Non-Album tracks being listed under Album?

[Milhouse]

I have a track with the following filename:
"D:\Music\MP3\Various\Air - Kelly Watch the Stars - Extended Version.mp3"

The Album ID3 tag is "Moon Safari".

I have a seperate directory containing all of the tracks from "Moon Safari" in "D:\Music\MP3\Air\Moon Safari", and the above track (Kelly Watch the Stars) is being listed in the Moon Safari folder whenever I browse the album Moon Safari by Artist or Album - is this correct behaviour?

If so I've not noticed it before - ideally I don't want the track from "Various" listed along with the other tracks from "Moon Safari" even though the "Various" track contains the correct Album ID3 tag. I would prefer it if the tracks from "Various" were listed only in "All Songs" or under "No Album", although I appreciate this may not make sense as the ID3 tag correctly states to which album the track corresponds - only it doesn't correspond exactly as the track from "Various" is only a remix of a track from "Moon Safari".

My point is, is it possible to only have tracks that were on the album to appear in the album folder (ie. those tracks that are physically located in the "Moon Safari" directory) and for Slim Server to index tracks from elsewhere on the filesystem in "No Album" or "All Songs"? Slim Server seems to be collating all tracks from wherever they appear in the filesystem and listing them under the corresponding album as per the ID3 Album tag which means I have remix tracks appearing within each album and tracks are now totally out of sequence.

Hope this makes sense! If this is expected behaviour is there a preference to stop Slim Server collating tracks? :)

Using: 6.1b2 on Windows 2003 Server

[Patrick Dixon]

I think it's doing exactly what it should.

Slimserver gathers tracks with the same Album tags into one album, wherever they are in the directory structure. For common Album titles like "Greatest Hits", it also looks for the same artist name.

AIUI, Slimserver only uses directory structure if there are no tags or if it can't make sense of them.

It's odd though, that your compliation is not tagged with the name of the compilation album. For example: if it were called "Ambient Remixes", then the track would be tagged

Artist=Air
Track=Kelly Watch the Stars
Album=Ambient Remixes

and it would appear in slimserver with the other tracks from the compiation album rather than with the tracks from Moon Safari.

[Milhouse]

Hi Patrick and thanks for your reply - I expected as much, as it does seem reasonable behaviour, and I guess I've just not noticed it until now.

I suspect the best option - as you suggest - will be to give this track (and any others like it) a more accurate album tag which will allow Slimserver to index it correctly.

Thanks again
Neil