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Can Library be switched from sort by 'Album Artist' to sort by 'Artist' only?
#11
@rongon

Based on decades of reading various forums, it seems pretty obvious to me the easy way to start a e-fight is to argue for a specific tagging scheme for classical works (jazz is a close second). One person's meat is another's poison, to borrow an old phrase  Tongue It's a pity the musicologists didn't get this sorted before digital recordings made it possible to include computer-readable metadata as opposed to those nice printed liner notes we used to get.

I took a first look at your files and posted a private reply to you and Tim. I can't examine the tag contents before tomorrow but I've already determined that Mp3tag has done you wrong by sticking ID3 tags on FLAC tracks. The contents may actually be correct but the presence of ID3 tags is incorrect.

Regards,
Kent
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#12
Thanks for explaining the MP3Tag error. That makes sense. Perhaps that is why Moode 8.1.2 isn't able to switch between sorting by Artist and sorting by AlbumArtist on my files. It can't access the tags because the FLAC file's header is incorrect, so it always goes to its default sort-by-AlbumArtist, no matter what it's set to in Library(Advanced). ???

Now the problem is how to fix it... Is there an tag editor you know of that does not make these kinds of errors? At this point I might as well pay for one, if that's what I have to do to make my library work correctly. 

I'm having a 'legacy code' problem, it seems. When I first started using Moode Player, several years ago, its default sorting behavior was by the 'Artist' tag (not the 'AlbumArtist' tag). For the old version of Moode (up to 5.3.1), I took my entire collection of FLAC files and sorted it by 'Artist' tag (for classical albums, Artist = composer, for jazz albums, Artist = bandleader's name, leaving the AlbumArtist tag to list the names of the musicians in the group, or the names of the orchestra and soloists playing). 

When I updated to Moode 6.x.x., I noticed that my Artist list had exploded into a giant list of random composers and performing artists, with no pattern to it. I figured out that Moode no longer sorted the Library > Artist column by 'Artist'; it now sorted by 'AlbumArtist'. My John Coltrane albums were now split up into multiple 'Artists' from 'The John Coltrane Quartet' to 'John Coltrane (ts), Erich Dolphy (as), McCoy Tyner (pno), Jimmy Garrison (bs), Reggie Workman (bs), Elvin Jones (ds)' to just plain 'John Coltrane'. In Moode 5.3.1 they were all listed under 'John Coltrane', but now they were shown with all these different Artist listings. 

Must I really go through all 850GB of my digital music files and re-tag all of them? I promise you, that's gonna hurt. If I really must do that, I'll want to do it right, just once

Is there an accurate tagger I should use? Heck, if I have to pay for it, I'll do it. 

WAIT... 

To rip that Bach CD, I think I used EAC with it shelling out to flac.exe to compress the ripped WAV files to FLAC. Could the incorrect header have been inserted then? Or did MP3Tag do that?
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#13
I find that MP3TAG is actually pretty good at correcting situations where the wrong type of tag has been used. It won't tell you your FLAC has ID3, but if you open such a file, then cut all the tags (ctrl+x) and then paste them back (ctrl+p) it will put it all back correctly. ID3 tags become properly formatted for FLAC.

The way you have tagged for Artist and Album Artist happens to be the exact opposite of how I've done it, and I'm sorry to report that my way will I think get you what you want in moOde. I tag each track with the "full name" of the artist who performed it, and then use the general over-arching artist name in the Album Artist column. So You'd have "John Coltrane Quartet" in Artist, and "John Coltrane" in Album Artist. Then you sort by Album Artist and I think you'll see it how you want. This method works for me on many scenarios, from Complications (Album Artist = Various), to samplers from Record Labels (Album Artist = Record Label), to Band Leader situations such as yours (Album Artist = Band Leader)

Perhaps try to manually tag a couple that way (on copies for safety) to see if it works for you. Then what to do about the rest if it does? There's a paid for utility called BLISS (blisshq.com) which can examine your collection and then re-tag it based on rules that you specify. It tidied up my collection a few years ago (then messed it all up again when I changed a rule in an unfortunate way and didn't test it properly (then tidied it again after)). That might do the heavy lifting for you.
----------------
Robert
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#14
Just a brief note before I head out the door.

Mp3tag and others like it aren’t intrinsically inaccurate taggers. Rather, they hide details from the user. There is a menu tucked away in the Mp3tag UI which allows one to select how it deals with various tagging schemes on both read and write operations. I don’t use it much but IIRC it can reliably strip ID3 tags from FLAC files. As I said in my PM the file I examined has three tags—ID3v2.3, FLAC (in the form of VORBIS COMMENTs), and ID3v1. I suspect they all contain the same info.

 More later.

Regards,
Kent
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#15
(09-14-2022, 07:32 AM)the_bertrum Wrote: I find that MP3TAG is actually pretty good at correcting situations where the wrong type of tag has been used.  It won't tell you your FLAC has ID3, but if you open such a file, then cut all the tags (ctrl+x) and then paste them back (ctrl+p) it will put it all back correctly.  ID3 tags become properly formatted for FLAC.

The way you have tagged for Artist and Album Artist happens to be the exact opposite of how I've done it, and I'm sorry to report that my way will I think get you what you want in moOde.  I tag each track with the "full name" of the artist who performed it, and then use the general over-arching artist name in the Album Artist column. So You'd have "John Coltrane Quartet" in Artist, and "John Coltrane" in Album Artist.  Then you sort by Album Artist and I think you'll see it how you want.  This method works for me on many scenarios, from Complications (Album Artist = Various), to samplers from Record Labels (Album Artist = Record Label), to Band Leader situations such as yours (Album Artist = Band Leader)

Perhaps try to manually tag a couple that way (on copies for safety) to see if it works for you.  Then what to do about the rest if it does?  There's a paid for utility called BLISS (blisshq.com) which can examine your collection and then re-tag it based on rules that you specify.  It tidied up my collection a few years ago (then messed it all up again when I changed a rule in an unfortunate way and didn't test it properly (then tidied it again after)).  That might do the heavy lifting for you.

Thanks. 
Yes, I know what you're suggesting will work perfectly fine. 
The only problem is that I will need to go back and rewrite the tags on nearly 1TB worth of music files. What a chore! 
And please understand, the only reason I have the tags the way I do is because that is what worked in Moode before version 6 (I'm using 5.3.1). 
That changed, and now I need to re-do the tagging of my entire music library. 

Does that make sense?

PS - If you look at the Joined: field in our member boxes (to the left of our messages) you'll see that Kent and I joined this forum in April 2018, one month after Tim created it in March 2018. I've been using Moode since before then, when its support forum was on diyAudio. I'm an early adopter, you see, and a happy Moode user for about 5 years.
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#16
I downloaded the test albums and had a quick look. At first glance the tagging looks reasonable but it's Classical and so anything goes.

         

MusicBrainz https://musicbrainz.org/recording/295695...3624281a50 has the following:
Code:
Track artist:   Steve Reich
Release artist: John Adams, Steve Reich; San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart
Orchestra:      San Francisco Symphony
Conductor:      Edo de Waart
Composer:       Steve Reich

I understand the OP issue to be the presence of the Album Artist in the artists list in Tag view when the Preference setting for "Tag view artist" is set to "Artist".  The help text for that setting should probably be "Artist: List all Artists, Album Artists, Performers and Conductors" instead of the current text which erroneously omits "Album Artist.

Looking back, the Library was completely rewritten starting with 6.0.0 2019 release and underwent a lot of improvements up through 7.0.0 2020 release. After that is was mostly tweaks and bug fixes. The consensus among the devs and testers during development of the new Library was that Composers, Conductors, Album Artists and Artists are all to be considered "artists". A couple of the devs and testers had extensive Classical collections.

In the 7.0.0 releases note we have items below. Note the 3rd one down.
Code:
- NEW: Library performance improvements
- NEW: Library advanced filtering engine
- NEW: Library Artist list includes Performers, Conductors, Album Artists
- NEW: Library option for the key used to differentiate albums
- NEW: Library option to include the comment tag
- NEW: Library support for multiple occurrences of certain tags

I suppose there could be a discussion around having an option something like "Artist (strict") where only the Artist tag was used to populate the list but I don't think this would be widely applicable plus it breaks compilation albums and thus prolly not a good thing to do.
Enjoy the Music!
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#17
(09-14-2022, 02:07 PM)Tim Curtis Wrote: I downloaded the test albums and had a quick look. At first glance the tagging looks reasonable but it's Classical and so anything goes.
....

I understand the OP issue to be the presence of the Album Artist in the artists list in Tag view when the Preference setting for "Tag view artist" is set to "Artist".  The help text for that setting should probably be "Artist: List all Artists, Album Artists, Performers and Conductors" instead of the current text which erroneously omits "Album Artist.
...

In the 7.0.0 releases note we have items below. Note the 3rd one down.
Code:
- NEW: Library performance improvements
- NEW: Library advanced filtering engine
- NEW: Library Artist list includes Performers, Conductors, Album Artists
- NEW: Library option for the key used to differentiate albums
- NEW: Library option to include the comment tag
- NEW: Library support for multiple occurrences of certain tags

I suppose there could be a discussion around having an option something like "Artist (strict") where only the Artist tag was used to populate the list but I don't think this would be widely applicable plus it breaks compilation albums and thus prolly not a good thing to do.

Thank you for this information. Being better informed helps, very much.

(09-14-2022, 02:07 PM)Tim Curtis Wrote: At first glance the tagging looks reasonable but it's Classical and so anything goes.

Well, the system I cooked up works well for both jazz and compilation albums/tracks.

Artist = Miles Davis
AlbumArtist (how the artist name appears on the album cover) = Miles Davis +19
Album (album title) = Miles Ahead

as opposed to

Artist = Miles Davis
AlbumArtist (how the artist name appears on the album cover) = The New Miles Davis Quintet
Album (album title) = Miles

or

Artist = Miles Davis
AlbumArtist (how the artist name appears on the album cover) = Miles Davis
Album (album title) = Bitches Brew

and as for compilation albums,

Artist = Compilation (Latin)
AlbumArtist = Various Artists
Album (album title) = Son No Ha Muerto: Best of Cuban Son
each Track Title will have the performers listed parenthetically, e.g., 'Suavecito (Celia Cruz Con La Sonora Matancera)'

That worked fine for my needs. However, I understand that how I did the tagging was idiosyncratic, but you see, I did it that way to get Moode versions 3.x, 4x and 5x to display the Library > Tag view > Artists column how I wanted it to appear. The revamping of the Library in versions 6.x and 7.x broke my (yes, unusual) tagging scheme.

It looks like I will need to re-tag my entire music library. I believe there are over 1300 albums. Maybe more. I have something like that number of physical CDs, and I have bought some digital music files in the last 5 years or so. Perhaps I have more than 1500 albums.

OK, so I have a very important question.

Using Mp3tag:
  • What is the correct set of tags for FLAC files?
  • What is the correct set of tags for DSF files? (I have a few)
  • What is the correct set of tags for MP3 files?
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#18
I can't comment on mp3tag cos I don't use it but regarding Artist and AlbumArtist tags the generally accepted and IME the most widely used method for popular music (Rock, Pop, Jazz, etc) is to set AlbumArtist = Artist unless it's a compilation album then set AlbumArtist to the string "Various Artists".

There are some exceptions to this for example the 6-String Theory album by Lee Ritenour. It's like a compilation album in that each track is performed by a different artist but it's not a "Greatest Hits" or similar and so in this case the Album Artist = "Lee Ritenour" instead of "Various Artists".

Adding an "Artist (Strict)" option which was mentioned in a previous post is actually a trivial amount of code but it couldn't be considered until after 8.2.0 ships this month cos getting the release admin and testing done is where all the time and effort is directed ATM.
Enjoy the Music!
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#19
Photo 
(09-14-2022, 10:24 PM)Tim Curtis Wrote: Adding an "Artist (Strict)" option which was mentioned in a previous post is actually a trivial amount of code but it couldn't be considered until after 8.2.0 ships this month cos getting the release admin and testing done is where all the time and effort is directed ATM.

A. Understood that the commonly accepted tagging format is [ 'AlbumArtist' = the name of the artist ] and secondarily one can use the 'Artist (Strict)' as the name of the artist(s) performing each track. In other words, the way you organized the tags for the Lee Ritenour album "6 String Theory". 

B. As noted previously, my tag formatting is a holdover from using Moode 5.3.1 and earlier (which works 100% fine the way I have the tags now). 

After Moode was changed to conform to point (A.) above, I now have to make a choice between:

1. Re-tagging my entire music collection to 'AlbumArtist' = the name of the artist, or
2. Waiting for an 'Artist (Strict)' option to be added to Moode in 8.2.1 or later. 

I think my best bet will be to start the process of re-tagging my collection. 
Perhaps the 'Artist (Strict)' option would be a nice thing for the community to have available as a choice in future versions. 

Can you share what you use to tag your music files (FLAC, MP3, APE, DSF, ALAC, AIFC, WMA, etc.)? 

Thanks.

@TheOldPresbyope

I've attached a JPEG showing the Options screens from Mp3tag. 

As you can see, there is no option to tag a file header as FLAC. The only choices are ID3v1, ID3v2 or APE. 

I understand FLAC evolved from APE. 
- Should FLAC files have the APE header and not the ID3v2 header? Or am I misunderstanding all this? 
- Does the above mean Mp3tag should not be used to tag files for use with Moode, and I should look for a different tag editor? 

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#20
I use a Mac and my ripper/tagger is a program called XLD. My workflow is pretty simple and consists of ripping CD to FLAC. Usually the tags that XLD fetches are correct but not always. In that case I just edit them using XLD.

For doing batch retagging you will need to consult other users / posts. I think @the_bertrum posted about a nice program in this thread.
Enjoy the Music!
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