Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Support questions for Neutron Player only.
blaubär
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Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by blaubär » Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:22 am

And if you don't use the album artist tag then you'll have to think about setting other criteria for the definition of what Neutron should regard as an album. Currently you define that by Album Artist, not Path.

blaubär
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Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by blaubär » Mon Jul 13, 2020 5:27 pm

Also see Group / Split by Album Artist ... would be nice to hear other people's experiences ...

DSperber
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Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:18 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by DSperber » Tue Jul 14, 2020 4:02 am

Well, you may be onto something. ZERO of my tags contain "album artist" values. I only use the "artist" tag field.

All of my ~7700 song collection was selectively produced using Audiograbber against the actual ~1200 CDs that I own, with the project getting underway back in 2008. Audiograbber does not capture or populate the "album artist" field, neither in ID3v2 tags for MP3 files nor in Ogg Vorbis comments (i.e. FLAC tags) for FLAC files.

ZERO "album artist" fields are populated. They are all blank.

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I see that Neutron doesn't have a "split by artist" or "group by artist" option on its Media Library Settings page, but only two items that refer to "album artist". Seems shortsighted, if that is now revealed to be the problem with my collection. I would say that either (i.e. both) should have been able to be specified, rather than assuming a music collection has one or the other or both populated.

Yes, both tag formats allow either/both to be specified (and of course not necessarily the same). But why base Neutron's functionality on the assumption that only one of the two fields is ABSOLUTELY PRESENT in order for the program to work properly? Why not allow acceptance either field since both might be present, and in worst case if one is blank but the other is not it clearly should be alternatively accepted purely by default?

I don't know, while this certainly may be the explanation for what's happening it's not a good thing to see in the program. I still think I would characterize this as a BUG NEEDING FIXING. If "artist" is the track artist, and "album artist" may additionally specify the album artist, why wouldn't you use the "artist" field when combining songs presented for the ARTISTS drill-down? Of the two similar and related tag fields I would think the "track artist" (i.e. "artist" tag field") is the most germane.

I don't understand the English anyway on that Media Library Settings page, as to what they are intending to produce. What does "split album by 'album artist' tag" mean? Is it designed to separate more than one album with the same title, by the presumed unique and different "album artist" field values? And how is that different from "group albums by 'album artist' tag ignoring other artists of the album"? I find both descriptions confusingly phrased, and I honestly don't know what either setting should have to do with the ARTISTS drill-down?

I'm drilling down using ARTISTS. The only real question is whether it should be the "track artist" (i.e. ARTIST tag field) or the "album artist" (i.e. ALBUM ARTIST tag field) which should be used to identify an ARTIST. If I have "Ronstadt, Linda" appearing in my ARTISTS list presented by Neutron, obviously Neutron must have been looking at the ARTIST field in my tags, since that is the only field I have present and populated. And if it used ARTIST to get this far, why is it now wanting "album artist" tag field for any further subdivision? What is the relevance here??

It's a simple task (or it should be) and it should only involve one tag field, namely ARTIST. Drill-down via ARTISTS should show a list of all "track artists" as produced via the ARTIST tag field. Tapping on one of the ARTISTS displayed should show a list of (a) all albums on which the selected ARTIST tag field is populated with the listed value, and (b) a combined list of all tracks in which the selectd ARTIST tag field is populated with the listed value. There is no place for "album artist" to come into play, unless some special handling is needed because multiple albums with the same name exist even when all of their tracks are for a completely different "track artist" and Neutron is not distinguishing them correctly (as from different artists) but rather mistakenly combining them (even though they had different artists) because of their identical album names.

The Neutron bug is that the major sort key here is supposed to be ARTIST (i.e. "track artist"), not album title. When I drill down through ARTISTS I do not want to see anything else, not album nor track nor anything, from any other "track artist". And every single album referenced should be automatically and totally unique from any other album referenced, by utilizing the albums named in tags for tracks having that "track artist", i.e. the ARTIST tag field from each track.

There is no justification for needing or using or assuming populated the "album artist" tag field at all. It is track files and their tags that we are building a tag database from, that implies artist/album/song. Yes there is also a folder/filename structure which is also detected, but the informational database for Media Library is being produced by analyzing the tags in each track. And in each track it is the "track artist" (i.e. ARTIST tag field) which says who is performing that track. The "album artist" field is totally irrelevant, and its being blank is not a crime.

I still believe it is Neutron which is the culprit here, if my ZERO presence of "album artist" tag fields is what is causing the ARTISTS drill-down to mistakenly include songs and albums by other artists, just because the name of the album on which those other tracks exist happens to have the same name as an album by the real ARTIST I am interested in and drilled-down for.

DSperber
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:18 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by DSperber » Tue Jul 14, 2020 4:13 am

blaubär wrote:
Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:22 am
And if you don't use the album artist tag then you'll have to think about setting other criteria for the definition of what Neutron should regard as an album. Currently you define that by Album Artist, not Path.
AHA! Perhaps this clarifies things.

As I said, I don't use "album artist" tag. I feel that not to be a crime, but if "split albums by the system path" (again, completely incomprehensible English if this is what the option was intended to facilitate) works, then I'll be happy. I truly did not understand what this whole "split albums by..." notion was needed for or intending to facilitate. Again, I just don't think a Herb Alpert track deserves to show up when I'm drilling down for ARTIST Linda Ronstadt, correct option set here for Media Library or not.

Anyway, I will give this option a try right now, instead of "split by album artist". I'll report back in a minute.

DSperber
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:18 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by DSperber » Tue Jul 14, 2020 4:37 am

AHA! You are a gentleman and a scholar! (I always say that to anybody who solves my problem for me) Worked perfectly!

Changed the setting to "split by path", turned off "split by album artist" and turned off "group by album artist". Did a REFRESH, and voila!

That was exactly the solution to my issue (not problem) of having blank "album artist" fields in my tags! I honestly still don't see why Neutron should show tracks (and their host albums) from completely extraneous "artists" other than the one I drilled down through, no matter that the host album might be named identically to one also made by my selected artist, but I can live with this setting solving the problem.

I would not use English like "split" to describe this option. I would instead call it "use this criteria to eliminate extraneous tracks by other artists who might have those tracks on an album that by complete coincidence might have the identical name as one by the true correct selected artist I'm actually looking for". I honestly don't think it should have been needed, but so be it.

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And it now correctly produces an ARTISTS -> Ronstadt, Linda display which now correctly shows only a total of 17 tracks attributable to Linda Ronstadt (on two albums, one having 3 of her songs and the other having 14 of her songs, for a total of 17 songs by Linda Ronstadt, who my drill-down said I was only interested in). No longer showing 14 tracks by Linda Ronstadt and also showing 27 tracks on one of the albums a track of hers appears on, incorrectly including 13 other songs by three other artists, all of whom were accidentally on their own host album of the identical "Very Best Of, The" name as that one of Linda Ronstadt's 2 host albums.

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And of course the small cover art image shown in the album list is correct, as is the small cover art image in the track list for that album.

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I would say "case closed".

Thanks again for your assistance.

blaubär
Posts: 3312
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by blaubär » Tue Jul 14, 2020 5:08 am

You're welcome. As to the understandability of the texts the GUI shows : we could use a manual or user guide .

DSperber
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:18 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by DSperber » Tue Jul 14, 2020 7:23 am

One more observation... (another goodness)...

The correct recognition of "path" as a splitter as opposed to "album artist" which doesn't apply to my collection, this settings tweak has also now made the ALBUMS drill-down presentation also work properly. So it now shows FOUR separate ALBUMS named "Very Best Of, The" each with the correct cover art image next to it, instead of combining all four into a single entry that gets the cover art of the first of the group (i.e. Herb Alpert).

So ALBUMS now works and looks exactly as FOLDERS does, as it always should have since for me every "album" named in a tag corresponds 1:1 to a "folder". That's how Audiograbber creates the folder name, from the album title which is also inserted into the "album" tag field of every track produced from that album.

On an unrelated matter, but interesting and amusing nevertheless, I was playing around with the user interface and decided to explore the "output to" red button at the top of the player panel. When I tapped it to see what would happen, an "output to" window appeared, on which was listed my Yamaha RX-A860 AVR which happens to be a device on my LAN (connected by ethernet cable as it turns out, but that doesn't matter... it's on my LAN). And my Samsung S10 is also on my LAN, connected via WiFi. And when I tapped on the A860 item displayed on the "output to" screen, amazingly the Yamaha A860 which was powered off at that moment all by itself powered on! And on the display screen showed "Neutron" with additional information.

I then went back to the Neutron player screen and pushed PLAY. And miraculously the sound output from Linda Ronstadt now playing on the phone was coming out the speakers of my sound system controlled by the A860 AVR, and not the phone! All DLNA-compliant I suppose with the Neutron app acting as the music server, delivering audio (in LPCM form, as it turns out is the default output type) to the AVR. Pretty impressive,and sounds good too, for both FLAC and MP3 files.

I did have one few minutes of hysteria though, as I didn't exactly how to get out of this "external sound-casting" mode and back to playing sound on the phone. Hadn't dawned on my to simply tap again on the "output to" button (to turn it "off"). So I unwittingly exited the app, and by doing so got myself in trouble. I then tried all kinds of things but was now no longer getting sound of any type played by music files or video files. I had sound from other notifications, but no sound from music or videos. I even tried Facebook where I know there were videos that had sound, and again no sound at all.

After stumbling around, turning the phone off and on, etc., I finally decided to look into Settings -> Sound (where else should I look?) and sure enough the volume slider for "media" was all the way down to zero. I guess Neutron changes the internal media volume to zero when it sends its sound "output to" an external device. As it turns out it will reset the media volume to where it was if you turn off "output to" by tapping on that button, but I didn't know that... until I finally accidentally discovered how it worked. But initially, I managed to get media sound back on the phone simply by sliding the "media" volume control back up to where it should have been.

After now realizing how this must work, I tried it all again. And this time I correctly reset sound-to-the-phone by properly tapping a second time on the "output to" button to turn off external sound-casting. And sure enough I once again heard Linda Ronstadt playing through the phone's speakers.

Quite a lesson. Yes, sure wish there was a manual or user guide.

DSperber
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:18 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by DSperber » Tue Jul 14, 2020 7:49 am

One more question, as long as I have your ear here: How do I actually EXIT the app immediately?

When I'm in the player and playing a song, and I push the BACK button (bottom-right button on the very bottom of the Samsung S10 screen) I'm taken back to the Samsung desktop, and the music is still playing from Neutron. That's fine, but I'm looking for a way that exiting the player will actually STOP->EXIT so that the player is terminated (like "X" in the upper-right corner of a program window on a PC, to exit the program and close the window).

Furthermore, once Neutron is started if I now pull down the Samsung status/notification bar (small row at the extreme top of the Samsung S10 screen) which is presenting a right-pointing "media" arrow as an icon, there is a Neutron "mini-player strip" presented at the top of the rest of notifications, which shows cover art of what's playing and which I can use to control basic play/stop/previous/next functions of Neutron. Excellent.

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Interestingly, if I then tap on the right-pointing "media" arrow which also appears in the upper-left corner of the Neutron mini-player strip, the strip will expand somewhat, moving the player controls down one row and adding a progress fuel gauge. And... THERE IS NOW AN "X" AVAILABLE, which if I tap it will actually finally EXIT THE PROGRAM!

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Tapping this "X" makes the program end and the mini-player strip disappears. And that is EXACTLY WHAT I WANT for when I'm actually using Neutron. Where is that "X" on the real player interface?

How do I exit-stop the program immediately and NOT get that mini-player strip appearing forever in the notification bar? Is there a correct way (equivalent to "X") to actually STOP->EXIT the program so that it doesn't leave media playing with a little right-triangle "media" icon in the notification row?

blaubär
Posts: 3312
Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:48 am

Re: Drill-down of ARTIST -> ALBUM mistakenly shows tracks by other artists

Post by blaubär » Tue Jul 14, 2020 9:25 am

No, there isn't. The GUI ( graphical user interface ) is only ever used to control the playing, and ending the GUI isn't supposed to end the playing. The playing itself takes place in another process, which you can shut down via the notification.

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