Multiple discs shows up as duplicate albums

[erland]

Does anyone know how I can get MP3 albums with multiple discs to be shown as a single album ?

I've set: "Threat multi-disc sets as a single album"
The album is stored in directories such as:
....\My Album\Disc 1\
....\My Album\Disc 2\

I've set DISCNUMBER tags to 1 or 2 for all tracks.
The album name is exactly the same on all tracks.
The files are only tagged with ID3v2.4 tags, no ID3v1 tags exists.

The discs show up as two separate album with exactly the same name.

If I change the option to "Threat multi-disc sets as multiple album" they show up as two albums with "(Disc 1)" or "(Disc 2)" appended to the name.

I think this has worked before with the exact same music files, but it might have been in SlimServer 6.5.

I've tried it with 7.3.0, 7.3.1 and latest 7.3.2 nightly.

Has something been changed related to this which requires me to change the tags in some way ?

[MrSinatra]

i assume they have the same year as well.

have you tried stripping 2.4 tags and trying 2.3 tags?

otherwise, i think you have found a bug.

(it may be the case that setting disc numbers means SC will see separate albums, no matter what. it would be good if slim would start spec'ing out expected behaviors given certain data conditions)

[erland]

i assume they have the same year as well.

Yes they do

have you tried stripping 2.4 tags and trying 2.3 tags?

Yes, same problem

otherwise, i think you have found a bug.

If it is, it feels strange that it hasn't been found before.
I just tried it with 7.0 and I have the same problem there, so there is either something special with my setup or no one is using the "Threat multi-disc sets as a single album" option.

(it may be the case that setting disc numbers means SC will see separate albums, no matter what. it would be good if slim would start spec'ing out expected behaviors given certain data conditions)

Well, I'm pretty sure the purpose with the "Threat multi-disc sets as a single album" is to combine the discs into one album. If it isn't the option is totally unnecessary and can be completely removed.

In the FLAC library it works perfectly by the way, it only seems to affect MP3 files.

[MrSinatra]

seems like a bug then... but in regards to your last point...

i think SC calls things a separate album if there is differing folder locations, even without disc number tags. if true, that could justify the option.

but i can't speak to all this, i store files in separate spaces, and i tag album names themselves with a "(disc #)" part at the end. i like to see all multiple discs of a given album or boxset.

[erland]

I've registered a bug report on this so someone can investigate it:
http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10528

I tested it with 6.5 and there it works correctly, it also works correctly if I put all the tracks in a single directory and not a directory per disc.

[Philip Meyer]

>I've registered a bug report on this so someone can investigate it:
>http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10528
>
>I tested it with 6.5 and there it works correctly, it also works
>correctly if I put all the tracks in a single directory and not a
>directory per disc.

I usually renumber tracknum's to be continuous across all disks, and remove disk numbers. Just avoid the whole problem and treat albums as they were intended. However, I have a few mp3 albums that still have disk numbers. It sounds like they are tagged similarly to yours.

Is your issue with a compilation albums, or normal albums too? I'm guessing that it could be that you are storing each disk in a separate folder.

If so, I suggest you name them somthing like "<disc> - <tracknum> - <title>.mp3" and put them all in one folder per album.

If you don't want to do that, try adding a TXXX COMPILATION=0 tag (or set a TCMP frame, which Mp3Tag calls "ITUNESCOMPILATION").

There was a change in SC v6.x.x (not sure exactly when it was released), to solve the "Greatest Hits" issue, where albums with the same name were being merged together to form a compilation. The scanner was changed to assume that albums with the same name in different folders are not part of the same album, and thus won't merge them together by default.

A COMPILATION=0 tag on all songs will force them to be considered as a single album.

[Moonbase]

That somehow would explain why I see all samplers as a bunch of separate albums. (Single tracks from VA albums being stored in the ARTIST folders, not in some arbitrary "compilation" folders. I want to be able to see what’s from one artist, after all.)

I hope it is not as Phil describes … I only recently went through all my 25k files to remove obsolete TCMP=0 (and COMPILATION) tags …

The physical storage location of any files should have NOTHING, but NOTHING to do with how albums/compilations are sorted/grouped internally. This is what metadata is for!

[erland]

Is your issue with a compilation albums, or normal albums too? I'm guessing that it could be that you are storing each disk in a separate folder.

If so, I suggest you name them somthing like "<disc> - <tracknum> - <title>.mp3" and put them all in one folder per album.

If you don't want to do that, try adding a TXXX COMPILATION=0 tag (or set a TCMP frame, which Mp3Tag calls "ITUNESCOMPILATION").

The issue I have is with a compilation album, I haven't tried if it works with non compilation album.

It works perfectly if I put all tracks in a single directory, the problem only occurs when each disc tracks is put in a separate directory.

There was a change in SC v6.x.x (not sure exactly when it was released), to solve the "Greatest Hits" issue, where albums with the same name were being merged together to form a compilation. The scanner was changed to assume that albums with the same name in different folders are not part of the same album, and thus won't merge them together by default.

Sounds like this could be it, the strange thing is just that it works on the same album in the production setup where it uses FLAC format. So it feels a bit strange that this new logic should only affect MP3 files or am I missing something ?

A COMPILATION=0 tag on all songs will force them to be considered as a single album.

I've already tried to set COMPILATION=0 and it didn't make any difference, the album is of course considered a non compilation but the discs are still split into separate albums.

[slimkid]

Hi,

I have noticed that a while ago (moving to 7.1 maybe) with flac album (compilation). I'm positive it worked as advertised before. I just gave it up, moved all tracks into single dir (but kept discnumber tag, so I can recreate the structure later on)

K

[Philip Meyer]

I was wrong about COMPILATION=0 tags.

The url for songs disambiguates to solve the "Greatest Hits" problem, where "Queen - Greatest Hits" and "Squeeze - Greatest Hits" would have been merged into one compilation album).

However, this was a problem for users that had not changed iTunes' naff default setting of always ripping to a rigid album\artist folder structure, even for guests/compilations (so compilation tracks and guest artist tracks are ripped to multiple artist\album folders). I believe that these are seen as several different albums of the same name by each artists. Adding COMPILATION=1 would make them be merged into a single compilation album. Generally, this would already be there if ripped from iTunes (as it adds an ITUNESCOMPILATION=1 tag).

If both "Queen - Greatest Hits" and "Squeeze - Greatest Hits" were ripped into the same folder, then I think this is the case when COMPILATION=0 would be needed to stop them from being considered as a single compilation album. i.e. this should not be required often.

>Sounds like this could be it, the strange thing is just that it works
>on the same album in the production setup where it uses FLAC format. So
>it feels a bit strange that this new logic should only affect MP3 files
>or am I missing something ?
>
I think you must be missing something in your tags. I found an example of a multi-disc collection that I have in mp3 format, with each CD held in a sub-folder. I did a full-rescan today too. It's working fine for me. My folder structure is:

Barclay James Harvest\
All Is Safely Gathered In - An Anthology 1967-1997\
cd1\
cd2\
cd3\
cd4\
cd5\

I have got both DISC/DISCC (disc number and disc count tags), and DISCNUMBER tags in the format:
DISC (eg. 1)
DISCC (eg. 5)
DISCNUMBER (eg. 01/05)

I also have a multi-disk OGG album, which is appearing as a single album correctly too.

Perhaps:
1) You have multiple tag formats in your files. I recommend loading all songs into Mp3Tag, saving id3v2.3 and removing all other tag formats.
2) You have trailing spaces on one of the albums. Ensure that all album tags are exactly the same. i.e. maybe there are some trailing spaces?


Perhaps you could also have a look to see how the tags have been read into the database - i.e. query the albums table to see if the album appears in there multiple times?

Phil