It is easy enough to change the metadata of a ripped CD composers can be listed together. Downloads of works by the same composer, however, appear at random points in my album which makes locating them difficult and frustrating.
mp3tag for pc or mac works well and easy to use. Free to use only donation requested and regularly updated.
It would help to know if you have PC or Mac, and what software you use to play your media.
FYI MP3Tag isn’t free anymore for the Mac, but it’s quite cheap and worth every penny. Just download from the Apple App Store
You are putting all the files for one album together in a folder for that album, so one folder per album?
Hi @RH608. I use Metadatics on my Macs. It uses a spreadsheet-like format and I include a column headed “composer”. Clicking on the header sorts the entries by composer name and will put all the tracks by a given composer together for easier editing. Alternatively, you can cmd-click the tracks with that composer and then just edit tags for that selection. I assume mp3tag does something similar if you’re on a PC.
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood what you’re wanting to do.
Roger
Thank you for replying. I download a complete album that includes the music tracks, cover art and booklet. This displays correctly in the Naim app but it’s position amongst hundreds is quite arbitrary which makes finding it difficult.
Robert.
Thank you for your suggestion. Seems easy to use so will give it a try. Do I edit the album before I add it to my music store, or edit it in the Naim desktop app?
Thank you for your reply. I am Mac based and store and play my files through an HDX / Superunity.
Thank you for your reply, Roger. That sounds like a lot of trouble for a technophobe to grapple with. I like music but struggle with computers. Any solution has to be simple!
Carry out editing prior to adding it to your music store. I think this then changes the date of the files to the current date so shows up at the top of the new albums.
You can only use the Naim app (I presume you mean N-Serve?) to edit CDs you have ripped.
Any other music should be added to the Downloads folder, and you need to edit it with a metadata editor on your computer. On a Mac I would recommend Metadatics. You can do this at any time, before or after the file is saved to the Downloads folder.
You get “Id Tag” with dBpoweramp. I use it all the time to edit my metadata.
Flac files??
I use both, I find the spreadsheet-like interface in mp3tag is good for updating a lot of tags and lets you get things done a bit quicker. It also has options to convert file names to tags and vice versa which is very useful if you have a download with barely any metadata which is sadly often the case with those download codes that come with vinyl.
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The OP had a problem to which users have addressed the software for editing metadata but not sure if we have addressed what metadata changes will correct the problem.
I can access my content on AssetUPNP (on a Windows server) by Artist/Album, AlbumArtist/Album, Composer/Album etc. using my apps Kazoo and BubbleUPNP.
Maybe to assist further it would be helpful to know what server/device is holding the media and what App is being used to access it, and what is the problem manifesting itself.
Thank you for your guidance. I will try and be a little more specific about the problem. Music files are downloaded as complete albums from a variety of sources (Hyperion, iTunes etc.) and saved to a folder on my iMac. and dragged into the downloads folder on my HDX. This works well but the new albums appear at random in the Album section of my n-Serve app. Ideally I want all works by, let’s say Chopin, to be grouped together. The HDX is backed up on a separate hard drive using the inbuilt software.
I should stress that my interest is listening to music, not struggling with computer programmes. Any solution needs to be suitable for someone who is not very computer savvy! Naim seem to have lost sight of this simple thought a long time ago.
If you want to browse by composer you need to use the composer tag, which you can do in N-Serve for CD rips, and in any other decent metadata editor for downloads. The albums will then appear under the composer list in your streamer UPnP input.
Do you mean a folder for each album containing the individual album tracks or a single track for the whole album?
What format are the file/files in (WAV, FLAC, MP3 etc.)?
What metadata do your files have? (or not have?).
Does your Naim app allow you to select by Artist, AlbumArtist, Album or Composer?
Thank you for your advice. The Naim app allows selection by composer, artist etc, but the metadata between record labels is very inconsistent. The app also only allows for one tag per album when in an ideal world I would like to add several categories. Very often an album may contain the works of two different composers.
At the moment I use the method you describe in 3 above. This works well and fulfils all my requirements. The problem is that I cannot edit the data of downloaded albums. From reading everyones suggestions it seems that I need a piece of software that will allow me to edit the metadata before I add it to my HDX. I will pursue this route!
You can edit it in situ in the HDX downloads folder. You don’t need to do it before uploading to the HDX. Basically the HDX downloads folder is just a location for the files.
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