Displaying Composer information in a Control Point

[DavidHB]

One of the frustrations I have with my network music system is the difficulty I have in persuading Control Points to display the information I want, where I want it. Simon has rightly spotted that this a particular problem for those with classical collections, and I have nothing but praise for the way he seeks to meet the needs of that group (of whom I am one) in the options provided by MinimServer. Would that things were the same in the Control point!

Where classical music is concerned, to the listener probably the single most important piece of information about a work is the name of the composer. That is why indexes of classical music are invariably ordered by composer name. The digitised music industry has had enormous difficulty getting its head round this simple fact. Ironically, a particular offender in this respect is Linn, which seems to make a determined attempt to omit composer data where it could and should be provided (in the scrolling titles on its own Linn Classical network radio station, for example).

This failing carries over into the design of Kinsky, which not only omits composer data where there is obviously space and need for it (in the rather significantly named "Full Artwork" screen for example), but also fails to scroll or wrap data where this would be useful in the Library and Playlist areas of the main screen (it doesn't even allow resizing of these areas). It's not that the composer name never gets displayed; it just isn't there when I most want it, for example when looking at the tracks of a compilation album.

Bubble DS (which I am coming to prefer generally to Kinsky in any case) is rather better in this regard, but still, for example, omits the composer name from its 'Now Playing' screen, which is in other respects much more functional than the Kinsky "Full Artwork" counterpart.

I am currently trialling the workaround of using MinimServer to add the Composer name to the track title display (by including Title.displayFormat={$composer$title^^^: } in tagFormat). This works surprisingly well, but introduces a lot of repetition into the Library and Playlist listings, and may push important track title information (which there should be, but isn't, an option to wrap, in either Control Point) out of the display.

One significant advantage Bubble has over Kinsky is that, on Bubble's Now Playing screen, track titles that do not fit are scrolled, so now I do have composer data on that screen.

Have any other users come across these issues? Is there anything else I can do in MininServer to alleviate the problem? Or do we just have to try to persuade the writers of Control Points to make them more user configurable? I think that the design of Bubble makes this rather easier than that of Kinsky, so I hope Bubbleguuum is reading this ...

David