Random Mix Adding Genres

[SAL9K]

I thought I'd fixed this problem by removing ID3v1 tags from MP3's, however, still every once in a while random mix will add tracks (even FLAC's encoded with dBpoweramp 17.7) that are not from the selected genres when the random mix is started. Hmm, don't know what else to try, it is what it is, I suppose.

[SAL9K]

Just a comment...

From your post it appears that your MP3's have both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags. Seems like I've had issues in the past with multiple tag versions in MP3 files. When I find music (typically whole albums ripped back in the day using Nero which I've decided is close to garbage for ripping to MP3's) that has multiple tag versions I use MP3Tag to clean it up. First in MP3Tag I select all tracks in the album, then from the Edit dropdown select Cut and it removes all the tags. I then turn around and from the Edit dropdown select Paste and the tags are re-written without the ID3v1 tags. In the Tools dropdown in Options I set it this way so that only the ID3v2.3 tags will be written when I hit Edit -> Paste.

Ended up removing all ID3v1 tags from my library, using the steps here: https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...3v1-tags/page4

Took a while loading all of the networked files into Mp3tag, but worth it in the long run. Cleaning up tags is oddly satisfying, like a good haircut, or something. And the random mix is still working as it should, only playing the selected genres. Those pesky ID3v1 tags were running amok.

Thanks for all of the help and suggestions!

[w3wilkes]

In the ID3v1 tags the genre is a single byte and only allows for a single genre. ID3v1 does have an unofficial extension that really isn't supported by very many programs, I would guess that LMS doesn't support this extension so LMS probably ignores it if present. Here's a link to a wiki page that gives layout and location in the file of the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. It also has a table of the values in the ID3v1 genre tag byte. In ID3v2.x genre is prefixed with "TCON" in the file and can support the v1 tag byte which is defined in the id3.org link below. To view the actual tag data you will need a hex editor like FRHED.

Layout of ID3v1 & v2.x

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

ID3v2.3 tag definitions are here

https://id3.org/id3v2.3.0

[SAL9K]

Removing id3v1 tags from offending folk genre mp3’s seems to have cured the random mix. Random mix gets confused by those tags apparently.

In my mp3tag inspection and removal, I saw nothing in the ip3v1 tags that indicated classical genre, so it’s still a mystery how the LMS library scanner and random mix are picking that up.

[w3wilkes]

Do you recall the issues you were having with ID3v1 tags and LMS?

I've been using DBPoweramp since 2015 and used EAC for about a year before that. My initial flurry into digitizing my music started back in about 2001 and ripped all my 600+ CD's with Nero. Right from the start of my ripping MP3's I've used VBR with highest resolution (V0 Q0 in DBPoweramp) with all my rips. As I recall from the Nero days it only did ID3v1 and the track length time was always wrong. Back then I used something called VBRFix that corrected the track length time. Once I started using EAC and then DBPoweramp and discovered MP3Tag I changed all the old Nero files to be ID3v2.3 tags. My biggest issue with the ID3v1 tags were the limited Genres (one byte with the values being pre-defined) and Title/Artist/Album fields were each limited to 30 characters. I also found that Nero didn't support gapless so I've had to re-rip the CD's with gapless as I've found them - like Abbey Road.

[SAL9K]

Here is a thread about them.

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=810569

I am pretty sure I had issues with ID3v1 tags at some point but can't remember what they were.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

Thanks for that link. It's informative the people were having problems with id3v1, but it's still not clear as to why. I've removed the id3v1 tags, and am having success with random play only playing the selected genres. I'll let it run for a few days, and report back.

Thanks for the help, hoping this is the problem.

[slartibartfast]

Do you recall the issues you were having with ID3v1 tags and LMS?

Here is a thread about them.

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=810569

I am pretty sure I had issues with ID3v1 tags at some point but can't remember what they were.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[SAL9K]

Just a comment...

From your post it appears that your MP3's have both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags. Seems like I've had issues in the past with multiple tag versions in MP3 files. When I find music (typically whole albums ripped back in the day using Nero which I've decided is close to garbage for ripping to MP3's) that has multiple tag versions I use MP3Tag to clean it up. First in MP3Tag I select all tracks in the album, then from the Edit dropdown select Cut and it removes all the tags. I then turn around and from the Edit dropdown select Paste and the tags are re-written without the ID3v1 tags. In the Tools dropdown in Options I set it this way so that only the ID3v2.3 tags will be written when I hit Edit -> Paste.

Do you recall the issues you were having with ID3v1 tags and LMS?

[SAL9K]

Just a comment...

From your post it appears that your MP3's have both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags. Seems like I've had issues in the past with multiple tag versions in MP3 files. When I find music (typically whole albums ripped back in the day using Nero which I've decided is close to garbage for ripping to MP3's) that has multiple tag versions I use MP3Tag to clean it up. First in MP3Tag I select all tracks in the album, then from the Edit dropdown select Cut and it removes all the tags. I then turn around and from the Edit dropdown select Paste and the tags are re-written without the ID3v1 tags. In the Tools dropdown in Options I set it this way so that only the ID3v2.3 tags will be written when I hit Edit -> Paste.

Excellent, something to try! I've been stumbling in the dark here. I've removed all ID3v1 tags from the offending Folk MP3's. Mp3tag 1.4.4. on Mac had both read and write enabled for ID3v1 tags, so I had to disable the write option for this to work. Thanks much for that detail! I'll let random mix run for a couple of days, and report back.

I've been much better with tagging over the last couple of years, working with FLAC's/Mp3tag/dBpoweramp exclusively, but I do have dozens of legacy MP3 albums that I can't seem to get rid of, probably were encoded with something like Nero, you've dated me .

[w3wilkes]

According to Mp3tag, MP3's show ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3) tags. For FLAC, I use dBpoweramp r17.7, which appears to be using libFLAC 1.3.4.

Just a comment...

From your post it appears that your MP3's have both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tags. Seems like I've had issues in the past with multiple tag versions in MP3 files. When I find music (typically whole albums ripped back in the day using Nero which I've decided is close to garbage for ripping to MP3's) that has multiple tag versions I use MP3Tag to clean it up. First in MP3Tag I select all tracks in the album, then from the Edit dropdown select Cut and it removes all the tags. I then turn around and from the Edit dropdown select Paste and the tags are re-written without the ID3v1 tags. In the Tools dropdown in Options I set it this way so that only the ID3v2.3 tags will be written when I hit Edit -> Paste.

[SAL9K]

Nobody else is seeing your issue with 8.3. Do you only have one type of tag in your files? I had some files which contained Vorbis, ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

According to Mp3tag, MP3's show ID3v2.3 (ID3v1 ID3v2.3) tags. For FLAC, I use dBpoweramp r17.7, which appears to be using libFLAC 1.3.4.

[slartibartfast]

So, I've gone ahead and reverted my LMS install to the latest 8.2.1, and also a complete library rescan. I'll let the random mix play and see what happens.

I don't know that I'm parsing the change log appropriately, but nothing there stands out there to me as something that would indicate differences in behavior for library scans and/or random mix between LMS 8.2 and 8.3.

https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https...hangelog8.html

Devs: are there any differences in library scans and/or random mix between LMS 8.2 and 8.3?

Nobody else is seeing your issue with 8.3. Do you only have one type of tag in your files? I had some files which contained Vorbis, ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

[SAL9K]

> Random Mix Pane:

Do you see the same behaviour using the Default skin?

So, I've gone ahead and reverted my LMS install to the latest 8.2.1, and also a complete library rescan. I'll let the random mix play and see what happens.

I don't know that I'm parsing the change log appropriately, but nothing there stands out there to me as something that would indicate differences in behavior for library scans and/or random mix between LMS 8.2 and 8.3.

https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https...hangelog8.html

Devs: are there any differences in library scans and/or random mix between LMS 8.2 and 8.3?

[SAL9K]

Spoke too soon. After about 2 days of a random mix playing only classical tracks, it started playing folk tracks again. I didn't touch the server, or music library in that time, so not sure what is happening.

Going to remove all non-classical genre tags from classical albums, so they have a single genre, and see if that fixes it.

Is there a way to log the exact random mix commands that are executed when the random mix is generated, and when its appended to when in continuous mode??

[SAL9K]

So I didn't revert to 8.2....

It was interesting that non-genre tracks incorrectly added to the random mix were all MP3's, so I started wondering if there was some funkiness in their tags. I noticed these MP3's had their genre tags encoded in the TCON field as a single string with a ";" delimitter, E.g. TCON='Folk;Classical'. So, I cleared the LMS setting "Separator for Multiple Items in Tags" (it was set to the single ';'), and did a complete library rescan, so I could easily find all of the library tracks that has their genres encoded with ';' delimited strings. I then redid those found MP3's so that they would have multiple TCON entries, instead of a single ';' delimit string. I only had about a dozen MP3 albums like this, so it didn't take me very long. I then did another complete library rescan, and now I am *not* seeing random mix add in non-genre tracks to the mix! All classical now!

So, the question is why was LMS confused by the ';' delimited genre tags in MP3 files?