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[kstuart]

I've been using Panes lately to select albums from  Genre --> Artist --> Albums

But when you do that, despite having the album listed on the screen, there is nowhere to play the album !

What is needed ( everywhere in MC18 ) is a right-click menu choice:

  Play Entire Album

right after "Play".

It is surprising that this is missing... or am I missing something ?  

[MrC]

In a panes view, you can either play from any item in the pane (right-click > Play) or double-click (behavior depends on double-click option in Options > General).  The collection of things that you click on will play (eg. Genre will play that genre, Album will play that album, etc.)

Or you can select something from the file list and play (or double click the first track of an album, again, depends on double-click option).

[kstuart]

If one uses the dropdown style of Panes, that doesn't work.

And, in any event, any place where you find a track in MC18, you should be able to right-click and "Play Entire Album".

For example, you are using Shuffle play, and after a track, you think - "I forgot that album was so good, I want to play the whole album!".

[MrC]

Right.  For drop down panes mode, you could select the album from the pane, and type Ctrl-P.  But I see your point.

[gappie]

And, in any event, any place where you find a track in MC18, you should be able to right-click and "Play Entire Album".

i would like an 'play entire album' option too.

For example, you are using Shuffle play, and after a track, you think - "I forgot that album was so good, I want to play the whole album!".

for that i made a button on my remote. i use that a lot. but an option to rightclick would be great indeed.

 
gab

[zxsix]

I can get behind this feature request!

[magnust]

If one uses the dropdown style of Panes, that doesn't work.

And, in any event, any place where you find a track in MC18, you should be able to right-click and "Play Entire Album".

For example, you are using Shuffle play, and after a track, you think - "I forgot that album was so good, I want to play the whole album!".

+1

 

[kstuart]

There is a related issue, that is both necessary for a "Play Entire Album" choice, but is significant even if that feature is not implemented.

This is Preferred Version.

When I was using a different music player, there was a long discussion about this issue there as well.

This refers to when you have different versions of the same album:

- MP3 rip for portable devices
- Original/early CD
- Remastered CD (that sometimes sounds better and sometimes sounds worse)
- "Deluxe" CD that contains alternate takes, unissued tracks, live versions of the same tracks, etc.
- High Resolution version from places like HDTracks in 24/96
- SACD in the form of an ISO file.
- High Resolution version from places like HDTracks in 24/192

Any PLAY ALBUM function needs to have a way to designate the preferred version for playback.  In many situations, MC18 will currently play every version of Track One, followed by every version of Track Two, etc. requiring the user to clear the playlist of all the other versions of each track.

Some method is needed to deal with this issue.   One possibility is for MC to support a Field, perhaps called "Priority", whereby one can indicate the preference as a ranked order (for situations where the presence of particular versions can vary due to availability of networked drives).

The "Priority" Field is the only way that can deal with cases where some otherwise preferable versions are undesirable due to excessive "Loudness Wars" compression.   Once the user has compared versions and has chose a favorite, that can be registered in the Priority Field.

One workaround would be to use the existing RATING field, but I think that some users have uses for that field which they want to be independent of the sound quality, namely for Shuffle and Party playback of only tracks that they prefer for artistic reasons, rather than sound quality.

[MrC]

You have the ability to group Albums in any way that suits your needs and play the album version you want - you're just not doing that currently.  A priority field would act like Stacks - you can currently stack your versions and have the top of stack always used for playback.  Lower files are ignored.

I think your usage case is atypical, but perhaps not uncommon.  I'd suspect the general usage is just one version of an album, so default views and behavior works as expected.

Once you get into having multiple versions of the same album, and name them identically, I think it might be incumbent upon the user to now start customizing the view towards the needs.

[kstuart]

From what I read in the introduction of Stacks:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=44063.0

the idea is different versions of the same thing, such as high quality, large filesize raw versions, and then compressed small filesize, more practical versions.

While this is the case sometimes with Albums, it's not really the situation which I am talking about.

The situation I am talking about is different versions of the same work of art, that have differing quality due to different master tapes used, different engineers involved, and most importantly, different goals.  If you are not aware of the issues described in the following link, it is highly important to all music lovers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_wars

[MrC]

Don't let examples limit general applicability.

You can stack anything you want.  The key concept, the topmost item (top of stack) is used for playback, while lower-level items are ignored by default.  Metadata can pass to lower members, but by expanding the stack you can control playback or tagging specifically.

[kstuart]

Don't let examples limit general applicability.

You can stack anything you want.  The key concept, the topmost item (top of stack) is used for playback, while lower-level items are ignored by default.  Metadata can pass to lower members, but by expanding the stack you can control playback or tagging specifically.

The problem seems to be that MC does not have any sort of "album" concept at all, other than the Album tag.

I have two versions of a particular album, where the tags are the same, but one is a different mastering and also has bonus tracks.  If you play the "album" in MC18, it will play Track One followed by Track One followed by Track Two followed by Track Two.   If you select all the tracks, and click on "Stack" then it shows only Track Four until you expand the stack.

So, it seems that you cannot stack two albums, you can only stack individual files. (By the way, even if you stack separately each "track one" and then "track two" and so forth - which could get laborious, especially for a multiple disk set - it still wouldn't work, because bonus tracks that are present on one release, but not on the other release, would not "stack" because there is only one.   Then, if the preference is for the version that does not have the bonus tracks, they would still play anyway.)

As always, I'd be happy to have missed something...

[MrC]

MC does have an album concept - it performs some special logic in certain cases.

What you want to do is modify your view or groupings to show Albums distinguished by your variations.  For example, you could use Keywords to designate your variations by adding SACD, Hi Rez, Remastered, etc.  Or use any calculated variation of these.  I've suggested using a Format tag, which predefined acceptable values that you can select.

How you modify a view depends on how you generally want to view/play your music.  Some folks like to use categories and drill down into an album to see future refinements by format.  Others would prefer to see a series of panes, where Album is selected followed by Format, or alternatively, by selecting a Format from pane and then selecting the available albums for that format.

Suggestion: define how you want to work, and we can explain how best to proceed.

[MrC]

You can stack groups of files automatically.  See the Advanced auto-stack variations available.

[kstuart]

What you want to do is modify your view or groupings to show Albums distinguished by your variations.  For example, you could use Keywords to designate your variations by adding SACD, Hi Rez, Remastered, etc.  Or use any calculated variation of these.  I've suggested using a Format tag, which predefined acceptable values that you can select.

Let's start from the beginning.

The beginning is CDs.

I rip a CD into a folder.

Over the last 30 years of the existence of CDs, the same collections of tracks have been released many times - sometimes dozens of times, in some cases hundreds of times, if you take into consideration different countries' releases.   Type your favorite album into the search at discogs.com to see this.

Sometimes the releases are the exact same audio files, but usually not.

So, there is an album - for example "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis - that consists of a group of recordings by the artist.  But an MC user might have ripped several different CDs into several different folders, each of them being the same album (eg "Kind of Blue").   All of these folders have audio files that  have the same tags - because only the audio data will be different.

Faced with different files from different folders with the same tags, MC18 puts them altogether and plays all the Track Ones followed by all the Track Twos and so forth.

So, rather than any organization of specific variations, MC18 first needs some sort of awareness of the idea of different variations.   The Album tag should remain just the name of the album ("Kind of Blue") - it's not correct to put every possible variations explicitly into the Album tag - we don't want the Theater View to show the Album as "Kind of Blue mastered by Steve Hoffman with correct pitch error compensation but from a copy of the original master tape and without bonus tracks".

When playing folders from Windows Explorer, this issue does not arise, because each individual CD is ripped into an individual folder, and the user chooses that folder in Windows Explorer.

The keyword may not be necessary - difference between releases that are SACD or FLAC or MP3 will be self evident in the MC18 display.

But what is needed is for MC18 to keep separate two different copies of the same tracks with the same tags, that have different audio data.

There also needs to be some recognition by MC18 when there are multiple tracks with the same track number.  (That would also help deal with the problem that is being mentioned by some other users where albums ripped as a single file with a cue file, end up as individual tracks plus the whole album again.)

If this requires that something is added to the software, it could, of course, be optional (for those who have some sort of need to have multiple tracks that are the same track number).

[MrC]

I am well aware of the problem you are wanting to solve... no need to belabor this.

What you've not described is how you would like to see your albums grouped.

It is trivial to use (any component of) Filepaths as the basis for breaking apart your albums into useful view groupings.

Suggestion: your goals will be better served if you ask questions such as "How do I accomplish X?" because we can offer suggestions that will suit your goal.

What do your album folder paths look like?  We can grab information from this path and use it to group your albums uniquely.

[kstuart]

(First I should say that I do have a habit of including background information that is clearly already known to some readers, just in case some other reader of the post is not aware of it.)

I did find one thread from two years ago on the exact same subject:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62458.0

which was somewhat helpful in clarifying the state of affairs.

I then did some experiments with Panes, and discovered that MC is mostly independent of any pre-existing grouping of files (outside of the default Genre-Artist-Album setup).  This has some clear advantages in allowing users to highly customize.

For example, in one case I had two different copies of an album in two folders, identically tagged, and using default Panes view, a right-click Play of the Album would play both track ones followed by both track twos.

But if I changed the right category to "Year-Album", since one of the copies was incorrectly tagged as having year "2012", then the right category would separate the two copies as "1965 - [album name]" and "2012 - [album name]" and thus right-click Play would only play one copy at a time.

So, now I am seeing where you are going, when you mention filepath or filename - creating a right category that is forced to be only one folder.

However, I think that MC should have some (optional) recognition that all audio files in a folder are a group.  Since MC includes CD ripping capability, it recognizes a CD concept (as opposed to just independent "songs").   (In fact, earlier in the thread, when I was referring to "album", I'm really more referring to "CD" or at least a grouped release of tracks.)

Currently, when a category is selected like Genre or Artist, if there are multiple albums, it lists them separately in the File List.   But when an Album is selected, it puts multiple versions of the same album together as one album, again with all the Track Ones first, followed by all the Track Twos, etc.

So, on the one hand, MC is treating all categories as equally able to be listed and played, but on the other hand, it is not recognizing "Album" as also able to have multiple sub-entities, even though it allows Artist and Genre to have multiple sub-entities in the File List.

If my hypothetical "Group all audio files in a folder" option were ticked, then the File List would show - for example - each separate version of "Kind of Blue by Miles Davis" - the same way it currently shows separate albums in the File List if you select Artist "Miles Davis".   (Lacking any other input, the folder name could be shown to differentiate the different versions.)

(By the way, in the File List, there is currently no way to play one of the listed albums by itself, something which prompted the original post in the thread.)

[MrC]

There is a lot of misunderstanding about MC here.  I'm not probably going to be able to clear that up.

Perhaps you can answer the question I asked:

    What do your album folder paths look like?
  
From this, I mean something like:

   M:\Music\artist name\album name\format variation\track # - track name

[kstuart]

Since you asked:

...\_Genre\Artist - Album *

* is followed by other identifying information in either brackets or parentheses, unfortunately I have never gotten around to deciding on standards.  Tracks are:  NN - track title

If I have a lot of CDs by the artist, then:

---\_Genre\_Artist\Artist - Album *

If I have a lot of fan-traded artist-authorized live recordings of the artist (see etree.org for more info):

---\_Genre\_Artist\_Live\XXyear-month-date where XX is the etree abbreviation for the artist

and then commercial releases are in:

...\_Genre\_Artist\_Releases\Artist - Album *

[MrC]

So does the * contain the format variation?

I'm looking for what pieces we can pull to use to augment your album groupings.

[kstuart]

I have just noticed that when Panes is not used, the File List has a drop down menu to specify how it can be grouped and sorted.

If I do Group by Filename (path), then it shows both versions of the album separately, and it eliminates the Track One, Track One, Track Two, Track Two problem.

However, in order to play one version, I have to select the individual files with the mouse.  The Group title cannot be right-clicked, unlike the category entries in the Panes view.

[kstuart]

So does the * contain the format variation?

I'm looking for what pieces we can pull to use to augment your album groupings.

As I mentioned, there is nothing systematic, since it has all evolved over years.

So, currently I would have something like:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)[2009 remaster][FLAC]

although some might use parentheses instead of brackets.

But a lot of my CDs are not yet ripped, so I am open to modifying it.

I am also open to using the facility to rename the folders from tags (especially since I have a full backup ).

[MrC]

So try something like this to give you an idea.

In your view, change your current Album category with one of the following expressions:

   [Album]ifelse(Regex(filefolder(), /#([[(].*[\])])$#/), - [R1])
   [Album]ifelse(Regex(filefolder(), /#.+([[(].*?[\])])$#/), - [R1])
   [Album]ifelse(Regex(filefolder(), /#.*((?:[[(].*?[\])]){2})#/), - [R1])

Try each of them.

These simplistically grab portions of that * stuff and places the capture after your album name, allow your albums to be split on filepath location.

This should help you see that you can use metadata from the files (including the file's path and name) to construct groupings the way you want.  We can refine the above to pull pieces, such as FLAC, and/or 2009 remaster, or whatever.  All we need to know is that the info is there, and if there is some pattern (e.g. parens, brackets, whatever), you can pull it.  Since you can pull it, you can then put it into a field and use that instead later on.

If you create a calculated user field using on of the above expressions, you can then use that field as your Group By criteria.  Problem solved.

It would be good for you to make your folder directories more consistent - it will help your Rename rules.

[kstuart]

Okay, so for Stacks ...

How do I select specific groups of Files and select one group to be the Top of the Stack and for that group to represent the Album ?

(From what I see, if I select all the files that are part of all the versions of the Album, and then do "Stack", it will just stack all the files with one file as the Top (like a group of cat pictures, with one picture as the Top).)

[fitbrit]

In your view, change your current Album category with one of the following expressions:

   [Album]ifelse(Regex(filefolder(), /#([[(].*[\])])$#/), - [R1])
   [Album]ifelse(Regex(filefolder(), /#.+([[(].*?[\])])$#/), - [R1])
   [Album]ifelse(Regex(filefolder(), /#.*((?:[[(].*?[\])]){2})#/), - [R1])

Thanks very much for taking the time to generate and post these!

[kstuart]

Thanks very much for taking the time to generate and post these!

He should change his username to "MrRegex". 

[JustinChase]

For what it's worth, I solve this with comments and notes.  Usually comments are enough, but sometimes there needs to be more info, so I put it in notes.

In the case of a very few albums, I even need more than comments and notes (sample and bitate, for example) to designate/specify which album I want to hear.  See below for one example of an album I've collected a little too heavily.

With that said, I also would like to see options 'play entire album (from here onwards)' and 'play entire album (from beginning)' in the r-click menu; so I don't have to go to a special view to play a whole album.

[kstuart]

Justin - unless have an SQ decoder, that Quad rip is pointless, which is a shame, because it is the only "correct" version of the album.

I say that because the album was recorded with the intention of being in 4 channels.   All the various sound effects were specifically chosen for how they sound in surround.   If you listen to Any Colour You Like from the original Quad with surround playback, you'll understand what I mean.

If there had never been any Quad, the album would have been different.

I saw them live shortly thereafter, and they used Quad in the concert hall for the performance, despite the increased expense and effort required.

It's possible to find fan conversions of the Quad mix to modern surround formats like DVD-Audio 5.1, on the Internet...

(not to mention that the original two track stereo master tapes were worn out years ago - none of the later  stereo remasters has the same "zip" of the 80's CD's)

[JustinChase]

Yeah, I've been reading and watching a lot on that mix, and the Guthrie mix.  One of the quad rips I have is from the Immersion set, which is the original quad mix, from the original tapes, on 96/24 in 4.0 channel.  I'm not sure if they actually went back to the original, original tapes for that one, but I know they did for the Guthrie 5.1 mix.  Gilmour says that the album that they released originally is actually 3rd gen tape for most of it and they went back to the original tapes to mix for the SACD, but it's never made clear if they did that for the parsons mix also, but I suspect they didn't.

One of these days, I'll have the house to myself, and I'll give it a proper listen, but so far, I've not had the chance yet.