Question & Feature request: Best method for browsing multi-disc albums

[whgmkeller]

Hi there. First, a very good and happy new year "to each and everyone of us" (to stay in the Chrismas Carol spirit a bit longer :-) )

I have several albums that consist of multiple (physical) discs. I chose to store them all in one directory per album, rather than have subdirectories for discs. Minimserver by default shows all tracks for all discs as a continous list.
Example:
Album: Marillion - Afraid of Sunlight [Remaster 1999]
Disc 1: tracks 1 to 8
Disc 2: track 1 to 10
All tracks sit in one directory:
\Music\Marillion\Afraid of Sunlight\tracks.......
Minimserver shows this as follows:
1 (track 1 from disc 1)
2
3 ...
8 (last track from disc 1)
9 (track 1 from disc 2)
10
11... and so on

Of course I could have chosen to store tracks from individual discs in separate directories, but I didn't. Why not? Because I do not want to see two or more entries for every multi-disc albums

In the above example Minimserver shows individual entries for both discs. This happens both when I have the discnumber as part of the trackname, and when I store tracks in separate directories per disc.

Now for my request. What I would like is to be able to store multi-disc albums in one directory as I currently do, but have Minimserver show that it is a multi-disc album in a more elegant way. Wouldn't it be possible to have it shown like this (following up on the above example):
Minimserver displays: (disc 1]
1 (track 1 from disc 1)
2
3 ...
8 (last track from disc 1)
Minimserver displays (disc 2)
1 (track 1 from disc 2, in the current implementation shown as track 9)
.... and so on

I hope it is a little clear what I mean :-)

Wouldn't this make sense?

Greetz, Willem
Netherlands

[simoncn]

(09-01-2013 17:32)whgmkeller Wrote:  Now for my request. What I would like is to be able to store multi-disc albums in one directory as I currently do, but have Minimserver show that it is a multi-disc album in a more elegant way. Wouldn't it be possible to have it shown like this (following up on the above example):
Minimserver displays: (disc 1]
1 (track 1 from disc 1)
2
3 ...
8 (last track from disc 1)
Minimserver displays (disc 2)
1 (track 1 from disc 2, in the current implementation shown as track 9)
.... and so on

I hope it is a little clear what I mean :-)

Wouldn't this make sense?

Greetz, Willem
Netherlands

Happy New Year!

It's easy to do what you want. In the ALBUM tags for the tracks, add a suffix [disc n] or (disc n) to the album name. You can find a full description of how this works in this section of the MinimServer user guide.

[whgmkeller]

Hi Simon, thanks for the reply.

You suggest to add the text (disc n) to the title of the album. Wouldn't that mean that I have two entries in Minimserver for every double-album? That's not what I want.

What I would like is to have just ONE entry in Minimserver for multi-disc-albums, but to have the content of those albums displayed in a more elegant way. I think Minimserver is smart enough to conclude if an album has multiple discs and group and display the contents of the album-discs IN ONE SINGLE LISTING, but start with tracknumber 1 for every disc.

Maybe I'm still not making clear what I mean. Maybe the following helps.

I have this double-album from Marillion in my library. When ripping the tracks, I entered info about on which disc the tracks reside. When I select this double-album in Minimserver, for instance in the Artist view, I have two entries for the two discs in this double-album.

Would it be possible to have just one library entry this album withoiut losing the info which track is one which disc? Maybe Minimserver could list the tracks as 1.1, 2.1 (track 1 from disc 1, track 2 from disc 1) .... 1.2, 2.2 (track 2 from disc 2, track 2 from disc 2) and so on?

Hope this makes it clear :-)

Greetz, Willem

[simoncn]

(10-01-2013 15:01)whgmkeller Wrote:  Hi Simon, thanks for the reply.

You suggest to add the text (disc n) to the title of the album. Wouldn't that mean that I have two entries in Minimserver for every double-album? That's not what I want.

If you do what I suggested, you'll get exactly what you're asking for. MinimServer will automatically remove the (disc n) text from the album title, and it will show you a single album divided into multiple discs.

[whgmkeller]

Hi Simon. Just tested it - I am still amazed by the flexibility of Minimserver !

Just two questions / suggestions, if I may.

Minimserver now shows 1. >> Disc 1, followed by the tracks from disc 2, in which the actual track 1 from disc 1 is shown as number 2. After the last track from disc 1, Minimserver shows (f.i.) 13. >> Disc 2, followed by the tracks from disc 2.

I can see the ease of use in de >> Disc 1 and >> Disc 2 shortcuts, but do they have to be assigned a number? It is a bit strange to have track 1 be listed as number 2 in the track list.

Same for the first track of disc 2 - would it be possible to have the index start with 1 for the next disc?

Thanks, greetz, Willem

[simoncn]

(10-01-2013 17:06)whgmkeller Wrote:  Hi Simon. Just tested it - I am still amazed by the flexibility of Minimserver !

Just two questions / suggestions, if I may.

Minimserver now shows 1. >> Disc 1, followed by the tracks from disc 2, in which the actual track 1 from disc 1 is shown as number 2. After the last track from disc 1, Minimserver shows (f.i.) 13. >> Disc 2, followed by the tracks from disc 2.

I can see the ease of use in de >> Disc 1 and >> Disc 2 shortcuts, but do they have to be assigned a number? It is a bit strange to have track 1 be listed as number 2 in the track list.

Same for the first track of disc 2 - would it be possible to have the index start with 1 for the next disc?

Thanks, greetz, Willem

MinimServer is sending the track numbers correctly as you are requesting, so the problem must be caused by the control point. Which control point are you using? I noticed that a recent version of Kinsky for Android had started doing this incorrect renumbering, and I reported it on the Linn forum as a problem. See this post.

[whgmkeller]

I use Kinksy, both on iPad (Davaar 4.3.11) and on my Mac desktop (Davaar 4.3.13).

On iPad, the numbers of disc 1 are shown correctly, starting with track 1, and the >>Disc 1 above it without a number.
Tracks from disc 2 are shown beneath a >> Disc 2 index, without a number, and then lists the tracks with their correct track numbers. This is as it should be.

Kinsky on desktop shows the incorrect data as per my previous post.

Greetz, Willem

[simoncn]

(10-01-2013 17:58)whgmkeller Wrote:  I use Kinksy, both on iPad (Davaar 4.3.11) and on my Mac desktop (Davaar 4.3.13).

On iPad, the numbers of disc 1 are shown correctly, starting with track 1, and the >>Disc 1 above it without a number.
Tracks from disc 2 are shown beneath a >> Disc 2 index, without a number, and then lists the tracks with their correct track numbers. This is as it should be.

Kinsky on desktop shows the incorrect data as per my previous post.

Greetz, Willem

Thanks for this information. This is either a recent change to Kinsky or something that varies between different platforms.

I've sent another post to the Linn thread. I'm hoping that Linn will respond and provide some clarification.

[simoncn]

(10-01-2013 18:31)simoncn Wrote:  I've sent another post to the Linn thread. I'm hoping that Linn will respond and provide some clarification.

This Kinsky bug is being fixed. See this post.

[Wammer]

As part of my major retagging exercise I have been making extensive use of MinimServer's ability to display multi-disc albums as single albums. It is a great feature which makes browsing much easier, and it works really well for single-genre sets - opera, concertos, symphonies, etc. - that make up the majority of my multi-disc sets.

However, I have a problem with multi-disc sets that use more than one genre. For example, I have an 8-disc set of Bach compositions that contains a mixture of concertos, orchestral, and chamber works. In this instance I used the "Album [Disc n]" format, but I experienced similar problems on another multi-genre set using just a common album title without the [Disc n] suffix.

The problem is that my control points (Kinsky, Songbook Lite, and PlugPlayer) all display multiple instances of the album. In Composer view, the eight discs appear as four separate "albums" - and I can discern no logic in how the tracks are split between each. In Genre view Concertos and Orchestral each display two "albums" which (coincidentally or otherwise) seem to reflect the disks they reside on, but Chamber displays three "albums" with no discernible logic.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?