Searching Melco with dCS Mosaic

[nickghough@gmail.com]

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[simoncn]

It looks like something went wrong when you posted. Please post again.

[nickghough@gmail.com]

(23-07-2023 13:00)simoncn Wrote:  It looks like something went wrong when you posted. Please post again.

Oh damn. I’ll try again!

Here you go:

My question is about searching my music on my Melco N1 running MinimServer via the dCS Mosaic app. If I search ‘Sigur Ros’ for example nothing is found. If I search ‘Sigur Rós’ with the accent on the ‘o’ however it finds the five albums I have stored there. 

Similarly if I search Crosby Stills Nash and Young it doesn’t find anything. If I search Crosby it finds all the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young albums I have stored. 

It seems crackers to me that the software doesn’t ignore accents, punctuation and the difference between & and ‘and’! 

I contacted dCS and they said it’s MinimServer’s ‘fault’ not Mosaic. I don’t have this problem when searching Qobuz or Spotify. Why is this such a big problem with MinimServer? I didn’t have this issue previously when I used Twonky. 

Hopefully someone can help me out here as it’s frustrating. I have over 7,000 albums stored and the idea that someone suggested of scrolling through the artist list is not a practical suggestion.

[simoncn]

MinimServer is a UPnP server and it implements the UPnP specification for Search. This specification requires a search to return case-insensitive matches from the values being searched (artists, albums, etc.) that contain the search query string as specified by the user. There is no provision in this specification for ignoring punctuation, ignoring accents or treating 'and' and '&' as equivalent. Ignoring accents could return incorrect results (false positive matches) with some European languages that treat an accented version of a letter as different from the non-accented version.

Twonky is also a UPnP server. I have tested the version of Twonky installed on my Melco N1A. It implements Search in the same way as MinimServer (without ignoring punctuation or accents) but takes two or three times as long to return the search result.

MinimServer needs to run on low-powered NAS devices on a home network with limited computing power and memory and achieve good performance for search queries. Qobuz and Spotify are web-based services hosted in the cloud with access to large amounts of computing power. This is the reason why they are able to implement the kind of fuzzy matching you have described on very large databases with good response times.

[nickghough@gmail.com]

(23-07-2023 21:37)simoncn Wrote:  MinimServer is a UPnP server and it implements the UPnP specification for Search. This specification requires a search to return case-insensitive matches from the values being searched (artists, albums, etc.) that contain the search query string as specified by the user. There is no provision in this specification for ignoring punctuation, ignoring accents or treating 'and' and '&' as equivalent. Ignoring accents could return incorrect results (false positive matches) with some European languages that treat an accented version of a letter as different from the non-accented version.

Twonky is also a UPnP server. I have tested the version of Twonky installed on my Melco N1A. It implements Search in the same way as MinimServer (without ignoring punctuation or accents) but takes two or three times as long to return the search result.

MinimServer needs to run on low-powered NAS devices on a home network with limited computing power and memory and achieve good performance for search queries. Qobuz and Spotify are web-based services hosted in the cloud with access to large amounts of computing power. This is the reason why they are able to implement the kind of fuzzy matching you have described on very large databases with good response times.

Thank you for the explanation. Kind of you to reply and I appreciate you taking the time. The trouble is, what I need is a way of simply searching my music collection in a way that reveals and then allows me to play what I have stored there. I have to say I am actually totally uninterested in the technical reason for how or why it does what it does. I just want to listen to music and access it easily and this simply doesn’t work well for me. I’m sure you will tell me it’s the best there is but sadly I find it clunky and more than a bit annoying given it keeps suggesting I don’t have music I know is there but it doesn’t show it simply because I haven’t typed the exact name with all the correct punctuation. From my user perspective this just seems plain daft. Your point about it having to take note of punctuation and accents makes little sense to me - you say it would throw up false positives. Well, the way it works now continually throws up false negatives, which to me seems worse. I’d rather see a list with a few ‘errors’ in it (eg artists or albums with similar names or part names) than be told that no artist of that name can be found.

[simoncn]

If you are not concerned about false positives, you can type Crosby to find all your Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young albums and you can type Sigur to find all your Sigur Rós albums.

[nickghough@gmail.com]

(24-07-2023 08:07)simoncn Wrote:  If you are not concerned about false positives, you can type Crosby to find all your Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young albums and you can type Sigur to find all your Sigur Rós albums.

Thanks. I was aware of that and of course with complex band names like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (and yes it needs to be typed that accurately) to find that band’s albums is you type more than just ‘Crosby’, I have learned to do that. The Sigur Ros example for me however highlights how the UI is simply not working well for how real humans search for things. I was totally baffled for a bit as to why it found nothing when I typed Sigur Ros. I even had to go and look at the files on my computer to check I wasn’t losing my mind about the music I thought I had stored. Given I’m not highly technical (like most people I might add) I think it’s expected now that a search engine is more sophisticated in its capabilities than I now realise MinimServer is and that is out of step with the way most people look for digital music to play.

[Peter StreamMagic]

I contacted dCS and they said it’s MinimServer’s ‘fault’ not Mosaic.



I use Kazoo and must say searching works perfect with this app.
During typing your quest, it gives you suggestions for artist,album.tracks, etc...
I do have Sigur Rós in my libary and got a perfect hit typing Sigu (bad luck if the first letters are accentuated)
So it is not fair only to blame MinimServer, dCS seems only to search with a fully written artist name.
I couldn't get the dCS mosiac app working,so was not able to try it.
Is there no way to preselect S in Artist and then select Sigur Rós?

[stefano_mbp]

Lumïn app is even better.
As it has an internal db (loaded from Minimserver) the search in the internal db section (in red) returns results ignoring accents (it doesn’t ignore punctuation or other characters
   
Of course the search in the Minimserver section (in yellow) is subject to the same constraints described by Simon

[nickghough@gmail.com]

(24-07-2023 08:34)Peter StreamMagic Wrote:  I contacted dCS and they said it’s MinimServer’s ‘fault’ not Mosaic.



I use Kazoo and must say searching works perfect with this app.
During typing your quest, it gives you suggestions for artist,album.tracks, etc...
I do have Sigur Rós in my libary and got a perfect hit typing Sigu (bad luck if the first letters are accentuated)
So it is not fair only to blame MinimServer, dCS seems only to search with a fully written artist name.
I couldn't get the dCS mosiac app working,so was not able to try it.
Is there no way to preselect S in Artist and then select Sigur Rós?

Hi Peter - that’s interesting and helpful and explains why I had no issues with Twonky. I switched from a Linn streamer attached to a QNAP NAS drive and used Kazoo to a dCs streamer with the music stored on a Melco N1 running MinimServer in one go! Perhaps Simon could explain why Kazoo is able to search like this but mosaic. Or is that a question for dCS?