Asset UPnP question

After using MinimServer for quite some time, I’ve installed Asset UPnP on my QNAP NAS out of curiousity. I’m happy with the results and the way you navigate through your music collection with Asset … need to learn and understand more.

One thing bothers me however: the way Asset deals with identical album names in ‘Album’ view - for example: I have two albums named ‘Unplugged’ - one from Eric Clapton, the other from Neil Young … in ‘Album’ view, the tracks of these two albums are blended into one and called ‘Various Artists’ … any thoughts on how to resolve this?

I’ll try to post a screenshot:

You are viewing by Albums, I use Album Artist/Album so I can navigate by Artist and then display all the Albums by that Artist.

I have the Tree directory configuration file on a Dropbox folder if you are interested.

Plus some different folder icons, custom designed by a Graphics designer.

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I also primarily browse by Album Artist/Album, I use Album also but do not have your jumbled example problems with same title albums. I suspect in these albums there is something missing in metadata, check out the entry in Album Artist tag

I browse by Artist in the Naim app suing Asset. How do I know if this is Album Artist?

I only use Folders & Filename Browsing with Asset - it shows my files exactly as I have them on my hard drive. You can move this to above Artist in the Browse Tree in the Asset configuration, it makes life very easy.

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Whether you view by albums or artist your circumstances shouldn’t happen.

If you right click a track or highlight a list of tracks then click on Edit ID-tag you will see the meta data.

You might see Artist and further down Album Artist. My guess is somewhere you have ‘Various Artists’ which is grouping all these together under one band or singer called Various Artists. Just change it to the artist or band in question.

Using Asset I have 6 albums called Unplugged all appear separately. You just need to do a bit of digital gardening.

Thanks for all the replies, now at work but will give it a try tonight!

You’d know by how it presents albums with tracks by multiple different artists. The most obvious example would be a compilation but others where there’s collaborating artists named on some tracks. An example of this would be Tom Jones’ Reload album where nearly every track is with another artist. I make Tom Jones as the Album Artist, and when browsing through Album Artist / Album I’d only find it under Tom Jones. Under just Artist you’d probably find the individual tracks also under the contributing artists (depending on set up).

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I keep ‘Artist’ and ‘Album Artist’ the same - avoids any confusion.

Me Too - it is the most effective to best results most times

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But how do you do that for compilations and albums like the Tom Jones example? The Artist is different for every track of the album.

My ‘Artist’ would be Tom Jones and my ‘Album Artist’ also Tom Jones.

Then I would edit each track as below to include the co-artist or compilation artist after the track name.

I’m not really interested when I am looking to play something by the Cardigans to see the Tom Jones album but if I am playing this album I do want to see who is co-singing hence editing the track name.

I edit metadata to add (show) contributing artists to a principle artist album such as suggested by Andy.
In the case of real compilations, such as your e.g. Tom Jones covers, with a mix of many different artists, but not a principle artist, then I browse by Album (album name)
If I wanted to find an album with a particular track (song title) or by a particular artist, then I use the Asset feature called Dynamic Browsing.

Looking at my configs I think I have Asset set up to treat Album Artist and Artist the same. Okay, looking at that again, I don’t think these are the settings I’m looking for.

Yes thats one way to do it, but its unnecessary if your Album Artist metadata tag is correct (not empty)

Ok, thanks, I know most of them are full but I need to check. Is there a setting that does this or will I need to do get those tags populated with an alternative method?

Just as an aside where I have a compilation such as Woodstock where there is no main artist - I call the artist & artist name Woodstock then for each track I have the artist and track name.

03 Woodstock - Richie Havens - Freedom

Just a way that works for me.

Thanks for all the comments guys, I don’t seem to have the option to browse by “Album Artist/Album” … just the options below. Do I need to adapt settings?

Ha. It’s more like digital pimple popping. It’s annoying when it shows up and the only way to make it go away is to get in there and get to work.

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What you see on the Asset table/phone browse display is selected & set in the Configuration screen, bottom the screen is Browse Tree open that & you will find an adjustable/programmable table (see picture).
Each line can be set by deleting or inserting which is reasonably simple, understanding the settings effect & the purpose of root, + & ++ is another matter.
This is my browse tree setup & resultant iPad display, I like to keep it simple …


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