How do you deal with multi-disk albums? (Naim app and Minimserver)

My current practice is to rip them into the same folder, with the same album title. That means that I get a list of 30+ songs displayed within the Naim app, with no distinction as to the different disks.
I prefer having such albums listed as one thing for browsing purposes, but my ideal would be able to see the breakdown into different disks thereafter, and maybe even have the option to play individual disks.
How do you do it? Please include screenshots to show how it looks in the Naim app if possible.

I used to just rip them as disc 1 and disc 2 and have to select them independently for playback. Then I used the ā€œtrack fromā€ feature to rip the second disc under the same album title and start the track as 14 or whatever is one higher than the first disc so it gets played back as a single album.

TBH, Iā€™m still not sure which I prefer. Some albums like the David Bowie Collection have every disc as a distinct era. Other albums like Princeā€™s ā€œSign oā€™ The Timesā€ just donā€™t fit on one disc. So I find you need a bit of common sense to apply what is most appropriate.

I Always rip multi discs with a prefix for the disk number ie 102 or 202 with the first digit indicating disk all into the same folder. Discogs, I note, uses 1-02 or 2-02 when listing multi disc albums which should also work.

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Unitiserve rips them as sepearte CDs, the app shows this properly:

Yes, I do this too when ripping (using dbPoweramp), but that doesnā€™t impact how the Naim app lists them (other than the disk number and track number determine the order). It still presents them as a single list, just numbered 1-25 or whatever.

I can see some sense in occasionally ripping to separate albums / folders (in cases like your Bowie example), but most of the time Iā€™d want them together.
But, there are occasions when Iā€™d just like to play the second disk for example, and currently I have to try to remember or figure out where that disk starts in the continuous list of tracks.
Iā€™d like the display to look something like thisā€¦
Disc 1
Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
ā€¦
Disc 2
Track 1
Track 2 etc.

And I think that would annoy me too much.

And it would annoy me to death to have Mozartā€™s piano sonatas on one disk :wink:

Yes, thatā€™s definitely a case for separate albums! (Although my ā€˜ideaā€™ for multi-disk presentation might work). Iā€™m mostly a non-classical listener so this extreme doesnā€™t affect me. (Having said that, how do you tell the different ā€˜albumsā€™ apart - the useful part of the title is hidden!)

You are right, this is a challenge. It looks better on a tablet though, where you do
see the disc numbers. Youā€™d still need to remember on which disc the music you are lookng for is on.

Perhaps other browsing options work better - by work etc.

As I donā€™t often use the Naim app that often I checked this and you are correct that they renumber into a single list, albeit in the correct order. I can see how that could be annoying!

My default when ripping an album is to include the track number in the file name. Although the Naim app does still give them a serial number you can see where one disc starts and another finishes doing it this way.

See this link.

The key here is to use the same ALBUM tag but different DISCSUBTITLE tags.

You can even use different artwork for the discs.

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I always rip separately, but sometimes make a combined playlist if needed

Itā€™s my understanding from the thread title that @GavinB uses MinimServer, in which case itā€™s the server software not the app that does the renumbering. Thereā€™s a whole section in the user guide for MinimServer that deals with how it treats multi-disc albums. Best to read this, but in summary you can set it either to collapse them into effectively one album, as seems to be going on here, or, by setting a property, to treat it as a collection of separate discs.

There is a way of doing both but that involves adding an extra tag. Details are a bit complicated to replicate here, but itā€™s explained in the user guide so best to look there if this appeals.

Roger

I knew about the capability within Minimserver, but wondered whether any folks had given it a go. I guess itā€™s not too much of an effort to try it out on one or two albums.
Thanks, folks

The easiest way (for me) to fix this is by editing the metadata with a dedicated app, I use Foobar2000. Miniserver seems to be capable to read fields like Track Number, Disc Number, Total Discs, so even if I put all the files in the same folder, Minimserver knows to sort them accordingly based on metadata. Hope this helps.

Ditto.

I have used this and it does work, for the life of me I cannot find the albums at the moment, but will re-post if I do

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