[Scott F.]

Hi Guys,

I've got a weird one for you. Now this may not be a FLAC issue, it could be a SB Database issue.

I've ripped a few hundred CDs and saved them to my hard external drive. Nearly all of them got tagged and associated with the artist and album that they should have been but I've got a few that ended up with either a Music or No Album, album association.

Here's a quick couple of screen shots to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

The first pic is Mark Knopfler. This is a sort by Artist. You'll see the 'Music' album which contains a single song that should be associated with the Shangra-La album.







The next is a sort by Album. If you look closely, you will see the 'Music' album and a 'No Album' album.







The 'No Album' album only has a couple of songs associated with it. Under the 'Music' album, there are two full albums (Al Greens Greatest Hits and The Black Album from Metallica) plus about a dozen other orphaned songs.






All that said, here's what I've tried to do to correct the issue. On more than one occasion, I've gone into the Server Settings sub-menu and used the "Clear Library and Rescan Everything" command. That doesn't work. So last night I decided to download the latest 'nightly' thinking that Slimdevices might have a fix for it. I installed it, dumped and rescanned the music folder. Still no fix.

I've searched the Bug Reporting database but haven't found anything close to the issue I'm having. I haven't reported the bug yet or made a post at the SD forum. I will, but I wanted to see if anybody here has noticed (and fixed) this issue first.

The problem with this bug is when I do a play by Album, SB drops the songs that are associated with the 'Music' or 'No Album' tag.



Oh BTW, the SD forums are completely inhospitable for anybody with a functioning pair of ears or a system with even the slightest leanings towards high resolution. I actually got compared to Hilter gassing the Jews somehow. .....and I thought AA was bad. The trolls over at AA are tame compared to some of the (honest to goodness) bugger eatin morons they have over at the SD forums.


TIA

[Thump553]

I'm pretty mystified.  Are you able to retag your songs manually?

How are you ripping the CDs?  I've been using EAC with FLAC as an external encoder.  I've done about 100 gig of albums without encountering this problem.

Finally, thanks for the headsup on SD forums, but what is that?

[jakepunk]

I'll take a guess.  My hypothesis is that you quit EAC before flac could finish encoding the .wav file, and now you have a .wav file in your directory.  The .wav does not have metadata, but slimserver made a sincere effort to categorize it.  

My hypothesis is easy to test.  Check the filenames of the orphaned files and see if they have .wav extensions.

[mgalusha]

It's also possible that the metadata wasn't written correctly. Try opening the tracks in foobar and see if all the metadata is displayed.

I just deleted and re-ripped my copy of Shangri-La (SACD/Hybrid) and told Slimserver to forget and rescan everything and it seems to have found it without a problem.

mike

[Jon L]

The easy way to tell whether it's a Flac problem or Slimserver problem is to open that "music" file using something like Foobar.  If Foobar still shows that file as "Music" still, then something went wrong during ripping/encoding process.  Foobar will read .wav files, but you can tell it's .wav by looking at it.

It's a good possibility that some program was not allowed to finish before it improperly shut down, i.e. EAC, Flac encoder.  It's very possible those files are indeed still in .wav form, not recognized by Slimserver.  

If it's in .wav, you just have to encode it with Flac.  If it's in Flac but with messed up tags, just manually retag these files.

[Scott F.]

I'm using EAC and FLAC. After EAC rips the files to the hard drive, I then drag and drop the files into the FLAC frontend. I select all of the files then push the Encode button.

I checked all of the files and they are definately FLAC rather than WAVs. I've taken several of the suspicious files and dropped them into the FLAC frontend and tested them to insure the coding is correct. They Test OK.

The files play just fine with Winamp. All of the Metadata? (does that mean file tags? song name, artist, track # etc.) shows up fine. I'll try downloading Foobar and see what happens there. I'll also try re-ripping one of the CDs.

When it comes to manually retagging the files, I've searched for that option in EAC and FLAC but I'm not quite sure how to do that. Any help would be appreciated.

FYI the SD Forums = Slim Devices Forum.

[mgalusha]

Scott,

Foobar has facilities buit in to update the tags individually or as a batch. It's labeled as masstagger.

I came across an open source standalone tagging program that works pretty well and it's free. http://easytag.sourceforge.net

[Thump553]

Scott:

You can set up EAC so that it rips automatically to FLAC.  Take a look at the tutorials, if you are still stuck post again about this part of it.  That will eliminate one step in your ripping process, making it easier and faster.

If I try to rip a defective disk, the defective track will be written as a WAV file, not a FLAC one by EAC.  If you listen to that track it will be a partial copy of that track-say 2:20 minutes of a normally 4:18 song.  Maybe it is these partial tracks that are your problem.

Try re-ripping the album and see if EAC reports any errors on the extration.

[Eli]

I've got a weird one for you. Now this may not be a FLAC issue, it could be a SB Database issue.

It's neither - it's a tagging issue.  You're seeing pretty much what SlimServer sees when it indexes your library.  For whatever reason, those tracks under "no album" do not have album tags.

First, when you rip, you'll probably also want to encode to FLAC. This lets you pass tags from EAC to FLAC instead of doing it manually in FLAC Frontend.  There are a number of tutorials available on how to do this.  This will usually ensure that all the tracks of a ripped album at least have the same album name, year, genre.  The one thing you can't do when ripping/encoding in a single step that you can with FLAC Frontend is apply album replay gain.

Second, you'll want to pick up a program that allows you to examine and easily modify music file tags.  This will be the only way to go back later and make corrections.  And the only easy way to add tags that are difficult to add with EAC.

Third, you'll want to experiment and get a feel for how SlimDevices uses the tags that it sees.  Tags like ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTIST (both of which you'd need to add yourself, because EAC cannot) can be used to good effect once you understand them.

[Scott F.]

I'm getting full rips. I just checked Metallica's Black Album and it's all there.

BTW, you haven't lived until you've heard Metallica played on a 300B with Lowthers, actively crossed over into vintage 15" subs    Snoop is a pretty cool listen too. ......Oh, wait.... I just hit play on NIN Pretty Hate Machine......OMFG!!!!!!  


sorry....got sidetracked there for a side or two.


Mike, Eli, I'm going to try one of those stand alone tagging programs. I downloaded Foobar but the mistagger was a little cryptic. I think I'll try that Easytag if I can figure out which version to download. If the new tags don't work, I'll try re-ripping a CD and see if that cures the problem.

Thanks for all the help. I'll report back after some more experimentation.

[Papajin]

You can get those entries if you have stuff listed in a playlist that no longer physically exists in the place you originally added it to the playlist from.  For instance, rip a CD to FLAC, reindex, then add it to a playlist.  Go in there and remove the flac files, and then reindex again.  So long as your saved playlist is out there with the obsolete entry, it'll keep popping up as "No Album".

[Scott F.]

Hiya Guys,

Problem solved. Sure enough it was the tags. I tried the Easytag program but unfortunately its for the Lunix platform so I searched for one that runs under the XP platform. I came up with a program called Tag&Rename. It was a trial version ($29 register) but it worked just fine. It has a nice GUI interface for those of us that have forgotten how to use DOS parameters.

When I pulled the files up in T&R they had the Music tag as the artist or album. A breif renaming session ensued. I dumped the database, rescanned the music directory and all is where it should be now.

Thanks for the help!

[Jon L]

Hiya Guys,

Problem solved. Sure enough it was the tags. I tried the Easytag program but unfortunately its for the Lunix platform so I searched for one that runs under the XP platform. I came up with a program called Tag&Rename. It was a trial version ($29 register) but it worked just fine. It has a nice GUI interface for those of us that have forgotten how to use DOS parameters.

When I pulled the files up in T&R they had the Music tag as the artist or album. A breif renaming session ensued. I dumped t ...

Good for you.  This is why before I rip every CD, I glance at the tag info to make sure things have been tagged correctly.  Remember, you are relying on somebody else who entered the tag info before you via CDDB/GRACENOTE, etc.

Tag & Rename is a great program.  Normally, I hate paying for software, but after using Tag & Rename during the trial period, I had no reservations about paying for the real version

[Papajin]

Remember, you are relying on somebody else who entered the tag info before you via CDDB/GRACENOTE, etc.

I can't speak for other DB's, but some of the info in CDDB is HORRIBLY inaccurate or missing.  You do have to keep an eye on it.

[Scott F.]

Normally I watch the tags pretty close but I guess these got past me    

Thanks for all the help.