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[blafarm]

Can someone please shed some light on why some of my rips, which are all in wav format, are displayed as "Multiple Artists" when I park my mouse on the album cover while in Album Thumbnail mode? The text display of the track that's playing is correct at the top of the app and the file name makes no reference to Various Artists or Multiple Artists.

Thanks

[jleerigby]

First of all the view scheme that you are using is referring to the album artist auto field instead of the artist field.  Most people find album artist auto useful as it will automatically work out if the album is single or multi-artist.  For an album artist to be considered a single artist by the album artist auto field the following must be true:

- The album artist field (not album artist auto) has been manually set.  This overrides the album artist auto calculation.

or both these statements are true:

- All tracks reside in the same directory (if they don't check out the library tool, Rename files from properties and use a directory rule like artist\album making sure that 'use assorted on multi-artist albums' is checked)
- All tracks have exactly the same name in the artist field.

[blafarm]

Thank you, I think I understand what you are saying but I was unaware that the view scheme I was using was referring to the album artist auto field. I would rather not let MC make those decisions for me as I have spent hundreds of painful hours perfecting the naming scheme of my wav files.

I have looked high and low, and cannot figure out how to change the naming scheme for the album thumbnail view to artist album. For the record, all of my wav files are in the same root directory and do not reside in any subdirectories. Any advice?

[jleerigby]

Do what I said about renaming albums so they are in a logical heirarchy like artist\album.   It really is unusual for anyone to chuck all files in one root folder - a bit like putting all your clothes (socks, shirts, hats, suits etc) in one big box!  I prefer to use drawers and cupbaords so I can find stuff easily.

If you disagree with me on this that's fine - I makes no odds to me - I just want to advise you how to solve your problem.

Renaming your files like this will ensure that all or most of your single artist view schemes are automatically deemed single artist, hence the name of the album artist will not be calculated as Multiple Artists.  You can then go through the ones that are still (incorrectly) deemed as multi-artist and override this by putting teh artist name in the album artist field.

I think (and I haven't tried this and it's not my preferred method) another way around your problem would be to copy the artist name field to the album artist field (using move/copy fields) but this will only work if you are careful to select single artist albums.  Don't try this without backing up your library first and only on a few files to see if it works for you.  Like I said this is not the recommended method - it's a fudge and improper use IMO of the very use Album Artist Auto feature.

If it were me I would just sort out that directory structure.

[blafarm]

JLee,

Thanks for your response. I have chosen to store all of my wav files in a root directory for a variety of reasons, including being able to see and make global naming and genre changes using programs like Flash Renamer without having to enter and exit directory structures unnecessarily. This methodology has saved me countless hours while cleaning up massive tagging innacurracies from the freedb database.

My wav naming convention automatically sorts the albums in a very predictable and logical way:
Artist/Year/Album Title/Track Number/Track Title/Genre.
Here is a sample of the convention:

Al Green_1995_Greatest Hits_01_Tired Of Being Alone_Rock.wav

I create the library by importing the media and then using Library Tools>Fill Properties From Filename.  ...And yet, out of 800 albums, MC seems to display this particular album (along with 10 other single-artist albums), as Multiple Artists when I park my cursor on the cover in the Album Thumbnail view and in the Album/Artist (auto) column in the Detail view. I have also noticed that the Tag Info window doesn't even offer Al Green in the Album/Artist (auto) pull down menu - in spite of the fact that Al Green is listed in the Artist fiels.

I'm feeling pretty stupid right now. I am having trouble understanding why MC is doing this to 10 or 11 of my 800 albums, when there is nothing different about the file name structure.

I appreciate your advise to change my directory structure but I would prefer to leave it as it is - if possible. I cannot figure out how to force MC to acknowledge these 11 albums as "Not - Multiple Artists" without manually editing each song in the Album/Artist (auto) column for 11 albums.

Is that my only option? Is there no way to completely turn off the auto feature and let MC depend solely on the info in the Artist and Album columns? Thanks for your response.

[Nolonemo]

Blafarm,

To each his own, but I prefer keeping stuff in a folder hierarchy, mainly so I can access stuff without using a tag reading program (it's a holdover from having a folder-based portable before I switched to my current tag-based Zen).

Anyway, it sounded like one of your problems with the folder route was not being to open the lot in a mass tagger.  Does the program you use have a "resurse subdirectories" feature?  If so you would be able to open everything from your root directory.

As I said, a little off topic....

[blafarm]

Nolonemo,

Thanks for motivating me to look closer at my renaming application. Yes, it does support Files, Directories and Subdirectories. I'm going to consider the directory structure that JLee suggested, although it would take a couple of days, as my collection is quite diverse.

I would still like to know if there is a technique to force MC to behave in a uniform manner.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[jleerigby]

I would still like to know if there is a technique to force MC to behave in a uniform manner.

You have to options like I already said:

1. Override the album artist auto calculation by manually entering album artist for each album.

2. Obey the rules that MC expects when calculating the album artist (fix your folder structure and ensure that all files share the same artist name).

[blafarm]

Thanks JLee,

I think I've finally got it now. I didn't realize that I could manually change the info in the "Artist/Album (auto)" column to solve the problem.

Thanks for all of your help.