Handling of "Various Artists" CDs

[crunch13]

OK, this is not so much a hack as a procedural workaround in the PMM that results in a particular arrangement of data on the DMS, which in turn drives the behavior of the SSA.

The background is that the PMM/Phatbox handling of compilation ("Various Artists") CDs blows. If you rip with PMM, you lose all the artist metadata (PMM substitutes "Varous Artists", without any warning). If you drag in a CD that was ripped by iTunes - which keeps accurate artitst tags - into PMM the album gets broken up all over the place (by Artitst) by the PhatBox SSA.

I am looking for a solution. Here are some nutty ideas I am  thinking about. I would like to reuse my iTunes-ripped songs and i generally like correct tags, so the idea is to make the PB well behaved with REAL artist tags in CD compilations.

1a. Create a "Playlist" for each compilation album. This would keep the songs together and easy to find. It sort of breaks the playlist model/semantics a bit.

1b. Create a playlist for all compliations to live in. A little neater in terms of "playlist proliferation" Not sure how easy it would be to find an individal CD in the playlist, if there are many.

2. Create a "dummy" mp3 file with the VA & album tags, track 00 (or make it track 1 and increment all the other tracks). Then the SSA can at least find a "starting point" for the CD.

Ideas?

TIA!

[crunch13]

Hi, i just found  bad_album_db and album_seek in the wiki under the INI stuff.... anyone have opinions on these as an alternative to having compilation albums busted up by track artist?

[judb]

Well some programs use ID3 tags properly.. theres a compilation setting in ID3v2 that allows you to have Various Artists in the Artist feild and the track artist name in another feild that says who wrote or sang the song.. however PMM doesnt look in those feilds because, well they didn't think about it or didn't want to code it.

Thats my understanding.  Tag and Rename supports the compilation feilds and seems to work properly with winamp and some other programs..  perhaps we can work in compilation artist support into the new Phat4X software and figure out how to make the database work on the phatbox with it.

[crunch13]

For now, I just want a (sneaky?) "workaround" using the PMM and existing firmware, if one can be devised. I'm also not crazy about losing the correct artist metadata. My wife's iPod had a TON of compilation albums and she hates the SSA sorting & seeking  (vs her iPod), You can see what I'm up against here.... she thinks I'm nuts because I love the PB like it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, meanwhile she can't play one bloody VA CD from beginning to end!

PS what is Phat4x? (functional specs, etc)

PPS using more (custom) tag fields would rule. imagine fixing pronouciation there..... custom title display on capable HU's, etc....

[judb]

phat4x is a project in development by Para, from these forums, its a cross platform replacement for PMM.. check the phat4x forum further down the main forum list.

[Paul]

meanwhile she can't play one bloody VA CD from beginning to end!

Why not just make a playlist for each Various Artist CD and when you want to listen to one of those, switch to playlist mode?  That's what I have for all my movie sound tracks and it works fine.

[crunch13]

If you read my initial post, that was solution #1a.

So, that's one vote for this approach!

It's still not as slick at iTunes/iPod which handles VA discs "correctly." The one thing I can say about #1a is that it is low effort (relatively, depending on how many compilation albums you have to make playlists for) and nondestructive to the file tag metadata.  

[Paul]

Sorry! I had read 1a when you first posted it, and then forgotten about it.  

I think, for now - that's the best way to go.  Especially because you can store the information in a tag category that you don't use, and choose the display pattern on the headunit for that particular playist.

ie: I have "I heart huckabees" as the playlist name, and display that on the top line.  Then I have "Jon Brion" (artist - but written in the comments field) and "over our heads" (song title) displayed on the bottom line.  (I'm brainstorming here -  I don't actually have that setup, but I think it will work...)

[crunch13]

Also my issues and potential solutions would be specificly for SSA, since I have the Audi PB + factory head (basically NO display capability )  

[Paul]

Ahhh.  This is why forum admins shouldn't offer suggestions.

[crunch13]

No prob, it helps just to ping pong the ideas and test my assumptions, ive only had the box for 2 weeks....
Thanks!

[Cameron]

I encountered this same problem while working on PhatMac. The solution I came up with was to use the "Composer" or "Group" field as the artist name when the track is written to the DMS.

This way the ID3 tags are all correct in my music library, yet my various artist albums all appear 'normal' on the DMS.

For example, I have a CD of classical music from several artists. Each MP3 has the real artist, album and track name (which is how iTunes ripped the CD). I then manually added "Classical Mix 1" to the "Group" field of each track, and made sure the 'compilation' bit was checked. When PhatMac saves these tracks, it writes "Classical Mix 1" as the artist in the DMS database.

When listening, I can navigate to album or artist "Classical Mix 1", and hear the complete album. Only downside is that the DMS won't announce the real artist .. but I can live with that.

Cameron.

[judb]

Thanks Cameron, that was exactly what I was suggesting to add to phat4x.. sweet!

[Phatboy]

Ive used Windows media player to rip the music, and then re-edited the song titles and the artists using PMM, its a bit slow but does work, Windows media player will show the artist and the title in one, but not seperately...
takes ages to sort out all the music already on the computer, but once its done its all good...

[flatlandskibum]

I find Tag & Rename a decent piece of software for this purpose. It has IMDB and Amazon lookup to generate the ID3 information. It's a little dodgy as far as stability of the application, but the tag handling capability is something I've yet seen duplicated.

[dc4bs]

So far, I've prety much ripped everything using winamp pro with these naming conventions:

For "regular albums"
artist - album name / track# - song title

For "compilations, movies, shows"
"album name / track# - song title - artist"

This puts each album in it's own subdirectory and now that I have the keg, all I had to do was grab al the album directories I wanted and select "make playlists from directorys".

It took FAR longer to eject the disk when I was done than it did to create all the playlists (600+ so far)

By the way, the "voice" feature completely mangles the album name "INXS - X".  It's hilarius to listen to it make the attempt though...

dc4bs

[amb]

I am a bit baffled by the "various artists" problem.  So help me understand the issue better...

I ripped all my music using another app than PMM (in ogg format), and it tags each song with the ARTIST field in the vorbis comment with the artist of the track, not that of the album (i.e., the actual artist, not "Various Artists"). The ALBUM name field is populated with the name of the album.  Each album has its own folder, named by the album artist and the album title (i.e., "Various Artists - Gatecrasher National Anthems Disc 1"), and each track is named with the track number and track title (i.e., "22 - Iguana (Mas Mix).ogg").  I use PMM to update the database and sync/save to the DMS.  When viewed under PMM, everything appears to be sorted correctly.  So, it would appear that PMM does the "right thing" in that songs in the same album are sorted together even for the various artists albums.

As reported here, when browsing in "Albums" mode in the car, the songs get scattered all over the place.  I know about the bad_album_db variable in phatbox.ini and had tried setting it to "off" or removing it but it didn't fix the problem.

So the question is, does the phatbox actually use each album's folder name to sort (which contains the string "Various Artists"), or does it use the ALBUM field in the tag info?  If its the former, then it would explain the problem.  I searched for a definitive answer (both here and google in general) but came up empty.

I guess I should also ask the question more generally: is it PMM or is it the phatbox that screws up the album sorting?  If it's PMM, then it's being inconsistent, because it actually sorts it correctly on screen and plays everything in the proper order on the PC.

Thanks in advance for any info that would help me really understand the nature of the problem.

Also, can someone explain what the phatbox.ini variable "ssa_use_disc_up_down" do?  I searched for this and also couldn't find an answer.

P.S. I am running the Phatnoise Media Manager 3.75, the phatbox is an Audi unit, updated to the latest firmware, the car is an 2001 Audi S4, but I doubt this matters.

[todd1010]

I thought that if you were to browse by "album mode" on the DMS, then once you found that album then it would play the entire album? That would mean that you album ID tags were correct.

[SteveC]

Album mode is a misnomer. In actuality, it is "Artist/Album" mode. When in Album mode, the collection is always sorted by Artist first, then grouped by album.

The Phatbox does not use the folder information at all. It just uses the song's tags. You could organize your collection so that every single song is in it's own directory, and the Phatbox wouldn't care.

[amb]

I thought that if you were to browse by "album mode" on the DMS, then once you found that album then it would play the entire album? That would mean that you album ID tags were correct.

That is true only for non-"Various Artists" CDs.  If I browse in Album mode in the car, my "Various Artists" CD tracks become interspersed all over the place, and would only play one track at a time and then move on to the next album.