Here are Twonky 5/6 trees to suit larger music collections

[Briain]

Hi

I'd forgotten about the short date code bug (I use only embedded art, so it wasn't apparent on my own FLAC collection). When this was first brought to my attention by another Linn DS user, I emailed the PV engineer who looks after the maintenance of the released versions of Twonky; he immediately knew what was causing it and sorted it in their current working code. My assumption is that this (and a few other nice to have fixes) will be included in either 6.0.37 or 7.0 (I suspect the short date one should be fixed in 6.0.37). I've just been told by a Twonky forum member that one of the other things I suggested is now in 6.0.37; the capability to broadcast albumartist (where exists, and artist where it is absent) in container zero. That would make a huge difference to me (and many other Linn owners) as it means when browsing by album, the albumartist (where it exists) will be shown as opposed to a psudorandom contributing artist from that same album. Hopefully, Qnap will soon get the builds of 6.0.37 and we can beta test them.

Bri

[Briain]

Hi Folks

Updated and New Trees

I've just updated the custom trees and added some new ones. I've enhanced the previous versions (the alpha-grouped artist and albumartist versions) and I've also added two new 'ungrouped' trees which might be better suited to folks with smaller music collections. The four new trees are located are on page two, but for convenience, there are direct download links to them all below. By 'small' music collections I'm really meaning only a few hundred albums or less, but the changeover point is really governed by the control point you are using as opposed to the trees (or Twonky). Personally, I think about 1000 albums would be a good chang-over point, but as it's easy to try different trees, you're best to just find out by trying them.

Medium to Large Music Collections (alpha-grouped trees):

Folks with large music collections and who do use the albumartist tags, use this one

Folks with large music collections but who do not use the album artist tags, use this one

Small Music Collections (ungrouped trees):

Folks with small music collections and who do use the albumartist tags, use this one

Folks with small music collections but who do not use the album artist tags, use this one

Full instructions (and pictures) of how to install them with the Qnap Twonky QPKG can be found here on the Linn forum.

Bri

PS For folks who wish to show art at the head of the folder containers, please continue to use the older trees on page 2 of this thread. If there is demand for this feature in the newer trees, I'll adapt them soon and post them as alternative versions.

[Budgie]

Hi Briain,
Been using your trees for large collection for the last year with no serious issues but I do have a couple of questions.
The first concerns tag display problems caused either by my tagging errors or tagging by others downloaded from freedb which use illegal characters in tags. These tend to prevent display of tag or curtail length of tag. I believe the tagging standard is set by Vorbis but can you shine any more light on this. At present all I can do is check how tag is displayed in Kinsky and edit if incomplete or missing.

Second question concerns use of more than one genre tag which you advised above was possible. I have found this works but there is a display problem. If for example I tag a file as "early" and "vocal" and then filter by genre using Kinsky, the genre "early" is shown twice, once with the file carrying two genre tags and then again with all the other files which have single "early" tag. It would of course be much better if all files tagged "early" were shown in the one tab, whether they had a second genre tag or not.
Is this issue an artifact of how your trees work and can it be fixed?
Grateful for your advice when you have a moment.
Best wishes for the New Year from the Highlands
Budgie

[Briain]

Hi

Illegal characters

I'm not aware of illegal characters causing any issues; could you give me an example of the character that upsets things and I'll try it on my test server?

Multiple genres

If you had only 6 albums and tagged the first three albums as Early and next three as Early,Vocal (note that there should be no space after the comma) then you should see only two entries in the Kinsky genre menu; Early and Vocal. The Early genre should have all 6 albums and the Vocal entry should have only the last three of them. Is that not what you are getting? If not, could you describe what you would be getting when using the above example?

To use an example from my collection, I have things like the below:

Classical,Classical - Piano
Classical,Classical - Piano,Chilled
Classical,Classical - Organ
Classical,Classical - Harpsichord

My genre list would look as below:

Chilled
Classical
Classical - Harpsichord
Classical - Piano
Classical - Organ

All of the classical albums will appear under Classical, and they will also appear under one of the other genres. The only exception to that is the one tagged as Classical,Classical - Piano,Chilled which will appear under all three of these headings.

Al the best
Bri

[Budgie]

Hi Briain,
Many thanks for the reply.
I shall have to come back to you on the illegal characters/syntax as I cannot now find what I corrected. I did post a cryptic note once before on this and will try and find it. Not todays problem.

On the matter of two genres your examples are clear and logical. What I have is slightly different, however I have just seen that there should be no space which I understand but I notice now that through habit I have entered a space. Will revise tags and try again and get back to you if there is still a problem.

Finally I seek advice and help on how to deal properly with multiple composers on one CD.
I have a large collection of classical music, mainly opera which I have ripped to flac files and stored on NAS. I use your large collection trees and QPKG version of Twonky. For operas on more than one CD I re-number the tracks and tag so that the whole opera appears as if on one CD. Also had to do much tag correction as half of the freedb tagging downloads put composer in the artist tag.

To find an opera I usually go Music > Genre > Composer > Album and all is fine.

Where I have some difficulty is with CDs by a single artist eg The Sixteen - (Harry Christophers) with tracks by different composers. I have tended to put these in a folder "Various" below the Genre and tag each track with the correct composer. My problem is that once I have gone to Genre > Composer > Various there are only 4 options, Album Artists, Track Artists, Albums and List Tunes. No Composer choice here. Of course I know that the composers show in the alphabetical list at the top of the tree but that makes finding a work difficult if you do not remember the composer. Of course in this example, putting the albumartist as "The Sixteen" would make life easier but I haven't started tagging in this way yet. Will stop rambling now but wondered if you had any advice/thoughts on this.

Regards,
Budgie


Take for example CD Cantatas by John Clerk of Penicuik

[abgestumpft]

Hi Briain,

first of all thanks a lot for this nice Twonky tree config. It's much more comfortable than the pre-installed one.

I'm using Twonky 6.0.38 on my QNAP.

One thing I have recognized (could be also a Twonky problem):
When going to Album view the Album Artist is not considered, meaning all albums with same name get grouped together.
E.g. I have:
Artist 1 - The Ultimate Collection
Artist 2 - The Ultimate Collection

When I then navigate to:
Albums - T - The Ultimate Collection
I get listed both Artist 1 and Artist 2 mixed under that Album.
I would expect something like:
Albums - T - The Ultimate Collection (Artist 1)
Albums - T - The Ultimate Collection (Artist 2)

Is this a bug (either in Twonky or the tree config) or works this as designed and I have to workaround it (e.g. by creating unique album names in my whole collection)?

regards
Sebastian

[Briain]

Hi Sebastian

There are actually two issues that could do with fixing:

Disambiguate same named albums

The first one (the one you have observed) has been there since day one, and it seems they can't fix it. I had several albums with the same name and yes, when browsing in the albums container, same named albums show as one big album containing all the tracks. I had about 5 pairs of albums with the same name, and 2 situations where three had the same name. The easiest way to fix it is to append the album name to disambiguate them into separate albums; below shows one example:

King Crimson - Red
Black Uhuru - Red

With them both called 'Red', I had one big album containing the King Crimson and Black Uhuru tracks, so I remaned them as below:

Red (KC)
Red (BU)

Of course, you could use anything to disambiguate them; for example

Red
Red.

It doesn't matter what you do, as long as they are different.

Show albumartist (where present) against albums in the albums container

As to the second issue, when browsing the albums container on a control point that shows the artist as well, Twonky shows an artist from one of the album tracks. That's fine for Pink Floyd etc, but for compilations, it is the wrong approach. I have asked if an algorithm can be created that shows the albumartist (where present) and shows the artist if the albumartist is not populated (I think that's what Foobar does). I was in touch with them a few days back and gave a gentle prod to remind them about this outstanding issue.

Bri

[abgestumpft]

Hi Briain,

thanks for your reply. I will then rename the affected Albums as you've suggested.

best regards
Sebastian

[Budgie]

[quote="Budgie"]Hi Briain,
Many thanks for the reply.
I shall have to come back to you on the illegal characters/syntax as I cannot now find what I corrected. I did post a cryptic note once before on this and will try and find it. Not todays problem.

On the matter of two genres your examples are clear and logical. What I have is slightly different, however I have just seen that there should be no space which I understand but I notice now that through habit I have entered a space. Will revise tags and try again and get back to you if there is still a problem.
[snip]

Hi Briain,
It has been a while. The issue with using two genres is that when genres are displayed during a search, those genres which have been used on a CD with more than one genre tagged appear in the alphabetical genre list twice. For example if I have a CD tagged Choral and Oratorio and search on Genre, the genre Choral appears twice, once in a short alphabetical list of just the genres which have been used on CDs with more than one genre, followed by the main alphabetical list. It is a nuisance as if I select the first Choral which appears in the list I cannot see all the Choral CDs, only a subset. To find the rest I must scroll down to where Choral appears again and select that. It would have been better if there were only one Choral genre appearing with all CDs which have Choral tag even if they also have Oratorio or any other genre tag. Hope this is more clear.

Meanwhile I have just purchased a TS559 as old TS209 was filling up. On the TS 209 I am running QPKG version of Twonky 6.0.34 with your trees. I see that the TS 559 has 6.0.38 built in, but this is also available as QPKG version. I guess the TS 559 system is quite a bit different from the older machine so do you have any advice please on whether it is easier to install your trees to run with QPKG version of Twonky or the embedded version?. Please forgive if this is covered in this or other threads, am still trying to catch up.
Regards,
Budgie

[davidlang3]

Thank you so much!!! I Have used WINScp und renamed the old Folder Views to views.old...
Now the QNAP makes Sense

[VladG]

Is anybody there? Is this topic still alive?
I'm desperate and really need help/advice from you, gurus, with navigation tree for a large library.
Please answer if any veterans still here.

Greetings to everyone!

[dolbyman]

and you did not open a new thread with your actual question, instead of posting in this old one .. because ?

[VladG]

Because this thread refers exactly to my problem and I realized that those people who posted here may be able to help. I've learned a lot from reading this thread from the beginning and managed to create a navigation tree which serves my needs. Almost but not completely. So my hope is that this is a right place to get help.

Down to my first issue:
When browsing by folder, Twonky sorts artists/albums etc. by parameter 'res' which I cannot find a description for . I'd like to be able alpha-grouping them, but all my attempts fail -- Twonky just ignores filters like 'res[3]'. Is it possible to do so?