Handling music boxes

[Fritz]

Good evening to all of you,

For the first time ever I bought some music collection boxes (the Mercury Living Presence boxes). Good recordings by large, but now I feel they invade my otherwise album by album selected music collection to much.

For browsing my music I prefix the classical album titles with the composer e.g. "Telemann: Denner-Flöte - 12 Fantasien für Traversflöte solo", most others are typically prefixed with the artist e.g. "Noir Désir: Des visages des figures". I maintain a number of tags like composer, orchestra, conductor, label, artist, album artist etc for searching.

I think of having two "albums "with album title "Mercury Living Presence 1" and "Mercury Living Presence 2" with the box images displayed and having CDs displayed once I click on them. I am using the Naim app on an iPad.

Did anyone try something along these lines? Should I use the grouping mechanism? But then do I run into problems because of the artist, or having the box image displayed? Should I use Multidisc albums?

I would appreciate your thoughts!

[DavidHB]

I have used an arrangement similar to the one you propose, but I would not use it for every boxed set. There are a number of points to bear in mind here.

The first point is that you are in charge; the arrangement of your music library and its presentation in your control point should be what makes sense to you. There is no such thing as the 'right' method, and it makes sense to allow yourself some trial and error. Doing things differently is typically only a matter of editing some tags.

The second point is that the boxed set is, very largely, a function of the limitations of the CD (and, formerly, the LP) format and the marketing intentions of the record label. Those things may be meaningful to you when you come to rip the CDs in the set, or they may be irrelevant. There is nothing to stop you creating a different album grouping from the one in the boxed set.

The following example may help. I have a boxed set (22 discs) of all Stravinsky's recordings of his own works. Within the set, the discs are grouped (ballets, symphonies, concertos etc.), and I chose to use these groupings, rather than the complete set, as the basis for creating the individual albums in my digital library.

MinimServer regards a set of tracks as an album if they have the same album name and the same single value for AlbumArtist (see the relevant section of the User Guide for more details). In my library, all the tracks of an album will be in their own folder (and perhaps in sub-folders for individual discs) which will have the same name as the album, and each album will have its own album art. The album name may however be very different from what is on the CD cover.

I don't have a single fixed practice when it comes to listing the contents of the album by disc (or not, as the case may be). If the boxed set is of a single work (say a Mahler Symphony or an opera), I tend not to identify the individual discs, but to group the tracks by the sections (movements, acts or whatever) of the work. For something like a 'complete recordings' set, I may well preserve the disc organisation, as in such sets the record label will often try to arrange the works meaningfully within the set.

So my advice is to look at each set on its own merits, use tagging to organise it in your library in whatever manner is meaningful to you and presents itself sensibly in your control point, and not to worry too much about consistency or 'doing it the right way'.

I hope this helps.

David

[simoncn]

(22-12-2014 15:19)DavidHB Wrote:  MinimServer regards a set of tracks as an album if they have the same album name and the same single value for AlbumArtist (see the relevant section of the User Guide for more details). In my library, all the tracks of an album will be in their own folder (and perhaps in sub-folders for individual discs) which will have the same name as the album, and each album will have its own album art. The album name may however be very different from what is on the CD cover.

One small clarification to this very helpful post: MinimServer also regards a set of tracks as an album if they have the same album name and are in the same folder (not a subfolder).

[Fritz]

Good evening David and Simon,

thanks a lot for your detailed replies. I tried out the following:

• Created a folder "Mercury Living Presence 1" with the tracks of each CD in a separate sub-folder
• Copied the ALBUM tag to the GROUP tag and prefix with the string "CDnn"
• Changed all ALBUM tags to "Mercury Living Presence 1"
• Emptied the ALBUMARTIST tag
  

However I do not get the desired effect of having one "Mercury Living Presence 1" album with the CDs as "sub-albums". At a first glance this is due to the different artist values. So I guess I need to follow Simon's advise to give up the CD-subfolder structure and put all the tracks in the "Mercury Living Presence 1" folder. This seems pretty awkward to me. Is there another way of doing this? ... Also in the overall approach I feel to be misusing the grouping feature....

[simoncn]

(26-12-2014 18:32)Fritz Wrote:  Good evening David and Simon,

thanks a lot for your detailed replies. I tried out the following:

• Created a folder "Mercury Living Presence 1" with the tracks of each CD in a separate sub-folder
• Copied the ALBUM tag to the GROUP tag and prefix with the string "CDnn"
• Changed all ALBUM tags to "Mercury Living Presence 1"
• Emptied the ALBUMARTIST tag
  

However I do not get the desired effect of having one "Mercury Living Presence 1" album with the CDs as "sub-albums". At a first glance this is due to the different artist values. So I guess I need to follow Simon's advise to give up the CD-subfolder structure and put all the tracks in the "Mercury Living Presence 1" folder. This seems pretty awkward to me. Is there another way of doing this? ... Also in the overall approach I feel to be misusing the grouping feature....

You can achieve what you want (without changing the folder structure) by setting the ALBUMARTIST tag for all tracks to the same value. Many people use the value "Various Artists" for this. In addition, you should set the mergeFolderAlbums property to true.

Edit: If this album is tagged with multiple disc numbers, the album discs will be merged automatically without needing to set mergeFolderAlbums to true. This mergeFolderAlbums settings in needed if you have a single-disc album whose contents are spread across multiple folders.

[Fritz]

Good evening Simon,

Thanks for the help and the extremely helpful hints.

Using the Grouping approach I have now an "Album "Mercury Living Presence 1" with each CD as a sub-Album. (Comparing the number of albums before and after setting the mergeFolderAlbums I had to chase some loose ends). I tried out to use a blank as value for the ALBUMARTIST tag, but apparently white space is ignored so I used the "Various Artists" value you proposed.

I couldn't come up with a solution to two minor problems:

• Is there a way of having the album cover of the grouping album different from the cover of the first CD in the box? Background: I have cover images in the tracks included.
• At the end of the sub-album (cover-icon) list I find (using the Naim app under "#") a list of folder links e.g. >> Disc 1, >> Disc 10, >> Disc 11 etc.
  I do not have this with other albums where I used the GROUP tag. Is there anything obvious I might overlook?
  

Once more thanks to Simon and David for your help.

[simoncn]

(28-12-2014 19:47)Fritz Wrote:  Good evening Simon,

Thanks for the help and the extremely helpful hints.

Using the Grouping approach I have now an "Album "Mercury Living Presence 1" with each CD as a sub-Album. (Comparing the number of albums before and after setting the mergeFolderAlbums I had to chase some loose ends). I tried out to use a blank as value for the ALBUMARTIST tag, but apparently white space is ignored so I used the "Various Artists" value you proposed.

I couldn't come up with a solution to two minor problems:

• Is there a way of having the album cover of the grouping album different from the cover of the first CD in the box? Background: I have cover images in the tracks included.
  

If you have embedded album art within the tracks of the album, it isn't possible to use a different image for the overall album. See this section for more information.

Quote:

• At the end of the sub-album (cover-icon) list I find (using the Naim app under "#") a list of folder links e.g. >> Disc 1, >> Disc 10, >> Disc 11 etc.
  I do not have this with other albums where I used the GROUP tag. Is there anything obvious I might overlook?
  

You need to disable the A-Z sort setting in the Naim app. Disabling this will show these disc header/divider lines in their correct positions. You are seeing these headers because the album is tagged with multiple disc numbers.

Also, because this album is tagged with multiple disc numbers, the album discs will be merged automatically without needing to set mergeFolderAlbums to true. I will edit my earlier post to clarify this.

[Fritz]

Good morning Simon,

Thanks, tried this out and it works indeed without to setting the mergeFolderAlbums to true.

I used the Group tag previously -see the screenshot for Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. This is what I would like to use for the Mercury Box too. To see what I get right now for the Mercury Box I attached a second screenshot.

Not sure what causes the different behavior.

   

   

[Fritz]

(29-12-2014 12:16)Fritz Wrote:  Good morning Simon,

Thanks, tried this out and it works indeed without to setting the mergeFolderAlbums to true.

I used the Group tag previously -see the screenshot for Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. This is what I would like to use for the Mercury Box too. To see what I get right now for the Mercury Box I attached a second screenshot.

Not sure what causes the different behavior.

Getting used to posting attachments: Here a better screenshot for Beethoven's Sonatas
   

[DavidHB]

(29-12-2014 12:16)Fritz Wrote:  I used the Group tag previously -see the screenshot for Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. This is what I would like to use for the Mercury Box too.

I'm afraid I haven't quite got my head around what is causing the difference you want explained - Simon is the expert on that. But it does occur to me that you are using the GROUP tag rather in the way that the DISCSUBTITLE tag is meant to be used - see this section of the User Guide for the explanation of this.

Does this matter? Maybe not; as I said in my previous post, there is no one right way of doing things. But if you use the GROUP tag to identify 'sub-albums' within a boxed set you cannot then use it to identify individual works (sonatas in the Beethoven example). As in such a case I would often wish to identify and play a particular sonata, I prefer to use the 'Disc n' feature (or DISCSUBTITLE if the discs need to be individually named), and then to use GROUP to identify the individual works.

Often in my collection, the contents of the COMPOSITION and GROUP tags are the same. I use the former to identify works within a browse sequence (often, obviously, from a selection by composer) and the latter to identify the contents of a particular album.

The other point I would make is that, while it is not essential, I think that the results look better in the control point if either all the tracks or none of them have the GROUP tag populated; a mix of Group headings and track titles tends to look messy. Sometimes adding Group tags to all the tracks will mean that a Group contains only a single track; this is not something that worries me.

David