Sort by Filename

[hvaleton]

Hello Simon,

Thanks for all your answers and the time you put into this. You've given me a lot to think about and I've been experimenting into the wee small hours, yesterday.

(15-05-2013 12:31)simoncn Wrote:  

(15-05-2013 11:02)hvaleton Wrote:  Hi Simon,

Yes, I read that you use a Composition tag to group tracks into one composition, wheras I group the movements of a symphony in an album.

It's much more important to populate the Group tag than the Composition tag. I'll take a look at the documentation to see if this needs clarifying.

If you populate the Group tag, MinimServer will send "album" XML data to the control point that's equivalent to what you're getting at the moment. This should mean you'll continue to see the same thing in Kinsky, Chorus or Sonos. (I don't have any Sonos equipment, so I haven't been able to try this with Sonos.)

The advantage of doing this is that you can easily find, select and play an entire album (CD) in its original order. You can also easily find, select and play any multi-movement musical work within the album.

The Compostion tag is optional, and I'd suggest you start without this and maybe add it later if you need the additional indexing that it provides.

I did start with the Group tag as you suggested. Normally I do all my tagging using MediaMonkey, but MM does not ssem to support the creation or edtiting of custom tags, other than "Custom 1", "Custom 2", etc. Maybe I'm overlooking something but I can't get MM to change these into "Group", or "Composition", etc. (Suggestions for MM, anyone?)
Then I tried Mp3tag (rather unfamiliar to me, but I'm learning to use it now) and with this tool I succeeded in creating the Group tag in a number of test files. In it I put the same info I normally put in 'Album', and I changed 'Album' for all files within the same folder/directory to the name of its directory.
So, Album = Vioolconcerten (Ibragimova), and
tracks 1-3: Group = Mendelssohn - Vioolconcert in e, Op.64 (Ibragimova, OAE, Jurowski)
track 4: Group = Mendelssohn - Ouverture 'De Hebriden' ('Fingal's Cave'), Op.26 (OAE, Jurowski)
Tracks 5-7: Group = Mendelssohn - Vioolconcert in d (Ibragimova, OAE, Jurowski)
This worked fine, as you predicted.
In Sonos, however, Album is a very important source of information, since the on screen info is scarce and there's little room it, so you need to wait for the various fields to start scrolling one after the other... A real nightmare, actually. Sonos has definitely not been designed for classical music! But I'm digressing here.

After making the aforementioned changes to my test files, showed:
Title: Op.64: 1 Allegro molto appassionato
Artists: Alina Ibragimova (viool), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Vladimir Jurowski
Album: Mendelssohn - Vioolconcerten (Ibragimova)

As you can see some information is lacking here. I can guess from the prefix of the title, "Op.64: " that Mendelssohns famous violin concerto in E minor is being played, but in other cases this would not be so easy. There are many cases in which the composer of the track that's being played is not in the Album tag. There is no Composer field in any of the Sonos access points (Sonos CR-100 controller, Sonos Ipad app, Sonos Android app, Sonos for Windows).
Take for instance the fourth track in my example: it's an overture and (so) is not named in the Album tag.
All in all, I think it's clear why I would try and hold on to my original way of Album tagging, for the sake of Sonos.

Then a brilliant idea came up
What if I put the Folder/Directory name in a new custom tag named AlbumMinim and put "AlbumMinim:Album" in the aliasTags setting?
This way I would not have to change the text of my Album tags and MinimServer would treat AlbumMinim as Album to get the correct order of tracks in Folder View.
I tried this but it did not work out, unfortunately. The track order was still the same as when I started:

Mendelssohn - Ouverture 'De Hebriden' ('Fingal's Cave'), Op.26 (OAE, Jurowski)
Mendelssohn - Vioolconcert in d (Ibragimova, OAE, Jurowski)
Mendelssohn - Vioolconcert in e, Op.64 (Ibragimova, OAE, Jurowski)

(N.B. I've given the Group titles here, since the grouping still works.)

In my desperation I've also added both AlbumMinim and Album to the list of indexTags, but this did not change the sorting behaviour.
Is there someting I don't understand about the alias function? Or is Album treated differently from all the other tags?
I have succesfully tried aliasing Composer to Componist.

Quote:

Quote: I also put a shortened list of the performers and sometimes also the year of recording in the Album tag to be able to see the difference between various performances of the same symphony.
I also (redundantly) put the name of the composer in the Album tag, because otherwise the name of the composer would get lost in the presentation of track info in alle access points I have used so far.

You can do all this with the Group tag. Alternatively, you can use the tagFormat property to include this additional information in the "album" XML data that MinimServer sends to the control point. This is an alternative to manually copying this information into the Album or Group tag.

Quote: For serious listening I have a Linn DS Akurate (using Kinsky or Chorus on my iPad) and for less serious listening in the remainder of the house I have three Sonos zones. Sonos soes not, and probably never will show the Composer tag.
Your method seems to have some advantages but I'll have to give this a lot of thought before I re-tag my entire collection of some 9000 cd's.
What do you put in the Composition tag? Just, say, "Symphony No.2 in E flat major"? In that case it could sometimes probably be used for more than one composer, so that one would absolutely need the composer tag to get a unique combination And what about the performers?

This comes down to your personal preference. If you're browsing by index, it isn't necessary to add composer or performer information to the Group or Composition tag, because you can use the Composer or Performer/Artist indexes in combination with the Group or Composition index to resolve any ambiguity in the Composition or Group value. If you're browsing a flat list of Groups or Compositions, you might find it useful to have some additional information for disambiguation.

I've added and populated Composition tags to my test files and it works like a charm. I will of course keep experimenting but this is a promising addition. Thanks!

Quote:

Quote:Very importantly: will this Composition tag be shown in any access point app in the "now playing" section? I personally doubt it. And that would make the Composition tag only usable in the search process, correct?
Please enlighten me!

Thanks in advance,
Hans

An advantage of using the Group tag for your musical works is that you'll see the Group value in the "Now Playing" section automatically. You can also use the displayFormat setting in the tagFormat property to customize the Now Playing section with any tags in your files.