Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème

[cat6man]

maybe you have never programmed but 2 is not <10, but the program needs to understand how many digits the the track number field occupies. It can’t just assume that in some cases it is 1 and others it is 2.

If you want to send me 1 show via Dropbox I can edit the metadata and show you what it should look like.

Actually, it should know that from everything I've ever programmed in, including fortran, unix, S, Matlab, R.
I think that we math oriented programmers never had to deal with this. In every one of those environments, 2 is always less than 10. I'm curious, what programing languages can't deal with simple counting and sorting. I guess it's some binary world where they are saving bits, instead of just using integer arithmetic?

In any case, I consciously dug myself into this hole, so now it's on me. I'll put something up on Dropbox for you tomorrow.

Thanks

 

[jbrrp1]

Actually, it should know that from everything I've ever programmed in, including fortran, unix, S, Matlab, R.
I think that we math oriented programmers never had to deal with this. In every one of those environments, 2 is always less than 10. I'm curious, what programing languages can't deal with simple counting and sorting. I guess it's some binary world where they are saving bits, instead of just using integer arithmetic?

In any case, I consciously dug myself into this hole, so now it's on me. I'll put something up on Dropbox for you tomorrow.

Thanks

I think a lot of the problem is that the sorting isn't of numbers, it's of text. "T2", "T10" - - T1 comes before T2, and the 0 that follows isn't factored, because the previous two positions have already set the order. It seems that the sorting algorithms are treating the track number data field as text, because so many are a mix like this.

 

[EuroDriver]

As someone who's obsessively "groomed" the metadata of their digital music files ever since I first ripped my CDs back in early 2000s, I sometimes forget that not everyone does that. And if you don't, then you are always going to have problems with any music software (like LMS) that relies solely on tags. That's because a subset of digital music — @dminches 's guess of 20% seems about right — is atrociously tagged by the labels.

This was one of the huge positives of Roon, because it broke the reliance on file tags for music organization. Roon uses a 3rd party music database vendor (still Rovi?) for the actual information about albums, and only used the file tags as a means to identify an album in their internal database. Even this isn't perfect, but it's much easier for the perfectionist "groomers" like me to plug the remaining gaps.

I seem to recall @Taiko Audio and @EuroDriver mentioning that XDMS would use a similar service to identify albums, rather than relying on file tags exclusively. Perhaps Ed can clarify that this is still the design point.

If so, then these issues with poorly-tagged files should be easily surmountable. If not, it may be time to don your boots and start grooming! I personally use and like MP3tag on WIndows.

The concept of linking into a metadata identifying service is still there, but low on the to further investigate list.

Rovi has morphed into Tivo, Music metadata does not seem to be their focus

 

[Christiaan Punter]

Ac

Is all your track metadata messed up? If you downloaded music it should be fine.

Who created the track numbers that are messed up?

There is no way to batch this.

Actually, there's a program called Bliss that can automatically fix inconsistencies based on predefined preferences and naming conventions. The last time I used it was when I wrote a brief article for it in 2013, but if anything, it's probably gotten even better since then.

https://www.blisshq.com/download.html.

Bliss

Super-handy Music Library Tagging Program

www.hifi-advice.com

PS: I find that jRiver Media Center also works very well for metadata tagging and with no limitations with respect to file format. It even tags WAV and AIFF.

 

[Christiaan Punter]

Actually, it should know that from everything I've ever programmed in, including fortran, unix, S, Matlab, R.
I think that we math oriented programmers never had to deal with this. In every one of those environments, 2 is always less than 10. I'm curious, what programing languages can't deal with simple counting and sorting. I guess it's some binary world where they are saving bits, instead of just using integer arithmetic?

In any case, I consciously dug myself into this hole, so now it's on me. I'll put something up on Dropbox for you tomorrow.

Thanks

It's just that Numerical Sorting was not always part of Windows, which I guess made much of the audio industry follow suit. Prior to Windows 10, the system simply looked at the first character. In that case, an order of 1,10,11,2 seems logical to the system. See also this article:

Enable or Disable Numerical Sorting in File Explorer in Windows 10

How to Enable or Disable Numerical Sorting in File Explorer in Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

 

[austinpop]

First, let me thank folks for their comments and suggestions.

I actually do obsessively groom my tracks, I just seem to have missed the leading zero issue.

Every album has been through Tagscan, and I ensure the disc and track numbers are correct, then rename each file as:
"d-t track" where
D is disc number
T is track number
Track is tagged name of track

All the disc and track numbers were carefull checked. In what bizarre computer coding universe is 10 less than 2? Some dumb integer sort to save comparisons??
a legacy of a time when coders optimized for simplicity?
Why?????

Roon is a no go here, even if it sounded good as I detest the interface and keep my music in a logical folder structure that works beautifully for me and has been groomed and adjusted in the decades since I first ripped all my CD.

Also, much of my music cannot be tagged by any external service as it will not be found. For example, I have a lovely recording of Fairport Convention playing live at Cropredy from a week ago, as broadcast by the BBC. I carefully checked all the titles, disc numbers and track numbers. It just doesn't work correctly because some stupid software (lms' fault, not TAS) can't recognize that 2 < 10.

I need to check how some mobile apps treat this issue before I decide how much effort to put into adding leading zeros. Pray for me.

That is a mystery indeed. I have plenty of albums with more than 10 tracks, where the TRACK tag contains purely integer numbers from 1 to n (n>10), and TAS/LMS has no issues with them. Could you post a screenshot of the TAS queue showing the tracks out of order? This could be some other issue, like the special characters problem, where LMS simply bailed on reading the tags, and then resorts to using file names for ordering. This will end up in character sort order.

 

[cat6man]

That is a mystery indeed. I have plenty of albums with more than 10 tracks, where the TRACK tag contains purely integer numbers from 1 to n (n>10), and TAS/LMS has no issues with them. Could you post a screenshot of the TAS queue showing the tracks out of order? This could be some other issue, like the special characters problem, where LMS simply bailed on reading the tags, and then resorts to using file names for ordering. This will end up in character sort order.

Screen capture on Android phone

 

[austinpop]

That is odd indeed.

 

[cat6man]

here is a link to the first disc of this concert.
feel free to download and enjoy (it was broadcast on BBC radio).

if someone can identify the problem with ordering tracks, i'll be very grateful.

2022-08-13 Cropredy (Fairport, BBC)

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

[cat6man]

stranger and stranger (but closer to understanding the problem, i think)

i've tried a couple of modifications to see if anything worked.

1. added leading zeros to track numbers
2. added leading zeros to track numbers AND renamed files from "1-1 track" to "1-01 track"
3. added leading zeros to track numbers and renamed files from "1-1 track" to "track"

case 1- no change, still the wrong order in the queue
case 2- worked fine
case 3- now tracks are all alphabetical by filename, and with no numbers in the filename, it seems to ignore the tags completely

so, it looks to me like it is creating the queue based only on the filenames, and this is consistent with the observations that it is behaving like the information is text, not numerical (e.g. "1-1 filename") and adding the leading zeros to the filenames works even for a text based sort on the filenames.
it appears to me that it is completely disregarding the meta data.
why would it ignore the tags for track and disc?

 

[bryans]

Screen capture on Android phone

I believe the format of 1-XX is disk 1 track XX.

So 1-01 is disc 1 track 1, 1-10 would be disc 1 track 10.

 

[austinpop]

stranger and stranger (but closer to understanding the problem, i think)

i've tried a couple of modifications to see if anything worked.

1. added leading zeros to track numbers
2. added leading zeros to track numbers AND renamed files from "1-1 track" to "1-01 track"
3. added leading zeros to track numbers and renamed files from "1-1 track" to "track"

case 1- no change, still the wrong order in the queue
case 2- worked fine
case 3- now tracks are all alphabetical by filename, and with no numbers in the filename, it seems to ignore the tags completely

so, it looks to me like it is creating the queue based only on the filenames, and this is consistent with the observations that it is behaving like the information is text, not numerical (e.g. "1-1 filename") and adding the leading zeros to the filenames works even for a text based sort on the filenames.
it appears to me that it is completely disregarding the meta data.
why would it ignore the tags for track and disc?

In parallel, I downloaded your album. I first did a full scan of the library in Server settings. I hope you are doing this after every change?

Interesting behavior.

If I navigate to the album by Artist (i.e. Fairport Convention), the tracks show up perfectly:


In contrast, if I navigate by Music folder, I get what you see:


I think this is an issue with LMS not dealing well with certain tagged WAV files.

For now, given TAS/LMS is a dead end, I suggest finding workarounds — as you did — and wait for XDMS. Assuming XDMS does a better job with tagged WAV files, specifically RIFF ID3v2.3 tags.

 

[cat6man]

In parallel, I downloaded your album. I first did a full scan of the library in Server settings. I hope you are doing this after every change?

Interesting behavior.

If I navigate to the album by Artist (i.e. Fairport Convention), the tracks show up perfectly:
View attachment 97203 View attachment 97204

In contrast, if I navigate by Music folder, I get what you see:
View attachment 97205

I think this is an issue with LMS not dealing well with certain tagged WAV files.

For now, given TAS/LMS is a dead end, I suggest finding workarounds — as you did — and wait for XDMS. Assuming XDMS does a better job with tagged WAV files, specifically RIFF ID3v2.3 tags.

View attachment 97206

Thank you sir!

Since folder view has always been my default, I'll stick with that and trust that xdms will deal with all tags properly.

In the meantime, I'll have to check the behavior of my other apps used on the road.

Before taiko, when I was in the diy mode and primarily using HQPlayer, folder navigation had always worked well, so I never saw this coming.

 

[cat6man]

Thank you sir!

Since folder view has always been my default, I'll stick with that and trust that xdms will deal with all tags properly.

In the meantime, I'll have to check the behavior of my other apps used on the road.

Before taiko, when I was in the diy mode and primarily using HQPlayer, folder navigation had always worked well, so I never saw this coming.

There must be something else going on, because most albums here play in the correct order in TAS, with similar (I think) tagging.

 

[dminches]

There must be something else going on, because most albums here play in the correct order in TAS, with similar (I think) tagging.

The issue is your use of folder view which uses an antiquated Windows ordering algorithm. TAS had no issue ordering them correctly if I selected the album from the more traditional album artists route.

 

[austinpop]

The issue is your use of folder view which uses an antiquated Windows ordering algorithm. TAS had no issue ordering them correctly if I selected the album from the more traditional album artists route.

Actually, it's not that simple. There's nothing wrong with using folder view. I do it myself, as do many others here.

There must be something else going on, because most albums here play in the correct order in TAS, with similar (I think) tagging.

Exactly. I have plenty of albums with tagged WAV files that are correctly displayed in both "traditional" album/artist views as well as folder views.

The mis-ordering itself is not some antiquated Windows ordering algorithm. What is happening is that for some tagged WAV files, LMS is not reading the tags. Instead, it is simply displaying the file names instead. And filenames, of course, are treated as characters, not integers. Hence, the character order as seen.

So the mystery is not why the ordering is wrong, it's why LMS reads some tagged WAV files correctly, and not some others.

Again, since this is LMS, it seems pointless to dig further into this rathole. Work around it as best you can, and wait for the holy grail (XDMS).

 

[cat6man]

thanks everyone. i agree that additional work is not justified for LMS and why it does what it does.

i believe it was valuable to understand/recognize this problem, which can only benefit xdms going forward. in addition, i can now discard the personal meta-tag of being a 'bad metadata groomer'

now back to your regularly scheduled programming

 

[cat6man]

and i guess we can retract the all-purpose "it's bill gates' fault" (which is usually true, just not in this case)

 

[ctydwn]

True story. I know it is a bit weird and maybe TMI. Dreamt last night my system was set up in the backyard of my parent's house where I grew up. Wind was blowing and leaves had piled up all around the rack, components and speakers. I was frantically trying to rake it carefully. Then Emile shows up. I was devastated he would not hear the system at its best. He calmly pulls over this ancient lawn chair to the sweet spot and assures me it sounds good with a subtle nod. Now if that is not neurotic. Needless to say I did not tell my wife.

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...did you at least give "dream-Emile" a glass of beer?