Displaying Composer information in a Control Point

[Andre Gosselin]

(23-11-2013 23:16)DavidHB Wrote:  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

I agree with most of your points. I experimented with many control points, and the difficulty of clearly displaying the composer metadata when switching control points and music servers got me into the habit of always harcoding the composer last name as the start of the track titles when tagging my music files. This adds redundancy, but frees you of depending on a specific feature of a music server or control point to correctly see the composer info. (BTW, your remarks could also be extended to the conductor metadata, which for classical music lovers is also important, but are mostly ignored by most control points.)

Surprisingly, not all music servers publish the composer metadata when asked for track metadata by upnp control points. The upnp standard does not seem to impose that. For example, mediamonkey server does not publish either composer or conductor metadata, whereas minimserver, foobar and assetupnp do. This inconsistency in the behavior of upnp music servers may explain (but not excuse) why some control points treat the composer metadata somewhat lightly.

Also, it should be noted that BubbleUPnP displays the composer name at the top of playlist tab (when viewing by album), and also at the top of the library tab. In the Playing tab, composer is also shown below the track title if the "Show composer" choice is selected in the "Now Playing" settings. BubbleUPnP also displays the composer name in its "Show metadata" contextual menu when long pressing a track title. I think BubbleUPnP is doing a decent job when it comes to displaying composer metadata (if of course the music server in use cares to publish those in the first place).

André