Managing the Z3000 Pro Audio Library

Wasn't going to stick my oar in here... but...

The bottom line with music is that it's completely different to maintaining a movie library.

Regardless of any online scraping that these players can do, an absolute prerequisite is to tag all files correctly before you even think about building a library.

Read that last line again and if you get it, carry on reading. If not, please ignore this post.

I use Squeezebox (or whatever it's called this year!) and have done for over 20 years. I have a FLAC music collection built up over that time from ripping CDs that contains 124,492 tracks in 9,761 albums and this afternoon for a laugh I thought I'd let my Z9X 8K have a go at them.

It "scraped" in a comparative time to my Squeezebox server and notwithstanding @peteru 's comment above about large libraries, I can't find any mistakes. I can drill through Artists to Albums and then tracks - no mix ups I could find - but then I wouldn't expect there to be - the entire 124K collection is tagged correctly - something I'm fastidious about. Well it did take me 20 years....

Probably the main concept you need to understand is Album Artist vs Artist - completely different fields with completely different jobs, and the next one is the "Compilation" tag which is vital for, well, compilations. Vital.

Get those right and 99% of your problems evapourate. Get all the spelling correct and that's the other 1%. Get them wrong and you might as well try to input a piece of toast for all the good it'll do.

It's not rocket science but a methodical logical approach is needed and the old adage of GIGO applies in spades.

That said, I'm sticking with Squeezebox - particularly because these boxes work as a client using Squeezelite which I have to say is the one of the best decisions Zidoo and Eversolo ever took for music - utter game changer.

 

@Markswift2003
Thanks!
I will try the compilation tag.
Never new it exist.

 

Very interesting discussion.

FYI I only use local data when scraping, as my files are tagged with the information I want to see when playing the music, and I also don't trust the data quality of whatever external network source(s) Zidoo might be using for scraping from the net. I want to be in control of the music meta data.

I guess part of this is also what it means that the music is tagged "correctly". What is correct? Is there a universal standard (which)? A quick googling seems to result in a lot of diverse opinions.

And if there is a standard, have Zidoo implemented it in full and correctly in that case? Is there an instruction from Zidoo on "if you want the music library to work in full, this is how you need to tag the music"? Not asking to be troublesome, I'm genuinely trying to understand.

As for myself I realized that I actually do use Album Artist, for one thing: compilations (I set that tag to "Various"). The Artist tag is then used for the Artist for each track.

A good fallback could perhaps be to default to Artist for grouping functions when the Album Artist tag is missing.

With my (consistent, but possibly wrong) way of tagging it is anyway very strange to me that the search results in the library are so inconsistent/incomplete (as exemplified). Why does some music show up and other music doesn't. It should either all show up, or none of it should?

But anyway, @Markswift2003, are you saying that if we all use the Album Artist tag for... well, the Artist, and use the Compilation tag for compilations, then everything will be fine (as far as the aspects governed by these tags go)? I guess I could investigate how I could efficiently copy all my (non-compilation) Artist tag info to the Album Artist tag, so they both have the information.

Again, my desired use case for playing music does not go through or rely on the music library but Zidoo's implementation forces me to use it (for the reasons mentioned earlier).

 

I don't think that's a bad question at all - it would be good if there were clear guidence from Zidoo on this,but I guess until that happens, this thread will help others, which is what this forum is about.

 

"Album Artist" is the artist connected to the Album, "Artist" is the artist, or artists, connected to the track.

"Album Artist" will often be the same as "Artist" - for example Paul McCartney is the "Album Artist" and also "Artist" for the track "Ballroom Dancing" on the album "Tug of War"

But for the track "Ebony and Ivory" on the same album, Paul McCartney is the "Album Artist" but both Paul McCartley and Stevie Wonder are tagged as "Artist".

The Compilation tag means that the track is part of a compilation album - ie Various Artists.

It's a universal standard - don't know where it came from, but I've been using it for decades and every tagging program and every ripping program I've ever used uses it, as does every player I've used from Imerge to Linn to Squeezebox to Sonos etc etc...

Edit - a bit of Googling and the ID3 tagging standard was first proposed in 1996 and developed from there...

 

Hello all. The Album Artist tag is necessary for the Zidoo & Eversolo Music Player to read artists' info.
As other posts under this thread mentioned, they cannot be replaced or ignored.
The details that can help you use MP are included in this guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pTt1bNycFOkik9OU_SGpBTmIWeKhN-w6/edit?tab=t.0
Also, tips on editing full-track tags are included.
Thanks for the comprehension : )

 

Hi Thomas, could you please offer the info in details to help us solve this? Including model, FM version, process with picture/video.

 

Hey peteru, have you ever gave us the tracks with issue? If not, you can send them to me.

 

Thanks for following up.

I never managed to narrow it down to a small subset of files. The problem only appeared when I scanned the whole library of about 70,000 tracks. I'll see if I can narrow it down or reproduce it again. My workaround was to first add only the subdirectory with the ABBA albums (//NAS/Music/ABBA), scan that, then add the parent directory (//NAS/Music), and remove the //NAS/Music/ABBA directory, then do a full rescan. It seems that having ABBA in the database first prevented the collision with BLACK SABBATH. If I can come up with a reproducible case I will share the files. I'm not sure if I will be able to reproduce, since I have converted some albums from single FLAC file + CUE file, into multiple individually tagged FLAC files. However, I'm 100% sure that no ABBA files had BLACK SABBATH in their CUE file or in the ID3 tags.

 

Thanks for following up on this. I actually reset (deleted) the library to try to work around this and started again from scratch (reindexed the entire library). So far I have not had the Scan error again but will for sure report if I do. I have a Z3000 Pro, running latest fw (1.2.05).

Any comments on my other reported issue, that initiating play from the File manager results in a player behavior identical to when initiating play from the library, except that the File name is displayed as Track name, instead of the actual Track name. Artist name and Album name are displayed correctly, very strange that Track name is not. Surely a bug?

My file name syntax is "Track #" - "Track name", e.g. "01 - Best Song Ever". Playing through the library displays "Best Song Ever" as Track name, but playing through the File manager displays "01 - Best Song Ever" as Track name.

 

Hello,
I just re-tagged all the tags in my music library with MP3Tag, incorporating the album artist. The result isn't great: a mix of several artists (Can and Canned Heat, for example), and no recognition of albums by Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Doors (among others, because I didn't check everything). I'm still pretty disappointed. Could this be because my old audio library didn't take the new tags into account, and if so, how can I delete it and create a new one? I didn't see how to do this in the manual. Thanks.

 

If you scroll down the screen, past all the plugins for streaming services, you will find a settings option and that has a facility for deleting the database.

It took me a while to find it too! I think settings/preferences/configuration items should always be easy to find. I like it in the top right corner on the HT app.

 

What I find frustrating is I have a lot of compilation albums that have various artists, I have correctly tagged these to Various Artists and used the Artists tag for the Artist Name. I would like the search feature for Artist to be Artist and not Album Artist so I can search for a particular artist to play from all my compilation albums. I would suggest Adding 'Artist' & 'Album Artist' to the search feature would make more sense and make things a lot easier for everyone!

 

Hello Thomas. Normally, when you play tracks through the file manager, it will read the track's name rather than the ID3 tags. No worries : )

 

Hey, if I haven't misunderstood, the key requirement is for Black Sabbath to appear correctly and independently, along with all the existing albums should've been listed?
You can provide just one album each of the Black Sabbath & BLACK SABBATH to us for a test.

 

Hello Kim. The two artists as you show above is one of the problems. But an even bigger problem was that ALL ABBA albums were put under BLACK SABBATH and there was no ABBA artist at all.

I'll get the involved files in the next few days and share.

 

@peteru,
Thanks for your tip about deleting existing libraries. It's true that the Zidoo interface isn't exactly intuitive and user-friendly, especially since there's no mention of it in the manual. The persistent problem, as several people have noticed, is mixing albums from different artists within the same artist, for example, albums by Can that end up in Canned Heat, etc. Zidoo still has a lot of work to do.

 

I'm sorry, but what do you mean, "no worries"?

What is the purpose of that behavior (reading/displaying the file name instead of Track name)? To me it seems meaningless and unnecessarily reducing/corrupting the functionality to the point of being a bug. And you guys need to maintain different functionalities as well, instead of just invoking the same behavior/functionality irrespective of where play is initiated from.

After all, what does the customer want to do? Play music! Why would the treatment/display of Track name differ from the behavior when play is triggered through the music library?

As mentioned all other attributes and aspects display/behave in the same way irrespective of whether play is triggered from the File Manager or from the Library, it's only Track name that's treated differently, reducing/corrupting the functionality when play is triggered from the File Manager.

 

Hey, Thomas. Thanks for your thoughtful feedback. Reading ID3 tags is a function of Library, not file manager.
The Library dedicates resources to this task, while the File Manager prioritizes lightweight file operations. This separation ensures the File Manager remains fast and universal for all file types, while the Library offers richer music-specific functionality.

 

First, thanks to you and Zidoo for recently having started to engage in conversations like this in the forum, and showing a genuine interest in trying to collect input to help you to resolve bugs and improve the user experience. This is a new thing since I first became a Zidoo user in September 2023. Huge improvement!

But looking at this particular issue I still don't understand the explanation/reasoning provided, and the reply seems partially inconsistent/incorrect. Let's break it down into 2 pieces:

1. Not reading ID3 tags when initiating play through the File Manager. Again, all ID3 data that has the corresponding attribute displayed in the Music Player interface is displayed when play is initiated through the File Manager, except Track name. And my files only have that data in the ID3 tags. If Artist name and Album name (and Cover Art) were not displayed the response would make sense, but now it just seems inaccurate. What is it that I'm missing/not understanding?

2. "The File Manager prioritizes lightweight file operations". Fine. But look at the use case here. Clicking a file in the File Manager initiates play, which should start up the Music Player, which should act and behave in the same way as when play is initiated through the Library. Right?

So again, considering this use case of the user wanting to play the music, why is instead some sort of different inferior/corrupted functionality invoked when starting play of music, instead of just playing it in exactly the same way as when play is initiated through the Library (invoking the same functionality)? How is that of any benefit/use to the customer?

I'm in the software development business myself and this also makes no sense to me from a development perspective (there is no technical reason to build it like this). But granted, I do not work in an Android environment and certainly not with the SDK of the chip used here. But I digress, let's not go further down the development discussion path, unless you see a need to.

FYI, I also start play of all my video files from the File manager. I have experienced no issues related to that, it's only the Music playing experience that is compromised due to these 2 different behaviors, that seem completely unwarranted to me.