Hi, it did occur to me that there might be a way of handling this without adding any metadata.
If you set the showAllDiscs option of the serverOptions property to true, Minim does not merge the discs. So you could set up an alternative profile with this enabled and switch over to that profile to get the individual discs displayed. It would take a few taps on the tablet to do this, but I find switching profiles quite quick.
I stress I have not tried this myself. Most of my multi-disc sets are works like complete operas and having the discs merged is exactly what I want, so the default behaviour suits me, but the suggestion above would be easy to implement and might be worth a shot.
Over the years this type of question, especially when related to classical, has come up and numerous solutions have been suggested that rely on clever tricks that can be applied to Minim, Asset or others.
However, a couple of top-level observations from me:
I am not interested in being a part of some global music library, my library is for me and my family.
I wany my entire library (about 2000 each of classical and pop CD or downloads) to be accessible on not only my Naim home gear but also in the car, caravan, on the move, etc., where Minim is not an option.
We all know what music we have bought; I/we want a simple way to get to it
Each self-contained piece of music should be easily identified and accessed for play. That self -contained piece of music could be a fraction of a CD or multiple CDs. If I have 3 or 4 string quartets by different composers on a single piece of plastic, I doubt that the performers considered that these should all be played in sequence or not at all. Similarly if an opera straddles 3 CDs, they should also be identifiable and selectable with ease.
This is where “Top-down meets Bottom-up”. Not every music reproducing device (car, caravan, on the move etc.) has all of the search options available in Minim + others, so start off with what searches are available to all and go from there.
The approach I converged on 20 years ago and still works fine for me is:
Keep the number of Genre to an absolute minimum, for example under the general category of classical I have just three; “Classical Samplers” - typically Hyperion monthly samplers; "Classical Performances - these are mainly live concerts with a mix of styles, composers, etc.; and finally, “Classical” - everything else. Further separation just generates needless zones of ambiguity (factorial the number of zones?) For everything remotely considered popular by somebody “Pop/Rock” covers nicely.
Artest, for “Pop/Rock” this is fairly simple - the performer. For classical I use the composer, as this is not a search option in all reproducing devices - last name, first name, keep it simple.
Album, again for “Pop/Rock” usually fairly simple. For “Classical” then the name of the piece; Symphony No 5 Op. 74 is all that is needed, from the level above Performer I know that it is Arnold, Malcolm.
Similarly, when it comes to Track, 2. Andante con moto - Adagio, is all that is needed.
One of the first things I learned as a young Engineer (50+ years ago) in the drawing office was “make sure that everything is precisely defined once and ONLY once”.
I’m sure that everyone will consider me a philistine but what works for us works for us!