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[drmimosa]

I have a 10 disk set that I merged into one album (see screenshot). I can't for the life of me get it to sort by track number.

I have tried:

-Set Track no from list order
-Set Rules for File Display
-Building a view from scratch with overall different sort orders (number of plays, etc.)
-Rebuilding the filename with Move Copy Rename

Still, I get the odd behavior displayed in the screenshot, jumping from track 102 to track 13. I have noticed this on other large "hybrid" albums, where I take tracks from multi disk sets and merge them to one album.

Any suggestions?

[DJLegba]

Are you populating the Disc # field?

[aviateur]

Hi:

Make sure your Disc # contains the value 1 for the subject album if that is your intent. Note, you can also assign different Disc # values (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.). If you do, make sure the track # values for the respective tracks within a disc are renumbered (starting at 1). If you do not, the Album Type will be an INCOMPLETE type if there is no track 1 or there is a gap in the ascending sequence for the particular disc.

The next part applies for one disc (which is the case you described) or multiple discs. You renumber tracks by selecting all the tracks for a particular disc (i.e. Disc # = 3, select all the tracks associated with disc 3). Then select the following option/action:  Right-click the group selection of tracks. Then choose Library Tools > Fill Track Numbers From List Order. This will renumber the selection starting with number 1 in ascending order. The result is that you will end up with an Album Type that is COMPLETE.

Cheers,
Lawrence

[drmimosa]

Good idea, that may be the problem, I'll test this in a few hours.

Thanks!

[drmimosa]

aviateur and DJLegba,

You nailed it, the tag for Disc # was inconsistent across the albums and that messed up the "super album" track sorting. I never use this tag for my library, so I think I had ignored it in previous cases. To get the sorting I wanted, I just deleted the disk tag value and it sorted according to track.

If anybody else is interested, big consolidations like this are a nice solution for large multi-disc classical albums, ie "Guarneri Quartet: Complete Beethoven Quartets." Combined with a consistent naming scheme + "Fill in Track Numbers from List Order," adding "Link Tracks" for full works, and tagging first movements, you can set up nice full work shuffles. The shuffle is similar to live concert programs.

Thanks so much for your time, I really appreciate the detailed response. The depth of MC is amazing, I'm almost eight years in and still learning new features every week!

Cheers,

Phil

[aviateur]

Phil:

We are all right there with you. I'm currently only using MC for audio. And I feel like I only know a small slice of that. My learning curve started to decrease when I just started trying examples (expression language, options, etc.) and became actively (the last 2 months) involved with the Forum community. However, when I read some of the topics related to Networking or Video, I feel like I've landed on a different planet. It is an amazingly, comprehensive piece of software. I'm going to venture into managing MKV video files stored on an NAS some time this year. But just as you said, I'm still learning new things every week.

Cheers,
Lawrence

[aviateur]

Phil:

I did have a question about your consolidation suggestion. How would you manage this album set (see images) for playback? It is comprised of 16 albums, 262 tracks. When I request the artist, Garrick Ohlsson, the subject album appears. When I select Play and inspect Playing Now, all 262 tracks in Disc #, Track # sequence appear.

Cheers,
Lawrence

[DJLegba]

My response didn't qualify as detailed, but I will chime in on boxed sets. I have complete Beethoven string quartet sets by Vegh and Talich, and partial sets by others. The grouping on CD sets doesn't match the grouping on vinyl sets, which is completely understandable, as the publisher is simply trying to use the format in the most efficient way. And when I listen I never ever think "I'd like to hear Opus 18 numbers 1 and 2". So I create my own "album" names, and put each quartet in its own album. That makes searching for a piece and listening to it in its entirety much easier. I don't really care that the box set had 10 or 15 discs or whatever. They've all got the same cover art, and the same composer and artist, so it's very easy to see that they belong together - and it's very easy to group them this way with a "String Quartet" genre, then drill down by composer and artist or simply by artist.

The disc number field is great for live albums with multiple discs, but it's most useful for something like opera, where you might have three or four discs AND occasionally feel like listening to the whole thing from start to finish. And anywhere you have "Disc x" in an album name, remove it and put that info into the disc number field.

I have a Maria Callas set, and I do want to group these discs. Even though most of the operas have two or three discs, I'd never want to see a list of all tracks from all 70 or whatever discs, so disc number starts at 1 for each opera. To group these I've defined a new tag named BoxedSet.

Well, sorry for the boring detail. I love the way the MC database lets you organize your collection in the way that makes the most sense to you.

[drmimosa]

DJLegba, you were right on in your assessment of my sorting problem above, thanks again!

Lawrence, that's a good example of a tricky tag senario for classical music. As djl says it all depends on how you listen to classical albums. JRiver is a huge sandbox for setting up your own personal system, over time I have evolved three main ways of listening to classical works:

I want to hear a specific piece: Search, find and play. As long as tags for Tittle, Album Artist, and Composer are correct this is easy. Usually the suggested tags from a rip are wrong (Beethoven=Album Artist, etc.), so it pays to get this right on rip or import.

Browsing: Flip through album covers, pick one and play. I have a lot of different views set up, and the original reason I started consolidating albums is to avoid seeing tons of duplicate covers. For me looking at one cover is much better, it better approximates what I used to do shuffling and rearranging all my CDs back in the 90s, all multi disc sets would be in a box together.

I think I tried having an additional [Disk] view category a few years back, but I liked having fewer clicks to get to music and couldn't get the single disk albums to not have an extra category that just said (none) or (disk 1). I'm sure there is a decent work around here, but the single super album works for me.

Classical Concert Radio: I want to listen to a shuffled limited set of works, but not completely shuffled track by track and instead grouping by works. Basically WQXR from my CD collection.

I hacked a complicated system for this based on track links and tags. Track links aren't enough, because it seems the track links function as a numerical sequence going up until there is a break in continuity. So in a shuffle I would get a lot of second and third movement starts, missing the earlier movements. But I noticed that every time a first movement appeared I would get the full work without fail.

So I started tagging first movements with "First Movement" in the Comment tag. Then a smartlist can look for all Beethoven, Schubert and Mozart Quartet files with this tag, and I get a nice mix with complete works. The smartlist can be pinned to Car Radio buttons for easy access. I can also hit "Play Shuffled" on a multi disk collection/superalbum and get a different order every time that makes musical sense.

I'm sure there is a more elegant way to do this, but this tagging hack works consistently for me so I'm happy.

So that's what I would do with the Garrick Ohlsen collection, make a huge album and link all multi work concertos and sonatas and tag single movement works and first movements with a "First Movement" tag. This would play nicely with my smartlists and views.

DJL, I think your tagging system could work for this as well. If you have unique album names for individual works you can hit [Expand to Full Album] in a smartlist and you would have full works, its a simpler solution as well. I think you are right on with the idea that it should approximate how you like to listen to other media, LPs Cds Radio etc.

Hope this helps! There are other tagging solutions posted in the forum, a couple long threads on classical tags in the last year alone. Also, check out the website http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/TG/2_Classical.html for some interesting ideas for classical tags.

[drmimosa]

I have a Maria Callas set, and I do want to group these discs. Even though most of the operas have two or three discs, I'd never want to see a list of all tracks from all 70 or whatever discs, so disc number starts at 1 for each opera. To group these I've defined a new tag named BoxedSet.

Yeah, opera is tricky. Good solution! Not sure mine would work for this very well.

I love the way the MC database lets you organize your collection in the way that makes the most sense to you.

+1