Just discovered the "Merge Albums with Same Name" option and it solves the multiple cover issue I was having. Now multi-disc sets only show a single cover.....perfect! Thanks for listening
Can I add another request to the navigation system. When you select Genre within the library, you are then offered the ability to sort by track or album. Can we also have an option to list by Artist within genre.
From home screen click music then the cog icon in the right top corner, then it's under scan....If I remember correctly
Thanks THXjay, I am on version 1.3.67 on a DMP-A10 and I dont see that option anywhere under the menus accessed via the cog on the music screen.
Sorry I should have been clearer. The sorting option you show there will list all albums or all tracks A-Z by artist. That can make for a long list to go through. What I meant was a listing of artists under Genre, and you would only see individual albums or tracks after having selected the artist.
My DMP A10 just got a firmware update to 1.40.1 and the merge album option has appeared where you said it was - thanks!!
So, you basically want to merge the ‘Artists’ and ‘Genre’ tabs? You can already see artists. Many artists make music that is categorized under different genres. I like having options / a powerful search function but this seems a bit weird. I have artists with up to 10-15 albums but I don’t see the point of having these 10-15 albums seperated into genres. Often an album is categorized as jazz by some while others would call it soul, funk, electronica, singer-songwriter or one of 50 different sub-genres. Genre is generally not a very good way to sort music. It might be better to just add a ‘Genre’ option under Artists, to sort your 10-15 albums under an artist by genre. Like this: Having an Artist option under Genre, would mean that you don’t see albums by that artist unless you chose the correct genre / sub-genre.
I dont want to merge the Artist and Genre tabs. Under Artists you get all Artists regardless of the genre of their music. But if you select Genre and then Artists, you would only see Artists who have produced music labelled with the Genre you have selected. I hadn't seen the Genre option under Artists and will need to see what that is doing. But it would make more sense to be able to select the genre first, rather than artists-genre-artists as I expect the above is going to work. Most music server software I have encountered (Asset upnp, LMS, Volumio and others) allows one to select artists after having selected genre. You state the following "I have artists with up to 10-15 albums but I don’t see the point of having these 10-15 albums seperated into genres. Often an album is categorized as jazz by some while others would call it soul, funk, electronica, singer-songwriter or one of 50 different sub-genres. Genre is generally not a very good way to sort music." A lot depends on how you have populated the genre field in the tagging of your music. Many do not manage this very actively, sometimes whatever tagging resource you use can allocate a track to multiple genres. And as you say people can disagree about genre. If that is the case you might be right. Personally I manage the genre tag on my music very actively and it is an important way of structuring my music collection. I dont think I am alone in doing that. When you say "genre is generally not a very good way to sort music" I would respectfully but vigorously disagree - in fact I would say that it is actually the best way to make an initial split of a library containing thousands of tracks if you are actively managing the tagging of your library. If the genre field is properly managed it is probably the way of breaking up that vast bulk of files into the fewest number of buckets. Before recently reducing the size of my library I had about 9000 tracks categorised into about 12 genres. I would wager you could not give me a way to break that many files into the same sized or smaller set of buckets that was not completely arbitrary in musical terms. As for an Artist having albums or tracks in differing genres, I have no problem with that. I don't see why you would force them all into one genre if they were genuinely different types of music (although there might be issues with albums having tracks in different generes in some cases). But this happens so seldom it is a bit of a footnote.
‘Genre’ under ‘Artist’ was added by me to show that potential option. It is not there in the app. Artist name is an official thing (even though some artist names are ‘taken’ by several persons/artists). Album name and track names are also official. Year and date are official. Record company is official. However, artists or record companies rarely state which genre the artist is. So, genre is very personal and one of the things I hate most about Radio Stations / the music business. Telling listeners that a radio station plays ‘rock’ is like saying this radio station only plays ‘white’ music. Art is art and limiting people to only one genre made up in that DJ’s head is pathetic to me. This makes ‘genre’ such a bad way of sorting. It might work for you if you have dictated a certain genre for the artist/album/track. But it would not work for most people (my claim).
I agree that "genre" is arbitrary and inconsistent if you rely on what tagging software uses to populate that field in your ID3 tags. And I would agree that "most people" don't have the time or inclination to make sure that the genre field in their music collection is populated in a helpful way. However, "most people" are unlikely to buying an Eversolo streaming product. These are targetting an audience which includes at least a sizeable minority who care about and actively manage the tags on their music library. As for your dislike of radio station use of "genre" that is a separate point. You could cite that as a motivation to actually manage the ID3 tags on your library and label your music with genre tags that are actually meaningful to you. Indeed, the fact that genre is not absolutely standardised when it comes to a track is actually what allows it to be useful in organising your library if you choose to use it that way - it hasn't already been completely dictated by the artist. You might notice when I requested that artist was added after genre in the library I did not state that it was needed for the majority of users. But as I have said before, the option to sort by genre and then artist is offered by lots of music server software which competes with what the Eversolo library is doing, so it is far from an unheard of choice or request. My music library is organised into folders by genre, then artist, then album. Whenever I add a file to my library I take great care that it has what I deem to be correct genre tag before it is added to the library. As a way of managing music files it works great provided you are prepared to take ownership of what the genre tag actually says.
So, if I were to ask you what genre you have tagged a specific album with, you would be able to list that from memory for all albums? If not, you risk not seeing an album after sorting by genre. Hence, why I find it a bad way to sort. If you sort your folders by genre, this must mean that you only use one genre per album. Or do you have multiple copies of the same album under different genres? I mean, your wish for a function is as valid as any wish. But Eversolo’s official way to organize music on the internal SSD is not by having folders with genre. And I’ve seen plenty Eversolo owners who don’t use the Internal SSD and of those who do, many seem to be clueless about tagging.
You asked "So, if I were to ask you what genre you have tagged a specific album with, you would be able to list that from memory for all albums? If not, you risk not seeing an album after sorting by genre. Hence, why I find it a bad way to sort." I would get that right 99 times out of a 100 if you asked me at the level of a track. The one I got wrong I would find on my second attempt. You then asked "If you sort your folders by genre, this must mean that you only use one genre per album. Or do you have multiple copies of the same album under different genres?" An Artist can appear in multiple genres in my file system. And an album can also be split across multiple folders/genres. For me the basic unit is an individual track (only one copy of each track) stored in my file system as genre\artist\album\artistname_trackname.flac Works fine with all the main server and media player software (Jriver, Volumio, Logitech Media Centre, Asset Upnp, others I can't remember). Eversolo has a suggested format for how files are stored on the SSD but, at least in my view, the library software should be able to work with the ID3 tags on your music collection independently of the exact file/folder structure (and it appears to).
So, genre on track level? So, you would listen to an album but leave out one or two tracks because they are a different ‘genre’? Well, genre then does seem to be important to you Do you work as a DJ? I listen to ‘new releases’ on streaming services and one, whole album at a time. I call it ‘respecting the art’ and find the whole ‘releasing an album one song at a time’ as deeply disrespectful to the artist. But obviously, it might bring more traffic and make more money that way. Which seems to be more important these days… I guess, none of us could be considered belonging to the majority. Eversolo is ‘in it for the money’, though. They made that clear a few times when I suggested changes. So, maybe you should argue that this ’genre’ change will make them more money
If I wanted to listen to an album by a particular artist I would not search for it via genre if I knew it had tracks which crossed genres. I would search for it via artist or album directly. The tree you use to browse your music does not force you to use the same node at all times - yes genre is important to me but it is not the only way to do things. For example, I create quite a lot of M3U playlists (which might contain music across different genres) and import them to the Eversolo. Alternatively you might select a genre, then an artist, and then an album by that artist which includes songs across different genres. As for DJing or "disrespecting the artist", I will respectfully pass on those... I dont think adding another node to the browsing tree after genre is difficult for Eversolo to do. As for making money, that specific step is immaterial but part of the general process of building out the library functionality.
Nudging this one back into focus as a potential VU-Meter type of animated screen.. @Eki Shaw Please? Absolutely stunning .. and a major publicity stunt
I did that mockup design idea with the tape a while back and it has just occured to me that an extra touch would be if the album/artist name could be written in a hand written font to the tape itself.
While listening to music on our local storage, we should be able to view images and album cover scans within the album's folder via the tablet or mobile phone application.