Double albums track numbering

[lineinthesand]

I usually have all the tracks of a double album in one folder with the tracks' file names of disc 1 prefixed with an A and disc 2 with B, respectively. Accordingly, the tracks of disc 1 have the id3 tag type "CD" ("Part") set to 01, disc 2 with 02, respectively but each of the discs' tracks have their own numbering starting from 01. Yet, the track numbers in the metadata MinimServer reports is continuous, i.e. the tracks of disc 2 start at the number of the last track on disc 1 plus one. On the other hand, if the "CD" id3 tag of the discs' files is empty, MinimServer does "the right thing", i.e. display the track numbers as they are recorded in the id3 tags, in my case disc 2 tracks starting from 01 again (also like displayed on the CD cover).

Can this be changed without having to edit the id3 tags, that is, clearing the "CD" fields?

[simoncn]

It sounds like your tagging program is storing CD (Part) in the ID3v2 TPOS frame. When MinimServer reads the file, it maps TPOS to DISCNUMBER.

MinimServer merges albums across folders if the tracks contain a DISCNUMBER value greater than 1. If this merging has taken place, MinimServer renumbers the tracks from all discs to be consecutive as you are seeing unless the showAllDiscs option of the serverOptions property is set to true. This means there are three possible cases:

1) DISCNUMBER is not set and showAllDiscs is not set. Each disc will be shown as a separate album in the list of albums and the original track numbers for each disc will be preserved.

2) DISCNUMBER is set and showAllDiscs is not set. The files from all discs will be merged into a single album in the list of albums and the tracks from all discs will be renumbered to be consecutive.

3) DISCNUMBER is set and showAllDiscs is set. The files from all discs will be merged into a single album in the list of albums and the tracks from all discs will not be renumbered but will show as sepearate discs.

You are currently seeing 2). To see 1) without retagging your files, you can set the aliasTags property to DiscNumber:nil. To see 3) without retagging your files, you can set the serverOptions property to showAllDiscs=true. Both these options require the full version of MinimServer.

Another option is to change the ALBUM tags for each disc to add a suffix of [disc 1], [disc 2], etc. For example, the discs for the album The Wall would be tagged as:
The Wall [disc 1]
The Wall [disc 2]

MinimServer would merge these into a single album The Wall in the list of albums and show each disc separately without renumbering the tracks. For more details of how this works, see this section. This approach doesn't require the full version of MinimServer.