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[bblue]

Hovering over various tracks in a playlist or Playing Now, displays the above message in the information window that appears.  Some tracks display it, others don't.  Those that do and don't usually are consistent through a total album of tracks.

I've never created any stacks, and the files are HD from HD Tracks or similar.  Most of the time, but not always, this message will not appear on tracks that were ripped from CD.  The bit rate of the track seems to have no bearing, and right-clicking on the track offers no undo capability for the dual stack.

A couple of examples that display the message are Daft Punk - Random Access Memories, Christy Baron - Steppin'.  However a Count Basie & His Orchestra - Breakfast Dance & Barbeque, does not, nor does the recently released HD 2015 Remaster of 5 David Bowie albums from HD Tracks.  Some album titles do and others don't, yet there seems to be no common denominator.

I believe this started fairly recently, or I've just never noticed it before.

Is this a bug or anomaly of some sort?  Or asked, differently, what does it mean?

Thanks.

--Bill

[blgentry]

I have a guess:

When you set up a Handheld Sync definition, it does something with stacks to keep track of the original files in your library and their counterparts, in a different format or resolution, that get synced to your handheld.

Do you have any handhelds defined?  Are the files that show up as stacks files that are getting synced to a handheld?

Brian.

[bblue]

I think your guess is right on, Brian.  I had made two 'handheld' copies of this particular list (which I call 'Frequents'), one to a hard drive with the format unaltered and another experimentally to an iPhone 6s converted to m4a files and then imported to the phone via (*cough*) iTunes.

In checking this playlist for recent additions I noticed that those did NOT show the '2 items' message, whereas all the others do.

Is that something that could come back and haunt me in future lists if the same files are included?  Or why does this tracker need to be visible?  If you know.

Thanks!

--Bill

[blgentry]

I don't think there are any consequences of this stacking with Handheld copies behavior, but I'm honestly not sure.  I think it's MC's chosen internal method of tracking cached converted copies that just happens to be visible to us if we go looking.

Someone else is sure to know more details.  I just recognized the symptoms. 

Brian.

[ferday]

I asked this not long ago, too lazy to find the thread...but the short answer is the "stack" is the actual file and the handheld conversion cache.  It is to make it much faster to re-sync the same tracks at another time

The only unintended effect is I had to change some smart lists to include a file path, because the cached stacks were appearing in the smartlist as duplicate tracks

[marko]

Ferday, unless you were using the 'all' database modifier, that should not have happened. Back in 2008 when DP was working on these, he wrote:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=45680.msg313150#msg313150

In the next build the stacks are hidden a little more thoroughly.  The net of this is that if the stack is collapsed the smartlist should not find them.

And so it has been since then, as long as the stack is collapsed. For handheld cache files, why would they be anything other than collapsed?

It's possible to build a view that allows you to filter on expanded or collapsed stacks. This is a great help in my image library where I use stacks extensively. The attached gives some idea of what I have. The red text alerts when the filename and library [name] don't match, plus the 'top file' and the expanded/collapsed status of the stack are also shown in the thumb text.

Some more stack related reading:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=55782.msg379261#msg379261

To turn it off, go into options, type cache in the search box.

-marko

[ferday]

interesting marko, thanks

i can confirm that some (not all) of my smartlists started to dupe the cached stacks, and i don't generally use the all modifier.  it's not a real issue as it was a 30 second fix but it's always interesting to know