Minimserver allows this too now.
What you say is true, Roger (although not for all tags, I understand), but PeakMan was trying to combine values for three different tags together - something different.
The ; separates alternative values - allowing something to fall under more than one genre for example.
You could create a custom tag with the composite data you showed.
Well yes, that’s kind of what l thought. But judging by the contributions to this forum I seem to be in something of a minority. Which leads me to the question “Am I missing something?” There must be a reason why people who are more experienced/knowledgeable/affluent than me go to so much more trouble and expense than I have done.
Regarding Roon, there isn’t, and there is no reason why there would be. It just serves the music data as it is.
(at least as long as you don’t use Roon’s DSP with ideally custom-made filters for your room).
It’s all about the convenience and metadata (amount, editability even for online streaming, filtering, searching, browsing)
If you don’t need any of this, you don’t need Roon. But if you never experienced it, it can be not obvious what the possibilities could be. I summarized my most loved features here in another thread:
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I think you mean @Loulou rather than @PeakMan – that’s me! My point was that if you want a tag value of
Karajan;Berliner Philharmoniker;Anne-Sophie Mutter
you can have that. Alternatively, you could have
Karajan and Berliner Philharmoniker and Anne-Sophie Mutter
as three Performer tag values for the same track or album. I’d have thought this would actually be more useful if you wanted to search for, say, recordings conducted by Karajan.
Yet another possibility is to have Conductor, Orchestra, Soloist as separate tags. You can then use the tagFormat property to instruct Minim to combine them into a single string with a separator you specify. Full details are in the Minim user guide. This is probably the most flexible, although more fiddly to set up.
Roger
I don’t think you’re missing anything if it works for you. The main object is surely to be able to find the music you want to play as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Like many, I started my streaming journey in the days of the legacy platform (a 272 in my case) where the streamers did not have a built in server and the standard way to serve locally stored music was from a NAS, running server software such as Minimserver. There may still be an argument for using a NAS because of the extra features these servers such as Asset and Minim offer, but if the internal server is adequate to your needs, I see no reason to change your setup.
Roger
Thanks - that clarifies things for me. If I had a larger collection of ripped music I might need something extra. But everything fits comfortably on my 1tb SSD so I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.
According to me, the NAS is not the only way. The main inconvenient is the cost and the (relatively low once all is setup) some time to settle it correctly at the beginning. The main advantage are :
-the relative protection of your data if you use RAID storage (but keep in mind that RAID is not a backup, just more tolerance to error disk) (not the best argument). And backup from or to a NAS is quite easy.
-the true advantage of storing music on a NAS is if you have several listening points in your House or flat. (could also be accessible outside the house). The data is distributed to every listen point. You only have one set of data, the good one. not 5 hard drive connected to hifi, never well synchronized between them, with a cheap sector adapter which can also make some perturbation for your high end hifi (for the purist).
-nowadays, the hard drive, even usb key, can be very large, but ten years ago, a whole collection can’t fit on a single usb disk.
-NAS need less electricity than a PC, makes less noise, and is build to be on 24hours a day/7days. So vs music server on a PC, your music are always available.
-As Roger said, their is also extra functionality for some people on a NAS
This is not a one size fit all. the cost and the time to set it up (which is not so high) could prevent to use it. But once, set up, it is quite convenient
I’m not sure Roon can upgrade your music. But, surely, it did not destroy it, and maybe there are some who diminish the sound quality by “working” too much the sound signal.
Between listening to my bluesound node via tha bluesound or via the Roon app (commanding the bluesound), I did not hear some improvement (or any degradation).
Where Roon is said to be one ogf the best music server is for the latency between the command (phone or tablet, or even a computer) to the endpoint. By design, to get the Roon label approval, there is a hardware requirement of latency which is one of the lowest of the market
Roon does nothing to the music unless one explicitly enables DSP. In this case, DSP can definitely be used for good and for bad by the user.
If the room is measured and a custom filter is designed specifically for the room (there are service providers who offer this), I am quite sure that it can have very good effects.
Of course I agree, if a user blindly changes the equalizer settings, it can definitely destroy the sound 
Agree, I can’t hear any difference either with the NDX2 and this is how it should be.
Does anybody have any experience with Moode audio (https://moodeaudio.org/), Max2play (Max2Play | Audiophile Music and Video Player, Headless Setup Raspberry Pi and Odroid), Volumio or any other which have not have been mentioned ?
I have already seen this comparison, and should be interesting for people with that question :
Just in case anyone is interested here is the definition of the most commonly adopted format for metadata:
https://id3.org/id3v2.3.0
There some interesting nuggets in it, such as from section 4.2:
Multiple genres: these should each be placed in parentheses to separate out the individual entries.
Multiple Composers, Lyricists and Artists should be separated by ‘/’
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Christ, this streaming caper is complicated.
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Not really. People make it complicated. It just has choices like anything else in this game. You choose the best option for you. Only you can decide what’s the most important aspects you require are and you find the software or hardware that fulfills this. But in the end they all do the same things some with more bells and whistles than others. Less can be more for most users.
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Thank you to remember me this. I will check this. Will probably update it with MP3TAG.
Maybe I haven’t found howto, but neither foobar nor Bluesound nor MusicBee manage several value in a single field tag… At least with ; as a separator, but maybe it is not the good way.
Foobar manage the / as a separator for multiple value tag
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My understanding is that at the moment most software is following the ID3V2.3 standard, most things haven’t moved on to V2.4 as yet.
Ah, that’s good to know, thank you.