Managing the Z3000 Pro Audio Library

Hello,
I have a Z3000 Pro on which I installed a 10TB hard drive. I have no problems watching movies or TV shows. However, there's something I don't understand about the audio: on the hard drive, I have a folder containing about 8,000 FLAC files in 24-bit/192,000 Hz. I created a library without any problems, and all my files appear. However, if I want to sort or listen by album, artist, or track, 80% of my library doesn't appear. This forces me to go through the library to listen to a given album, artist, or track, which is tedious since they appear by name. It takes me an incredible amount of time if I want to search, for example, for a track whose name begins with W. Should I split the library into several folders, or is there something I'm missing?
Thanks for your suggestions.

 

Hello there. Have you tried this search in the upper left corner?
Additionally, if the library is still not visible under the sort function, feel free to send us some of the missing files. We can then investigate further to replicate the issue.

 

Building on this, I bought a Z3000 Pro recently, to get away from the issues with the Music Player in my Z2000 Pro.

The main issue for me with the Music Player in the Z2000 Pro is that it can not handle non-English "western" characters in Artist or Album names (characters such as such as å, ä, ö, ß and ø). Manual editing of the library data is needed to correct that behavior, so a huge effort if the library contains a lot of such data (like mine does).

This was reported in detail to Zidoo 1,5 years ago but they never fixed it. Happy to report that it seems to work well in the Music Player on the Z3000 Pro though.

Anyway, with a large amount of music my experience is also that the music library is useless to me. I have 30 000+ tracks across 2000+ artists and the library grows every day. Not only does it take far too long to get to what I want to play if I go through the library, but I also have "my own" folder structure on the hard-drive, a structure that enables me to find stuff quickly. It could be by record label, or a folder with files received from a certain friend. Etc. I.e. 100% customized to my own situation and preferences.

So I initiate all playing through the File Manager. Very happy doing it that way. But unfortunately the Music Player in the Z3000 Pro has a bug in that scenario.

The File name is displayed as Track name, instead of the actual Track name. This was not an issue on the Z2000 Pro. Album name and Artist name are displayed correctly, it's only the Track name that's not displayed as it should

I contacted Zidoo and they said that music must be played through the music library for Track names to be displayed, if played through the File manager the File name is displayed as Track name.

What on earth is the purpose/intent of that? Not only does it differ (in a most negative way) from the behavior of the Music Player in the previous gen, but Zidoo also seem unable (or unwilling) to explain the purpose, although they are obviously aware (I have asked but have received no response). To me it's a bug.

Does anyone here see any use of this behavior? To me it also seems like an unnecessary burden for Zidoo, to maintain this difference in behavior based on how the playing is initiated.

Going back to the OP's point, I also echo that the library does not display all music (when I looked at a certain Genre just to explore the functionality and give it a shot, there was music missing, that I know has that Genre in the ID3-tag). But again, I don't use the library (and won't).

A more minor issue I have with the Music Player in the Z3000 Pro is that Genre is no longer displayed when playing music. Genre is displayed on the Z2000 Pro. Zidoo's response to this is that music can be found by Genre in the music library. But that is of no interest to me, I just want to see Genre displayed when I play the music, just like on the Z2000 Pro. Am I alone in this?

 

Sorry but that function has a major design error.
It always looks for tracks. Even when I sort the library for artist.
Why?
Can we please set the search priority for artists or what ever we like.

 

Hello,
I'm still unable to get all my music tracks recognized and sorted. They appear in full in the library under tracks, but only partially under albums and artists (not even 20%), which makes sorting by album or artist impossible. Even if I want to select a sortable artist or album, it's very tedious. Small Android apps (on smartphones or HD music players) do this very quickly. How is it that Zidoo releases such buggy media players? I'm really starting to regret my purchase. I still hope (without really believing it) that this problem will be resolved soon.

 

Hi there.
When you type in the search bar and enter, you can select the sort of the results on the right side.

 

I understand this is frustrating, and I'm eager to help. Could you please send me some of the tracks so I can troubleshoot the issue for you? Thank you for your cooperation!

 

Well it's incomplete and inconvenient.
were is the genre, composer, library, etc etc
Let us decide what tag the results come from.

I'm from previous generations were people play music from artists instead of playlist.
So my search behavior is accordingly.
Artist, album. Play
I don't care about tracks. I want to start at track 1 of album yyyy from artist xxx.
So when i select a letter, i do so, to select an artist. Clicking 'left' and 'up' up to 10 times to get to the artist results is annoying.

But i wouldn't mind if there was a alphabetical selection in the music list just like in the HT list. That works conveniently.

 

Hello,
Thank you for trying to resolve my problem. How do I send you files?
Sincerely.

 

I think I got it now.
Both search behavior "from artist to album" (especially when not using the control app) & the alphabetical selection which can navigate.
Am I understanding this correctly? I will submit it to our tech team.
Many thanks for your feedback! : )

 

You're welcome. You can PM me and send me a link (via googledrive or dropbox etc.)
If you prefer email, you can also send to kim@zidoo.tv

 

Hello,
As you requested, I've sent some suggestions via Google Drive to kim@zidoo.tv so you can help me resolve my issue.
Sincerely,

 

Hi, Snukky. The lack of ID3 tag can cause the failed sorting.
You can fill the Album Artist， then in general the Artist and Album will appear correctly.
It's recommended to use Mp3tag software.
If you need further assistance or the issue persists, please be in contact with me : )

 

I was just about to post this lol.

I had major issues with my library with songs being all over the place and not in one album - then I learnt about MP3tag (which seems to do pretty much all music file formats) and, yup, Album Artist....problem solved.

 

Hello,
This is still strange because I've been systematically using Mp3Tag for years for this purpose, and I have no problems recognizing albums or artists on my other devices.

 

Same here, my music all has correct and complete data in the ID3 tags (I have also sent samples to Zidoo in another context). And yet the Music Library does not find content correctly.

I just now wanted to play music by "Magazine", that I have 3 albums by in the Library. So I wanted to pull up the content by that group. Searching for Artist generates no result (another group, Magazine 60, does show up though). But searching for one of the Album names, the album shows up.

In addition (separate topic!), I now get the error message "Scan error" from the Music library.

This is new since yesterday, up until then all content has been indexed.

FYI I have just over 32 000 files in the library and it is growing each day. My content is on the internal drive in the Z3000 Pro.

Does anyone have any idea what may cause this "Scan error", and how to resolve it? @Zidoo Support-Kim?

For some more background, I now try to use the Music Library due to the bug I mentioned earlier in the thread, that with my preferred way of initiating play (through the File Manager), Track names do not display, File name is displayed as Track name instead. (Please see my earlier post in the thread for full details).

I now find the music and initiate play through the Library option among the "Local music library" hamburger menu options at the top when entering the "Music Player". If I then click on the Library link I can search by folders and when initiating play from there Track names are displayed correctly (just as Zidoo advised when I contacted them about it).

But that workaround falls apart if indexing is not working, as the folders then don't show up in that view.

But going back to the beginning again, the search function seems very unreliable.

 

Hardly any of my files has Album Artist populated, I use the Artist field. And as mentioned elsewhere a lot of my content (all tagged in the same way) shows up when searching, but not all of it.

So I don't understand the advice you give, in what context would Album Artist be needed, instead of (or in addition to) Artist? This all just seems very inconsistent, but perhaps there is a logic to it that I'm not picking up yet?

 

Hello,
The tags for all my tracks were created with Mp3Tag. Like Thomas H, I only use the "artist" field and not the "album artist" field because for me it's a duplicate, and as mentioned above, it seems inconsistent and illogical that the Zidoo software is unable to sort because the "album artist" tag isn't entered. What I also don't understand is that for me, it still recognizes tracks with an empty "album artist" field. It would be good if the Zidoo team would look into this issue and resolve it. Best regards.

 

It is not duplicate.
"13 Christmas songs" could be an album with 13 different artist.
The album artist would very "various" or "cristmas crap" the individual tracks should have the appropriate 'artist' filled in.

MP8 does make a mess of it. Cause it merges artist and album artist together.
So even though i don't have any album from Wham or Mariah Carey they would appear in the album list.
They to should be listed as "Various".

 

I reported problems with artist handling in MP a while ago. See here. https://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/music-v8-0-app-misplacing-artists.99958/

I've been using puddletag to clean up my tagging in bulk (a few thousand files at a time), but the problem is that MP 8.0 does not remove old information from the database on a simple rescan. You have to completely delete the database and do a fresh scan to get rid of unwanted entries, like genres or misspelled artist names.

It's hard to notice with large collections, but MP 8.0 does misplace music. As I mentioned, I ended up with most/all(?) ABBA albums under BLACK SABBATH (all upper case) (together with some Black Sabbath albums) and also a separate Black Sabbath (mixed case) that had some other Black Sabbath albums.