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Topic: Multi-disk album: Foobar is sorting some tracks to "Unknown Artist" (Read 1954 times) previous topic - next topic
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Multi-disk album: Foobar is sorting some tracks to "Unknown Artist"

I'm flac-ing a large multi-disk album using EAC. Each disk in the album gets its own folder on my storage drive. Metadata is populated by freedb and, unfortunately, some of the data was unique due to variations in the freedb database. This created multiple albums within Foobar when I first indexed (6, I think). I went back and changed metadata (Artist name and Album name) as required to normalize all of the flac files using the properties dialog in Win 10.

I'm now down to 2 sorted albums in foobar, one has the correct album name, the other is "Unknown Artist". About 2/3 of the tracks show up in "Unknown Artist" and, in most cases, there are tracks in both albums from the same file folder. I've rescanned the drive several times, changed track names to ensure each one follows the same convention, rescanned after that, etc, but I still have about 2/3 of the tracks showing up in "Unknown Artist" and 1/3 in the correct album.

Naming convention for all tracks (does it matter? or is metadata more important?) is %albumtitle% %cdnumber% %tracknr2% %title%

I disconnected the ftp drive and reconnected/rescanned hoping to flush out the library and repopulate but the problem persists.

Any ideas on what else I can try or a different way to achieve the same goal? (Which is to have the album properly organized)

Thanks for your help.

Re: Multi-disk album: Foobar is sorting some tracks to "Unknown Artist"

Reply #1 –
Hi there,

Quote from: adamsheridan on
I went back and changed metadata (Artist name and Album name) as required to normalize all of the flac files using the properties dialog in Win 10.
^ Do this in foobar instead. I never trust the Windows Explorer properties to correctly tag files.

Hit the foobar File menu > New Playlist. Drag the album folder from Explorer and drop in the playlist - all tracks should be highlighted - right-click tracks > Properties. Make the Artist, Album, Date, and optionally Album Artist fields the same.

After that you could drag individual disc folders to a playlist, as above, and fix up Disc Number / Total Discs fields, Tools button > Auto Track Number, if needed.

Cheers

Re: Multi-disk album: Foobar is sorting some tracks to "Unknown Artist"

Reply #2 –
Quote from: anamorphic on
^ Do this in foobar instead. I never trust the Windows Explorer properties to correctly tag files.

Fabulous. Thanks for suggesting. You helped me figure out that editing/adjusting/etc is so much easier in the desktop install. I was trying to muddle through the mobile version. Will post an update if re-tagging solves the issue.

Adam

Re: Multi-disk album: Foobar is sorting some tracks to "Unknown Artist"

Reply #3 –
It also occurred to me that if you are ripping CUE files in EAC, foobar might be picking up wrong artist info from them, in addition to (and duplicating) the FLAC files. Just a different issue to be aware of possibly...

In desktop foobar at least, you can exclude CUE files from the library (Preferences > Media Library) and optionally from Explorer (Preferences > Shell Integration). I'm not sure how mobile foobar handles them.

Re: Multi-disk album: Foobar is sorting some tracks to "Unknown Artist"

Reply #4 –
anamorphic, thanks again for your help. I was able to re-tag all files that had issues. I hadn't been consistent with disc# and total disc info when I ripped the first few. So now the album list is organized correctly in desktop with all discs and tracks under one album and discs organized by disc/track number according to D.TT (example, disc 1, track 2 is 1.02) format. I don't have any cue files.

Mobile still shows two albums. The two albums show file names differently: the correct album shows tag data like disc# and track# in the same format the desktop uses (D.TT) and displays album title and artist name when playing a track, but it only has about 2/5 of the tracks. The incorrect album shows each file as named in the folder structure and displays that name when playing, while displaying "Unknown Artist" and "Unknown Album". There's also no progress slider. Leads me to believe the mobile install isn't picking up on a lot of the data attached to the file.

I think there's enough here to consider it a bug. I'll post again in the bug forum.