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Topic: Tag sort order (Read 560 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tag sort order


I'm new to Foobar and working my way through understanding how to us it.
I have mostly classical music where there is a clear distinction between the composer
the performer and the orchestra.  I tagged some rips from my old vinyl LP's and they
don't sort right. I'm using Columns-UI.
Instructions say that %ARTIST% will also check these other tags:
ALBUM ARTIST
COMPOSER
PERFORMER
as well as ARTIST
This causes much confusion.

How do I cause it to check ARTIST only and ignore the others?
I tried $meta(ARTIST) and also $meta(ARTIST) but apparently that's not where the checking is done.

Thanks for any help !!!

 

Re: Tag sort order

Reply #1
Where do your files sort incorrectly?

All Media Library viewers I know of show the files in alphabetical order using the same strings for sorting that are used for displaying the names. New files added to playlists are sorted by default using the "Sort incoming files by" string found in Preferences -> Shell integration. Autoplaylists by default sort like regular playlists but have the option to let user type a sort string that is enforced at all times. Playlist views allow sorting the views by clicking on the column headers. Columns UI allows configuring custom sort strings for each column so you can sort by entirely different strings than what is displayed.

I suggest starting your sort fixing by adjusting the sort string under that Shell integration preferences page first. The tag mapping documentation you saw are correct but I want to clarify that using %artist% will return the contents of ARTIST tag first. Only if it's missing it will try the other fields. If you wish to only get the contents of the ARTIST tag bypassing the mapping you indeed use $meta(artist). Capitalization for the tag field doesn't matter. The default string here is %path_sort% which means your tracks get sorted purely based on their folder and file name. Replace it with the default sort order you want. For example $meta(artist) | %date% | %album% | %discnumber% | %tracknumber% | %path_sort%.