New user questions

[kaledi]

So today I discovered MinimServer for the first time, having used a competing product for many years. MinimServer appears to be very powerful, but I'm trying to get my head round the technical features and ways of optimising its use. I have a few questions I hope will accelerate how will use it.
1. I have 3 separate folders that contain audio. I've added all 3 locations, but when I navigate via a controller (Heos app), I'm presented with the separate folders, rather than the content of the 3 folders merged into one collection. Is there anyway round this, or is this deliberate and by design.
2. Is there anyway to customise the navigation tree, so for example, I want to presented at the top of navigation with the choice AlbumArtist, Title, Artist, etc. I can get there with Tag view, but it takes several presses on screen to do so. Can Tag view be customised?
3. Heos devices have an irritating issue where the artist field of a track playing from a Various Artists album will show the artist as Various Artist (i.e. Album Artist field, rather than artist field), is there a workaround? I've tried using AlbumArtist.replace={Artist} in tag value. This seems to work well for Various Artist albums, but not for tracks that have Composer populated and then this is shown rather than Artist.
4. Finally, can multiple instances of MinimServer be running on a Synology NAS, so that multiple libraries, or subsets of a library can be navigated?

[simbun]

Hi kaledi,

I think you're the person I spoke to on the dbpoweramp forum, so I'll answer with that in mind (apologies if you're not).

I'll get this out the way first, do you have to use the HEOS app? I tested a HEOS product last year and it worked fine with another control point (BubbleUPnP), but what I didn't get to test was whether it'll work with grouped speakers (as I only had one to test with). If you can define your group in HEOS then play to that group with another control point then that's defintely the way to go. I say this not only because other apps will offer much more functionality but also because the HEOS app doesn't work particularly well with MinimServer (details below).

Back to the questions:

(01-02-2023 23:24)kaledi Wrote:  1. I have 3 separate folders that contain audio. I've added all 3 locations, but when I navigate via a controller (Heos app), I'm presented with the separate folders, rather than the content of the 3 folders merged into one collection. Is there anyway round this, or is this deliberate and by design.

HEOS presents a very rudimentary browse tree (Search, Browse Folders, Artists, Albums, Genres and Tracks from memory), so what I assume you're doing is using 'Browse Folders' that takes you directly to the AssetUPnP root index. Unfortunately with MinimServer, that takes you to MinimServers Folder View, hence it's showing you your 3 content directories. If you were to click on one of those directories you should see a >> Tag View, below which will be MinimServer's root index, but only for the selected directory.
I assume HEOS handles this differently for Asset and MinimServer because with Asset you can hide Folder View, so HEOS thought it safer to drop you into the root of the index.

(01-02-2023 23:24)kaledi Wrote:  2. Is there anyway to customise the navigation tree, so for example, I want to presented at the top of navigation with the choice AlbumArtist, Title, Artist, etc. I can get there with Tag view, but it takes several presses on screen to do so. Can Tag view be customised?

Tag View can be customised, but what I think you're getting at, is can you define a drill hierarchy e.g. Genre -> Decade -> AlbumArtist e.t.c. MinimServer has no such concept, what it does have is Intelligent Browsing, as well as various other features that can make browsing much simpler e.g. Alphabetical grouping and the abililty to jump straight to album view once the number of albums matching your selection has been met (documented here).

(01-02-2023 23:24)kaledi Wrote:  3. Heos devices have an irritating issue where the artist field of a track playing from a Various Artists album will show the artist as Various Artist (i.e. Album Artist field, rather than artist field), is there a workaround? I've tried using AlbumArtist.replace={Artist} in tag value. This seems to work well for Various Artist albums, but not for tracks that have Composer populated and then this is shown rather than Artist.

Try this.

(01-02-2023 23:24)kaledi Wrote:  4. Finally, can multiple instances of MinimServer be running on a Synology NAS, so that multiple libraries, or subsets of a library can be navigated?

If your Synology is Intel based I believe you can run multiple instances of MinimServer using docker, but best to check the documentation.

There's so much you can do with MinimServer, but I'll leave it with your initial questions for now :-)

[kaledi]

Thanks so much for your response.
Yes, probably me on AssetUPNP forum. It's something that has bugged me for a number of years. And yes, I would like to use the Heos app. Many don't like it, but I'm quite happy with it, particularly with a good server, such as Minimserver, or assetupnp. Moreover, I have considerabel number of Heos devices - speakers, AVRs, Soundbar, Streamer and it does work well for the whole eco system - grouping, choosing AV inputs to share etc.
With the folder, this is what I concluded, and yes, you are correct, I was referring to assetupnp and drill hierarcy. Not to worry, I can reconfigure my folders and learn how to implement what I need via Tag view.
That suggestion for the Heos issue seems to have worked a charm, so thanks for that.