Suggestions for multi disc albums?

[LJeneral]

Hi, after doing a search through the forums it has become quite clear that great as subsonic is it is still a little lacking when it comes to the treatment of multi disc albums.

If you put the albums in CD1, CD2 folders you get two folders (when really its one album release) and the artwork shows on computer but not on the mobile app.
If you put them in one folder and number the files 101,102,201,202 the album art now appears in the mobile app but the tracks display in the wrong order. For example CD1 track 1, CD2 track 1, CD1 track 2, CD 2 track 2. This is obviously not helpful when listening to DJ mixes which often come in multiple discs, same goes for compilation releases.

This seems to have been an issue for a number of years now. I am in no way complaining, I admit I wouldn't have the foggiest how to code anything and am very grateful to have found the program and be able to use its features. I would just like to ask some of the regular or long time users how they tag or set up their directories to circumvent the shortcomings? Thanks for your time and I look forward to your responses.

[daneren2005]

Hi, after doing a search through the forums it has become quite clear that great as subsonic is it is still a little lacking when it comes to the treatment of multi disc albums.

If you put the albums in CD1, CD2 folders you get two folders (when really its one album release) and the artwork shows on computer but not on the mobile app.
If you put them in one folder and number the files 101,102,201,202 the album art now appears in the mobile app but the tracks display in the wrong order. For example CD1 track 1, CD2 track 1, CD1 track 2, CD 2 track 2. This is obviously not helpful when listening to DJ mixes which often come in multiple discs, same goes for compilation releases.

This seems to have been an issue for a number of years now. I am in no way complaining, I admit I wouldn't have the foggiest how to code anything and am very grateful to have found the program and be able to use its features. I would just like to ask some of the regular or long time users how they tag or set up their directories to circumvent the shortcomings? Thanks for your time and I look forward to your responses.

1) Rename the files so that they are CD 1 Track 1...CD 1 Track N, CD 2 Track N + 1...CD 2 Track N + M so that they are in the correct order.
2) Just play the one CD and then add the second onto the now playing list.

There isn't really any magic way to determine that two different albums should be combined as one, especially since no one is consistent with naming/tagging of files/folders and a fix for some might break functionality for others.

[hakko]

Until Sindre has added support for disc number in the API, I'll start returning track numbers for CD1 as 1,2,3... and for CD2 as 101,102,103... and for CD3 as 201,202,203 etc. Not ideal, but I think it is the best solution for know to at least get the tracks sorted correctly in apps.

[Boutros]

hakko, I wholeheartedly support this solution (even if it's a stopgap).

[jzanitsch]

I generally just continue the track numbers as if all of the songs are on one album. For example, disc 1 has tracks 1-8 then I number tracks from disc 2 as 09-16.

[hakko]

I asked on the developer forum and it turned out that disc number was secretly introduced in 4.7. It is now exposed to apps in MusicCabinet as well. I don't think it is yet supported in iSub (the author was as surprised as me to see it available), but I think he'll add support for it soon, now that we know that it's part of the official API.

[LJeneral]

Well that's just smashing! Cheers for snooping around Hakko.

[tnt533]

My deal is a little different and I guess I should make my own feature request. I actually LIKE organizing double disc releases in their own folder under a parent folder for the entire release. It's cleaner when dealing with the files outside of the player and allows for a more standardized formatting of tags (track numbers) and file names. What I would love to see is album art being read from the parent folder as well and then displayed on the artist level with the other non-multidisc releases. The only way to make that happen as of now is to actually put a track in the parent folder with the art file and then Subsonic will read and display it but it's a messy solution. I won't do that so all my multidisc releases are sorted to the top and the art isn't displayed with the rest of the singledisc albums. =( I can't bring myself to just dump all tracks from all discs into a single folder either. I have some box sets that comprise 80 to 100+ tracks and several box sets have different art for each disc and I don't embed art into the files, instead choosing to do a single folder.jpg in the album folder. It's more manageable that way. If you need to change art you just change that one file.

Sindre, if you're reading this, please make Subsonic read the art file out of folders without tracks in them. Make it an optional thing if need be.

[Boutros]

Many thanks for the good news, hakko. I'm sure Ben will have this sorted in isub in short order...