Same album, two different file paths?

[lorirobn]

Hi there,

Is it possible to display an album only once if its tracks come from different paths, on Logitech Media Server?

I am undertaking the task of investigating albums that are displayed multiple times on LMS. On one such album, 10 tracks are in one folder, but the 11th track is elsewhere on my drive. This causes the album to be listed twice when displaying by Album (don't ask how long it took me to figure out the cause of the duplicate display!). The ten tracks are listed on the album's first listing, the 11th track is listed on the second listing.

I can move the tracks to keep them in the same folder, which is how they should be ultimately, but am wondering if there is an option to list album only once if its tracks reside on different folders?

Thanks!

[Apesbrain]

The LMS database does not care about folders; it reads and builds its indices based on file tags. If an album is showing up part in one place and part in another then the tags are not consistent between the two sets of files. Check that your tags do not contain the DISCNUMBER field as that will also cause an album to be split up.

8/16 EDIT: I stand corrected, sorry. See below.

[dasmueller]

The LMS database does not care about folders; it reads and builds its indices based on file tags. If an album is showing up part in one place and part in another then the tags are not consistent between the two sets of files. Check that your tags do not contain the DISCNUMBER field as that will also cause an album to be split up.

+1 I would guess Apesbrains analysis is correct. The tags are most likely creating the separation.

[w3wilkes]

Squeezebox server 7.6.1 DOES care about folders so I believe LMS also cares. I created a temp library from my current library and split one of my albums that showed as a single album in my old library (the tags all match up). All I did was create a seperate directory under the artist and moved 3 songs from the original directory to the new directory. All tags in the 2 directories match for Artist, Album Artist, Album Title, Year and Genre. The only difference is a seperate directory. Did a clear and rescan. Low and behold I now have 2 albums where there once was one with each album only showing the songs in its directory, the only difference is the album is split across 2 directories. Other than cleaning up your album directories I'm not aware of a setting that will tell Squeezebox server to treat tracks in different directories as the same album if all the tags match up.

[JJZolx]

Squeezebox server 7.6.1 DOES care about folders so I believe LMS also cares.

Unfortunately, I believe this is correct. Why it is, I have no idea, but I do know that splitting an album across folders can cause library indexing problems like you're seeing.

[garym]

Mp3tag can automate moving all files into appropriate artist/album folder locations if your tags are correct. Use tag > filename option. Ultimately, cleaning up location is a good idea.

[lorirobn]

Unfortunately, I believe this is correct. Why it is, I have no idea, but I do know that splitting an album across folders can cause library indexing problems like you're seeing.

Yes, I believe this is the case. The albums were separate until I moved that one song into the same folder as the others. That is the only thing I did, no tags changed or anything. After that, only one album was displayed.

Oh well, guess I have some file moving to do. Grrrr!!

Gary, thanks for the tip about mp3tag doing that automatically. I have mp3tag and will look into that, although I am pretty particular and may want to just do it myself.

Thanks for the responses.

[emalvick]

Yes, I believe this is the case. The albums were separate until I moved that one song into the same folder as the others. That is the only thing I did, no tags changed or anything. After that, only one album was displayed.

Oh well, guess I have some file moving to do. Grrrr!!

Gary, thanks for the tip about mp3tag doing that automatically. I have mp3tag and will look into that, although I am pretty particular and may want to just do it myself.

Thanks for the responses.

You can still be quite particular. MP3Tag has so many options on how you can rename and move files around that I'm sure you can set it to automatically do anything you want for making consistent folders.

[garym]

You can still be quite particular. MP3Tag has so many options on how you can rename and move files around that I'm sure you can set it to automatically do anything you want for making consistent folders.

+1. And my earlier post had some garbled text. The option in mp3tag is "tag > filename". And once in this option you can use various masks, etc. to get it to rename files based on things in tags and/or move to different directories/subdirectories based on tag info. I find this very useful at times.

[lorirobn]

Thanks, Gary. I will give that a try on mp3tag!