Wburkett, (and others who may be interested in dong this)... Although the solution provided by Zybex does do what you asked for, in that it allows you to virtually "clone" tracks, I would recommend that you don't do it, and instead just make actual duplicate copies of the files and waste a little disk space.
There are reasons why, which have not been discussed or apparently even considered.
When you do this, you are essentially tricking MC into importing the same file multiple times. Whether you do this with filesystem links, or with the ;1 trick, the result is the same: multiple entries in the MC database that refer to the same physical file on the filesystem. If you use links, even though MC will not know the files are the same, it is important to remember that all these links go to the same physical file. Here's why that matters.
You were told that you can have different and distinct tags for each of them. But this is only partially true: there's a big "gotcha". And that is: these methods are incompatible with Saving tags to files, and with Auto-Import. I'll explain.
It's essential to be able to have distinct tags for each "virtual track" as I'll call them. That's the whole point: you want to be able to give them different [Album] tags, probably different [Track #] tags, all that sort of thing. But it's this tagging that causes the problem.
If you have "Save in file tags" turned on for any of these fields (as you should) then every time you change one of these tags for one of the "virtual tracks" that change will be written to the file. THE SAME FILE. So every time you change the [Album] tag on a different virtual track, that latest tag is written to the one real file, and that file can only hold one [Album] tag. The previous contents of the [Album] tag in the file will be lost.
The problems fall from there like dominoes. If you have auto-import turned on and "update for external changes" is turned on, then when MC notices the file has been modified, it will re-read the tags from the file. And all the [Album] tags for the 3 copies you've made will be replaced with the one [Album] tag from the one real file. And all your work is undone: the three virtual tracks are all tagged exactly the same again.
So to get around that, you have to disable auto-import. Or avoid auto-import by moving any files with "virtual tracks" to a different directory that is not subject to Auto-import.
But still, if "Save in file tags" is turned on, that one file is going to be "right" for only one of your virtual tracks, and for all the others it will be "wrong".
To get around that, you would have to disable the "Save in file tags" option for all those fields. But that causes a big problem too. Because you have to disable it GLOBALLY, for all files in your library. So [Album] would never be saved to any file tags anywhere.
And THAT has consequences too. Because if you go that route, and you ever lose your library, you've lost the tag data: you can't recover them from the file because they're not there. And if the file is for some reason removed from the library and re-imported, you also lose your current tag data for that file, and you can't get it from the file because the file wasn't being updated. Or if you copy the file to a new PC or give it to someone, the current tag data isn't in it. All of these are bad.
I always recommend people have "save in file tags" turned on for all tags that they care about, so that the data is recoverable, and the current/correct info is in the files if you ever move them. But doing that is incompatible with these tricks, simply because there are not enough places to store all these different and distinct tags, except by keeping them in the library and not in the files.
So you can do this if you want, but you need to be aware of the consequences and side effects. I would not recommend you go this route. I think you're better off just wasting a little disk space.
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Topic: Recommendation on "artificial" albums (Read 1228 times)