faithfully lists them as I had set the Metadata "Beach Boys, The". So it looks like a Lumin bug. Anyone else get this????

[simoncn]

The LUMIN app would like you to put all.display.multiTag in the MinimServer tagCustom property. This will make the LUMIN app happy and the strange formatting such as "The, Doors" should disappear.

What do you currently have in the tagCustom property? You might need to add something else there to fix your Composer problem.

[Donuk]

Well, Simon seems to have saved the day. all.display.multiTag has sorted "The, Doors" problem.
There is nothing else in my tagCustom property line.
Also I seem to have lost the word Composer from the indexTags box. Putting it in has solved that problem too.

So it's trebles all round, especially Simon........

Donuk, damp downtown York