Multiple formats of the same album.

[lightsout 144]

I have some albums in my music library in high-res flac and normal flac. I like to keep a single library for music.

The problem is that Emby lumps them all in the same album, so the songs are repeated. Any way to get it to break things up besides making a second library?

 

[Happy2Play 8282]

Yes as the album/tracks will be identical.  Currently there is no way to have them separate as different libraries will still merge them.

Only current way would be if the album by chance has different versions and tag one one way and the other differently.

So for this specific example one Digital Media and the other CD per id.

Release group “Visions” by Norah Jones - MusicBrainz

[lightsout 144]

2 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Yes as the album/tracks will be identical.  Currently there is no way to have them separate as different libraries will still merge them.

Only current way would be if the album by chance has different versions and tag one one way and the other differently.

So for this specific example one Digital Media and the other CD per id.

Release group “Visions” by Norah Jones - MusicBrainz

Thanks that's helpful,

Is it true that they will even combine with different libraries? That seems really odd, why would two libraries be able to work together like that. I feel like I have seen posts about this but hadn't run into it myself.

[Happy2Play 8282]

14 minutes ago, lightsout said:

Thanks that's helpful,

Is it true that they will even combine with different libraries? That seems really odd, why would two libraries be able to work together like that. I feel like I have seen posts about this but hadn't run into it myself.

Multiple libraries mentioned here but there are others.

 

So currently you have to find a tagging way to make each album unique.  Then you will probably have to manually edit metadata to easily distinguish between them.

[lightsout 144]

2 hours ago, Happy2Play said:

Multiple libraries mentioned here but there are others.

 

So currently you have to find a tagging way to make each album unique.  Then you will probably have to manually edit metadata to easily distinguish between them.

Cool thanks man.

[jiggity 22]

On 21/03/2024 at 15:02, Happy2Play said:

Currently there is no way to have them separate as different libraries will still merge them.

Yes there is, i have been through this with Luke.
Emby identifies based on three things, The ALBUMARTIST, The ALBUM and the MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tags

The downside to this is the ID process is it is not very smart.  Emby can have 2 albums with the same ALBUMARTIST, and ALBUM tags, but one will have MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID and still stack them.  There needs to be one of 2 things to tell Emby they are 2 separate albums

The ALBUM tag must be different, or the MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tag must be different when the ALBUM_ARTIST tag is the same.

You can spoof fake MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tags, but be aware that  will generate errors in library scans
OR, you can add additional info to the ALBUM tag to tell the versions apart; for example  Rock LP [FLAC]

[Happy2Play 8282]

8 minutes ago, jiggity said:

On 3/21/2024 at 2:02 PM, Happy2Play said:

Currently there is no way to have them separate as different libraries will still merge them.

Yes there is, i have been through this with Luke.
Emby identifies based on three things, The ALBUMARTIST, The ALBUM and the MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tags

The downside to this is the ID process is it is not very smart.  Emby can have 2 albums with the same ALBUMARTIST, and ALBUM tags, but one will have MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID and still stack them.  There needs to be one of 2 things to tell Emby they are 2 separate albums

The ALBUM tag must be different, or the MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tag must be different when the ALBUM_ARTIST tag is the same.

You can spoof fake MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID tags, but be aware that  will generate errors in library scans
OR, you can add additional info to the ALBUM tag to tell the versions apart; for example  Rock LP [FLAC]

Yes that is what I said above.  Assuming you tag your media per musicbrainz versions.

As this album has 5 versions.

https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/329cb3f2-b650-4b38-bcd9-2fb2c6f3b8b9

But by default with just a AlbumArtist/Album tag it cannot be done unless you make them different per different tagging.  As Path becomes irrelevant.

[jiggity 22]

1 minute ago, Happy2Play said:

As this album has 5 versions.

And if you go to discogs it has 13 versions

which is why I have requested that Discogs release ID is added as a music ID form with the Discogs plugin

[Luke 37066]

On 3/23/2024 at 5:19 PM, jiggity said:

And if you go to discogs it has 13 versions

which is why I have requested that Discogs release ID is added as a music ID form with the Discogs plugin

Yes but I don't think that's the solution for this particular issue. We just need to be able to separate per library.

[jiggity 22]

4 minutes ago, Luke said:

Yes but I don't think that's the solution for this particular issue. We just need to be able to separate per library.

The solution seem simple, but perhaps there are back end reasons that separate music libraries are not treated as individual libraries

 

[Ronstang 202]

I have many artists where I have not only all their albums but many times I also have many versions of the same album, including different remasters and different country releases.  I use CueTools to generate FLAC tracks since most of my albums are stored in image form with a cuesheet.  At the same time I go to great lengths to make sure each album has the catalog number and the Label of release in the filename so I know exactly which version of the album I am dealing with.  You would be surprised how much difference there is in sound from on release to another many times. 

I used to buy a lot of used CDs on Amazon and I was always particular about the catalog number and Label because all releases are not the same.  Case in point I have an album from the Romantics in two versions, the catalog number is the same but the label is what determines the release.  The original release was on the Nemperor Label, where as the re-release was on the Nemperor/Epic Associated Label. The difference being the original release has the proper sound and dynamic range and the re-release is garbage since Epic in it's lack of wisdom decided with the mass adoption of CD Players a remaster was needed except all they did is raise the gain in all ranges thus destroying the dynamic range and quality of sound.

Would there be a way to use the the release, which is a combination of the catalog number and record label, which is unique to a particular release, to separate these albums into unique albums as the OP is requesting?  The barcode is another way as it differs slightly from release to release and sometimes is completely different. 

I'm sure there would be a way to use this information in the tags to separate albums as long as emby could take advantage of that exact tag field.  I mostly have see people put this particular information in the comments section.

Edited March 26 by Ronstang

[them8os235 16]

This is yet another reason I exclusively use the Folders view with my Music libraries.

Edited March 27 by them8os235

[Ronstang 202]

3 hours ago, them8os235 said:

This is yet another reason I exclusively use the Folders view with my Music libraries.

That would be very cumbersome for me, I have thousands of folders and subfolders.  I have about 6000 albums.  I have been collecting music for almost 50 years.  I don't have time to mess with my music collection now but when I get around to it I will find a way through tags to keep multi-versions of albums seperate.

Edited March 27 by Ronstang

[them8os235 16]

11 hours ago, Ronstang said:

That would be very cumbersome for me, I have thousands of folders and subfolders.  I have about 6000 albums.  I have been collecting music for almost 50 years.  I don't have time to mess with my music collection now but when I get around to it I will find a way through tags to keep multi-versions of albums seperate.

Ya got that right!   It's taken me countless hours of time cumulative over many months away from my loved one [lol] to properly organize and tag my music library.  Like you I've been at the digital music game since the very first CDs ever released I bought to play on my 1st gen Magnavox CD player they released, up to hundreds of purchased off HDTracks today.  My count is @ 2078 artists,  5780 albums, 50221 tracks.  I used a bunch of freeware/community supported tools, to paid tools to get it done.  As you're already aware of, massive effort, but I'm so very happy to have such a clean directory structure and well tagged library now.  Just saying don't get overwhelmed that it's too much: "You can do it!" [said in the voice of Rob Schneider in some of the stupider Adam Sandler movies -lol ], when you're ready.  

BTW, I should elaborate my prior statement.  The use of Folder View is limited to when I use Emby for music.  I don't like album view for more reasons than this.  But when I use Roon, I'm in the same boat as you. As they are philosophically and aggressively against ever allowing Browse by Folder (they do have a thing called 'Focus' that could be used to come close, which I'm not too thrilled with, but I digress).  So in that case for the few dozen HD albums that were tagged the same as other formats causing conflict I utilized a batch tag editor to alter the album name to include the format.  So that didn't take too long, in my case at least.

[pwhodges 1531]

13 hours ago, Ronstang said:

That would be very cumbersome for me, I have thousands of folders and subfolders.  I have about 6000 albums.  I have been collecting music for almost 50 years.  I don't have time to mess with my music collection now...

Me too (well, over 60 years in my case), which is why I use solely the folder view.

(1) Most of my music files have no metadata (a significant proportion is my own unpublished recordings), so the Emby process simply doesn't work.

(2) I'd rather listen to the music than spend hours, days and months applying metadata to all that music, and correcting the largely inconsistent metadata already there.

(3) To handle classical music, the normally mentioned metadata sources are laughably inadequate; the only decent way is to get Roon - an expensive option with its own database of metadata and a server specialised in handling it.  It is, of course, accordingly expensive, and I'm not sure that it even enables out-of-network access!

(4) I have developed the folder structure over decades, and am adept at navigating it.

Paul

[pwhodges 1531]

1 minute ago, pwhodges said:

Roon ... I'm not sure that it even enables out-of-network access!

I just checked.  Since I last checked a long while ago, they have added mobile devices to their client list.  They explicitly say they only work on the local network.  I suppose it would be worth trying with TailScale.  But I also know I'd have to do a huge amount of work on my files to get them into a state which Roon could handle.

Paul

[Ronstang 202]

3 hours ago, them8os235 said:

Ya got that right!   It's taken me countless hours of time cumulative over many months away from my loved one [lol] to properly organize and tag my music library.  Like you I've been at the digital music game since the very first CDs ever released I bought to play on my 1st gen Magnavox CD player

Well I started on vinyl  in the early 70s.  The first CD player I had was in 1990 when my new car had one.  In 2000 I took the time to digitize my vinyl collection that I could not get on CD and I still have some of those rips even though I was able to replace many over the years with CD versions.  About 2007 I got serious about tags as my collection had ballooned and all was in digital on hard drives because I finally started using music in a way I wanted album art and tags.

Getting the album art was the hardest back in the 2000s and many times for obscure music the images you could find were hand held photographed vinyl covers that were not even square.  It was then I learned Photoshop to correct these rare photos I was able to source.  I scanned all my personal CD collection but things obtained online had to be found and corrected.  I spent about 8 months every evening for many hours and then lost that hard drive.  Luckily I had the music backed up, but I had to start all over again.  Now I keep multiple physical backups of everything important. 

Ever since about 2012 I anytime I get a new CD I immediately rip it and use CueTools to to organize it, adding all appropriate release data.  Then I load the tracks into Tag&Rename to finish off and fine tune the tags into a uniform consistent form across my whole collection.  I hate finding tags where there are "dashes" where they should be none or vice versa.

Unfortunately I have to go through the whole collection again since emby does not play my lossless format of choice without transcoding.  I spent a long time putting all my collection that is lossless in WavPack because it is superior to FLAC but emby does not support it so now I have to go back and rip everything from WavPack into FLAC which also means I have to make sure the tags are all correct once again....so too much work for the moment.  I will revisit it when I am caught up with movies.

My biggest problem with emby is how it handles music.  It thinks like a ADD child who only cares about tracks.  I come from the period of Album Rock and listen to albums, not tracks so music should always be sorted GENRE>ARTIST>ALBUM>TRACKS.  The availability of individual tracks online has done great harm to the music industry and unfortunately many people these days miss those obscure deep album cuts that are often better than the radio hits.  It is a shame actually.

[user24 85]

1 hour ago, Ronstang said:

My biggest problem with emby is how it handles music.  It thinks like a ADD child who only cares about tracks.  I come from the period of Album Rock and listen to albums, not tracks so music should always be sorted GENRE>ARTIST>ALBUM>TRACKS.  The availability of individual tracks online has done great harm to the music industry and unfortunately many people these days miss those obscure deep album cuts that are often better than the radio hits.  It is a shame actually.

This is a great topic and conversation. With my library of over 8000 albums (so far) I have always liked random play of tracks for casual listening, all the way back to 5-CD carousel players. But I mostly always search, buy, browse and carry out serious listening by Album Artist/Album and likely always will. Emby does quite a good job with trying to allow for flexible options (e.g. folder view, which Roon is currently considering). Even more flexibility would be great!

I would love to have a fully organised folder set-up and also a complete well-tagged library - perhaps one day!!! The worst case is devising a good tagging system and then, many years later, needing to redo it because you think of a better way and/or start using another music management system. I don't really use the folder view extensively, but it is a great help with troubleshooting library inconsistencies.

With the new Emby music Genre view, it is greatly improved with GENRE>ARTIST>ALBUM>TRACKS being almost obtainable now.

Unfortunately Emby combines Album Artist / Artist / Composer all together within the Genre Artist section, which really dilutes the new Genre experience for me. Ideally, it should be user selectable/filterable.

E.g. I currently have the following counts:

• Album Artists: 1863
• Artists: 5602
• Composers: 7780

Therefore the inclusion of Artists and Composers makes viewing Genre Album Artists above Genre Albums quite difficult. Yes, one person can be the Composer, Artist and Album Artist, but the three entities should be treated as distinctly different within the Genre view, just as they have their own menu tab (filter) at the top of the music pages. 

This is probably a bit off-topic to the OP (sorry). With my duplicate albums, I just usually add a bracketed suffix to the album title. It's not an elegant automated solution, but it's sufficient for me. Cheers!

Edited March 27 by user24

[Ronstang 202]

58 minutes ago, user24 said:

With my library of over 8000 albums (so far) I have always liked random play for casual listening

I do use random play now, but when I was growing up you loaded an LP onto the turntable and listened until the side was over and flipped and repeated.  Then in the late 70's I started driving and recorded all my LPs to 8-Track tapes for in the car.  In 1981 I moved to cassette tapes when my parents bought me a new fancy stereo for HS graduation and I left for college with a suitcase full of cassettes. 

In those days the only random play available was the radio or the "mix tape".  I made exactly one mix tape before I decided it was a pain in the rear.  Even when my new car had a CD player, and the next a CD changer I always listened to albums because skipping tracks just to load a new CD was a pain for in dash and impossible with the changer in trunk.  Even when my new truck came with a in dash 6 CD changer I loaded it up with CDs full of MP3 albums and just listened to albums.

It wasn't until I started using Pandora when I was working in the garage or yard or even the car that I started listening to tracks.  I also had collected a lot of older music on "spec" that I didn't actually know.  When I found out about the book "Shake Some Action: The Ultimate Power Pop Guide" I went on a quest to collect as many of the albums listed as possible.  I think I ended up finding about 85%.  Then being the completist I am I sought out as many of the albums as I could from each band listed. 

I then loaded them all onto my phone with other music for a total of about 22K tracks and now I use the Android app Musicolet to listen randomly to all songs when I am in the mood to hear stuff I don't know or don't know well.  it is a great way to expand your horizons and it's nice to hear 20, 30 or 40 year old music for the first time.  

I do not like to mix genres on random play though as that's too much of a mood shift considering music is my companion when working on things.  It provides just enough distraction to keep me on task as I cannot work in complete silence.

But....when I want to listen to a particular band by itself I always prefer album play as at least back in the day they were meant to be listened to as such and that is how I know them.  When i hear a song by many bands I am expecting the next song on the album in my mind, not some random track.

Edited March 27 by Ronstang

[user24 85]

33 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

Then being the completist I am I sought out as many of the albums as I could from each band listed. 

Is having 112 albums by The Rolling Stones too many or not enough?!?!

Edited March 28 by user24

[Ronstang 202]

17 minutes ago, user24 said:

Is having 112 albums by The Rolling Stones too many or not enough?!?!

Yeah, I embarrassingly understand your pain, although I am not sure I have that many albums from anyone. 

[user24 85]

Definitely an outlier. These days I am much more interested in discovering new artists than filling decreasingly small gaps in my collection.

[Ronstang 202]

I agree, and there aren't many artists I like that I don't already have all their albums, I probably don't have all the releases but that isn't as important as I seek out the original release first and in certain cases the remasters if they are actually a proper remaster where the sound quality is increased but not really altered.  Most remasters are just LOUD and therefore garbage.

The only reason I started using Pandora (even though I rarely do now) was to create a station based on bands I liked and then let Pandora introduce me to similar bands I never heard of before as a way to expand my collection.  I added a decent amount of artists to my collection due to Pandora 10 years ago.

[user24 85]

13 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

I agree, and there aren't many artists I like that I don't already have all their albums

Yes - I'm exactly the same. I have also collected many of the 20th/30th/40th/50th anniversary editions, but after a while it gets to be too much of the same thing and not worth the expense. 

One of my favourite 'go to' places to discover new music, that sounds similar to artists and genres that I already like is CDBABY. I find it to be more extensive than BANDCAMP, although their website (now that they don't sell CDs anymore) is not as user-friendly for album browsing. Like a lot of places, they are more focussed on tracks these days.

Edited March 28 by user24

[lightsout 144]

On 3/26/2024 at 8:18 PM, them8os235 said:

This is yet another reason I exclusively use the Folders view with my Music libraries.

I mostly do the same thing when using Emby itself, but playback is not as nice when playing from folder. You often get the tracks in abc order, and you get a different now playing screen then when you select album or artist. Or maybe its a different screen prior to now playing. Anyways the experience is diminished.