[RoadTripper]

I have a question for experienced users of file servers. In my case it's JRiver. The problem is when you rip tracks from a disc onto a hard drive, the order they get laid out on the drive is by date, i.e. the time when the rip happens. (I could be wrong on this, because all this is sortable by the OS, if you ask it). When you select an album in the server, how do they get sucked in? In what order to the tracks played back? Obviously you would want the server to play them in the same order they were on the original disc.

So what happens? How do servers order the files they suck in? Alphabetic would be bad since Mozart never entitled all his opera "tracks" alphabetically. By date would be bad since the time stamp is usually not down to the second. Do servers know, via metadata, what the album is and, employing there own database, figure out where the files came from including the order that was present on the disc originally?

Anybody know?

[mitch stl]

Never used JRiver, but my LMS/Squeezebox system simply plays an album in the same order they were on the CD I ripped from. Track 1 play first, and it has a file name of "01 - song name", followed by "02 - next song" and so on. You can also build your own play lists and put the selected songs in any order you like.

[RoadTripper]

What ripping software do you use. My stuff got ripped a long time ago and nothing like numbering was added to the file names. I wrote a Ruby script to process all 140 GB of my rips and prefixed (01), (02), (03) . . . . on everything. Jriver doesn't perfectly honor that and puts things in its own order. What's weird is that correctly sucks about 90% of the files. The rest I have to fiddle with once they are imported. 

Any ideas from JRiver users?

[glynnw]

I am not sure I understand.  I use dbPoweramp to rip and JRiver for playback.  The tracks of the CDs in JRiver is exactly the same as on the original CD on my system.

[aldcoll]

First of all I am NOT the ripping master or a IT guru.

My experience is has been that the META data  Album Name,Artist,track and a few handful possible more items to track artist, album art, tempo.  See Below.

Most ripping software also has some configuration for the finished product file and folder saving format, Place is Artist folder on what drive/Folder etc. 

The META is like the wizard behind the curtain.   Not visible for regular viewing but there to provide all the little information you can want.

[Vincent Kars]

It is a matter of tags indeed.
Most media players, including JRiver, play an album by sorting on DISC and TRACK

If tracks don't play in the right sequence check these tags.

[Dan Gravell]

The problem is when you rip tracks from a disc onto a hard drive, the order they get laid out on the drive is by date, i.e. the time when the rip happens. (I could be wrong on this, because all this is sortable by the OS, if you ask it). When you select an album in the server, how do they get sucked in? In what order to the tracks played back? Obviously you would want the server to play them in the same order they were on the original disc.

So what happens? How do servers order the files they suck in?

There are different things going on here. In terms of the order on the disc, that is determined by whatever software you are using to list the files. If it's Windows Explorer that will have a default sort order, likely an alphabetic (not natural) sort order on the file name. This is why normally you have the tracks prefixed with the track number, e.g. 01, 02 and so on, to maintain order.

In terms of a software player (not a file explorer) that is almost always determined by the tags inside the files.

[charmerci]

So it's possible that your songs are listed by (01) (02),etc. Then within those numbers in numerical/alphabetical order.

[aldcoll]

So it's possible that your songs are listed by (01) (02),etc. Then within those numbers in numerical/alphabetical order.

The 01,02 is used as track information that I would guess the player/software see's in the Meta data. 

I have seen ripping software that adds a track number to the name of the track.  And when I have played the track that number doesn't appear on my player.

One can change the sort of the folder and sub folders i.e track # or name of track or artist.  The player looks at the META and uses that data or at least that is my experience.

The below is from a WIN 10 folder and how and what you want to see/use for the folder.  If you notice there are photo settings also for the appropriate folder.  And as I understand that is for your viewing. 

I have played with these settings over the years and so far no difference to the player.

In the below attachment you will see at the top left a sort by option.  I failed to get a snip of it    It has a whole menu of Track Artist etc items you can select that will make the item appear when VIEWING.  Once again if the folder was configured for Photo's the same Option menu would offer PHOTO settings for sorting. 

Alan

[WGH]

JRiver is all about tags. I have a few compilation CD's that ripped without tags and JRiver made a mess out of playback, once I edited the tags to include the track numbers everything played in the correct order.

[mitch stl]

Sorry about the delay in getting back -- been on the road all day.

I currently rip using K3b on my Linux PC. It adds the 01, 02, etc. to the file names. I clean up the tags using Easytag, whcih is also Linux software. I then transfer the album to my Vortexbox server. I've found it a headache-free process.

The few times in the past I've used Windows or Apple software for ripping, I recall those programs handing the process without issue.

[Mike-48]

When you rip, the metadata include track numbers. When you look at an album in JRiver, the default is to order it by track numbers.

As @WGH said, most player programs above the rudimentary level will catalog and present material based on the metadata (tags), not on filenames. Though this takes a little while for a new user to adapt to, anyone picking material by filename is foregoing a huge amount of ease and functionality in sorting, searching, and information retrieval.