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[r1pp3r]

Probably again, but I think I've found some quirks that aren't covered (probably).

I have a rip of a set of classical CDs, with multiple artists, often multiple artists per track. Each CD has it's own folder. I want to be able to access the set via one icon in the audio view, and create multiple playlists from that list. The list will be sorted by CD number and track, which works fine.

I also made sure that each track has it's correct number of artists, each separated by a semi-colon.

Importing all the folders has a few issues:

1. Where a folder has the same artist (orchestra, plus conductor), it appears as a seperate album. Fair enough.

2. Within a folder, it picked out the first artist on the list and decided that that was the single artist, and seperated those tracks out as a single artist album.

Sometimes I wish the auto-album feature could be switched off a per-folder basis; or have a feature that allows me to select from a set of tracks and tell MC that that set is an album, or that group of albums is part of a set.

Underlying this is, I suspect, a meta-problem where tags are limited in their power to keep track of multi-CD sets with multiple artists per track and per CD. This sounds like a corner case to me Would be nice to fix with the fantastic database that MC has.

I "fixed" my problem by created another folder, and linking back to all MP3s in the set from that folder, and letting the MC ordering algorithms do their magic.

[~OHM~]

I "fixed" my problem by created another folder, and linking back to all MP3s in the set from that folder, and letting the MC ordering algorithms do their magic.

There must be a better solution than what you have done.

[mwillems]

Probably again, but I think I've found some quirks that aren't covered (probably).

I have a rip of a set of classical CDs, with multiple artists, often multiple artists per track. Each CD has it's own folder. I want to be able to access the set via one icon in the audio view, and create multiple playlists from that list. The list will be sorted by CD number and track, which works fine.

I also made sure that each track has it's correct number of artists, each separated by a semi-colon.

Importing all the folders has a few issues:

1. Where a folder has the same artist (orchestra, plus conductor), it appears as a seperate album. Fair enough.

2. Within a folder, it picked out the first artist on the list and decided that that was the single artist, and seperated those tracks out as a single artist album.

Sometimes I wish the auto-album feature could be switched off a per-folder basis; or have a feature that allows me to select from a set of tracks and tell MC that that set is an album, or that group of albums is part of a set.

Underlying this is, I suspect, a meta-problem where tags are limited in their power to keep track of multi-CD sets with multiple artists per track and per CD. This sounds like a corner case to me Would be nice to fix with the fantastic database that MC has.

I "fixed" my problem by created another folder, and linking back to all MP3s in the set from that folder, and letting the MC ordering algorithms do their magic.

The solution to the problem you're describing is the [Album Artist] and [Disc #] tags.  Using folders to control the database views will never get you where you want because the database cares about tags and not much about folders.

If you choose a single [Album Artist] for all the files in a given [Album] they will group correctly in the views.  Note that [Album Artist] and [Artist] are different tags that can have completely different values.  The views group by [Album Artist] not by [Artist] which is why you're seeing strange behavior.

So for a multi-cd classical set (let's say an opera), you would want to ensure that the [Album Artist] tag agrees for all tracks (some people choose the conductor, some choose the symphony, some use both, others do yet different things).  Then in the [Artist] field you can still have long semicolon separated lists of the different artists contributing to each track (vocalists who appear in that portion, but not in other portions).  

If you want multiple discs to appear together as one album  (without jumbling) use the [Disc #] field to keep track of which disc in the set is which and they will sort correctly in order in the files view.

The rule for whether files appear grouped as a single album in the stock views is that all files must share [Album Artist] and [Album] tags, and in some cases they must share a [Date] (but that's not universal).  Use the [Artist] tag to capture artist information that varies by track.

[blgentry]

I'm going to make up an example to illustrate what mwillems just explained.  We'll pretend that your album is called:

Classical Hits

It's got 15 different artists on different tracks and a total of 4 discs.

Here's how you set up the tags:

Disc 1:

Album Artist:  Various
Album:  Classical Hits
Artist:  For each track, you put the relevant artist in this tag, so it will change track to track
Disc #: 1
Total Discs:  4

Disc 2:

Album Artist:  Various
Album:  Classical Hits
Artist:  For each track, you put the relevant artist in this tag, so it will change track to track
Disc #: 2
Total Discs:  4

...and so on.

Note that what you choose for album artist is kind of up to you as long as you keep it THE SAME FOR THIS DISC COLLECTION.  I've seen (Multiple Artists) used.  I've seen one artist that makes sense (like a DJ that makes a big compilation for example, you can use the DJ's name as Album Artist).  Various makes logical sense too.  Again, it can be anything you want as long as you keep it the same across all discs of the same disc set.

You can make these changes very easily and quickly by selecting all the songs from the whole set, opening the Tagging Pane, and then filling out Album, Album Artist, and Total Discs.  Then select the songs from each disc and set the Disc # for each disc in the set.  Easy. 

I hope that helps.

Brian.