Mike I just updated from an R5 to the current R6 version of Asset on my QNAP nas, and seemed to immediately lose a ton of data which I’m guess is the Album Artist/Album data (??) I had been using the browsing tree settings recommended by HH on the old forum a year or two ago. I guess those were lost in the R5 > R6 conversion??
Hi Bart, OK but not sure as an Asset newbee that I understand all that entails, is it retrievable ? do you have a copy of the settings ? are they findable when the old forum archive is restored
I found them in the 2016 email from HH – I’ll try just editing again. Thanks!
1 Like
I don’t have any issues with Album Artist appearing but it could be that I have a complete set of tags.
This is what I have at the top of my tree, I use almost all the time for non classical.
If your Album artist tags are not complete you can get Asset to use the Artist tag by checking the Fill missing Album Artist tags from Artist of Compilation tags
It’s worth loading up MP3 tag, sort by Album Artist to identify the blank ones, select all of these and create an action to populate the Album Artist from the Artist tag. It will only take 10 minutes to do this and will ensure that you have something in your Album Artist tag for each album.
I’m currently experimenting with a separate instance for classical music, trying to get a usable tree where you can quickly view by composer and get to the composition quickly. I’m almost there so may start a separate thread on this.
2 Likes
Hi Richard, many thanks for taking the time with your post. It’s spot on the right answer to my problem as posted yesterday morning.
Last evening working with PerfectTUNES ID Tags program I was able to go through my library & easily identify & correct all those with empty Album Artist tag’s. That has fixed my problem up to a point, everything is now view-able, but I’m still seeing all the album covers of albums with single tracks (duet’s & compilations)
Your suggested browsing tree top line “Album Artist/Album” does fix that problem, & its exactly what I’m looking for, but it does not show DSD albums. So deep diving into DSD metadata is the task for tonight.
Thanks again.
Glad to help Mike
Another nice thing to do with Asset is to enable upstream artwork. This chooses an image for each album at random to display in the root of each album artist. I like this as it seems easier to me to jump to an artist using an image rather than reading the name.
With some effortyou can go one step better than this by downloading images of your choice for each artist and placing them in a specific directory on your NAS. Then your artist image is fixed rather than being chosen randomly from your album covers.
To do this you need to use a program like WinSCP to allow you to navigate the NAS file system. Once connected you need to locate the AssetUserUpstreamImages directory.
On the QNAP it is here:
/share/CACHEDEV2_DATA/.qpkg/Asset/data/.dBpoweramp/uMediaLibrary-v4/AssetUserUpstreamImages
Then simply copy your images to the directory. They need to be PNG images and square to look right and the name need to exactly match the Album Artist name (case sensitive).
The images get loaded on startup so you need to restart Asset to get them to appear. With a lot of images it can take a minute or so to load up.
ATB. Richard
Thanks again Richard, I’ve just gone through all the DSD albums & found most had empty Album Artist tag’s, after a few clicks & copy/pastes using MP3Tag they are all now visible.
I’m already using upstream artwork.
Thanks for the tip on fixing the art but I need to settle down & get used to what I have & see what else is possible as I learn the basics.
Happy listening
Thanks, Richard, that’s really helpful. I might give that a try. The Asset forum suggested that selection wasn’t random but took the cover from the first ripped album for that artist. Of course your method does mean having to choose which cover or image for each artist.
That’s the way it works for me, maybe different on QNAP, but on Synology it takes the first album cover for that artist.
You are probably both right, it just felt like they were random!
Anyhow, I like controlling which image is shown, prefering pictures of the artists rather than an album cover, like this.
2 Likes
Very neat! I’m not sure I’ve yet got the time to seek out all the pictures but might do it with a handful of artists for whom the album selected grates on me as clearly not the most representative.
1 Like
Slight thread drift: I have no problems with album covers except one, & I sorted it out a long while back while still using the Synology’s dumbo Media Server. ‘We’ have all the Adele albums & that morose ugly face on “25” was too much, so I embedded an other.
Hi Richard,
My music files are on Volume 1 on my QNAP so the AssetUserUpstreamImages directory will begin with /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/etc.
Otherwise, many thanks for your tip.
Hi
i’m currently running Minimserver on my Qnap NAS. One thing i can blame is that you need to ask Minimserver to rescan your librairie when adding an album. with more than 4K CD it takes more than 1 hour…
Does Asset work the same way or does it scan permanently the librairie ?
when you add an album, how long do you wait before seing it in Nstream ?
You do not need to rescan with Asset, you see a newly added album straight away.
And its no longer called nStream, its simply Naim app
PS Asset UPnP operting manual … after initial installation scan “Asset watches the Music folder for changes and updates automatically.”
Are you really using N-Stream? It morphed into the Naim app a few years ago, so maybe time for an update!
To answer your question, I believe Asset will rescan automatically to update any new files you add.
It was not updating for me when files added. Read the manual, found this: Detect & Catalog New Tracks enables Asset to scan for new tracks as set with the following interval value (by default once an hour). So, if you dont change this setting to x minutes, it scans hourly. I am using Raspberry pi, Linux OS. Synology should be the same.
thx for you reply…and for sure the app is up-to-date…but, due to habit, i (was) still calling it Nstream instead of Naim app 
My files are also on volume 1 but oddly the directory is named 2!
Thanks for the info.
Hi Bart, I seem to be more or less happy with what I have set, maybe more to fine tune in due course. But for completeness of this thread, did you find the settings as per HH’s e-mail. These would be nice to see as HH knew his way around Asset. Can you post a screen shot of the HH settings for browse tree & the config page for the record.