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Connect Changing 'MY' Music Details!

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Obli

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Hi all,

I'm new to the forums. Happy New Year to everyone!

If you can't be bothered to read my babble, the question is right at the bottom, in a one line paragrapgh... =D

I received a NW-A1000 for Christmas. Initially I was a little disappointed, mainly by the lack of volume (that's been fixed - thanks AtracLife - perfect!) and awkward Connect software - for these reasons, my NW-A1000 nearly went back to the shop... (I wonder how many did following Christmas?)

Having fiddled about with Connect, it's starting to become more usable - I don't find it as slow as some people obviously do (I have a fairly well maintained, high-end PC though), and transferring music is very fast - approx. 1 track per second @192kbps doesn't seem slow to me guys, especially as it's via USB!

To my problem: I've spent ages editing tracks in the way I would like them to be named, etc. It takes even longer when you can only edit one track at a time, rather than edit metafiles (is this the right terminology?) in groups (this sucks Sony, please sort this out). Now, Connect has interferred, tried to be clever and edited 50% of my tracks, what seems quite randomly (why it's edited some and not others, I don't know) changing artist names, albums, genres etc.

How can I stop Connect from changing track / album details that I have already explicitly stated?

Edited by Obli
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An example of Connect screwing up my editing:

I have a CD: The Prodigy - Experience Expanded. The first CD is the original album Experience, the second CD a bunch of remixes. I renamed everything in Connect. For CD 1, I named the album 'Experience' for every track, and artist 'The Prodigy' for every track. For CD 2, I named the album 'Experience Expanded' for every track and artist 'The Prodigy' for every track.

Connect has automatically altered what should be two albums under Album Artist 'The Prodigy' in my library. I named them Experience (12 tracks) and Experience Expanded (11 tracks).

Instead of Album Artist > Album being The Prodigy > Experience and The Prodigy > Experience Expanded, I now have 4 albums under Album Artist The Prodigy: Experience (11 tracks), Experience: Expanded [disc 2] (10 tracks), Their Law (The Singles 1990 - 2005) [disc 1] (1 track) and The Prodigy Experience (1 track). Basically, it's taken one track from each of the two albums and found an alternative album name for them. I've manually changed the details for these tracks and they've returned to their correct, relevant album. I wonder if Connect will change them again...

Is this just a case of turning off 'artist link'. Basically, I need to stop Connect from making alterations to albums / tracks details that I edit through properties myself. The Gracenote thing is fine for ripping from CDs, I'm referring to importing existing music from my HDD into the Library, spending ages editing all the track details so they're perfect for the player then having Connect rename some of the details that I have already explicity stated in Connect! Grr! :)

Edited by Obli
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That's odd, I've never seen it do that to my songs before.

In any case, yes, you really should disable the artistlink feature in preferences to turn off these "behind the scenes" changes to your album names. I'll have to try some more tracks I have to see if it changes them, too.

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It's done it again! Grrr! :blink:

20 tracks all given random albums (I wanted them to remain blank for their albums)

I've reluctantly disabled Artist Link now... surely, the Artist Link feature should work regardless, and whether or not you want Connect to 'fiddle' with your music's data should be a seperate option - the two seem to be clumsily merged as one feature. SONY, WAKE UP!!!

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Same thing happened to me, so i turned off all networking functions + artist link

It´s especially annoying if you have non mainstream music - the database doesn´t recognize the albums and uses another similar album; i.e. labels some drum&bass album as '60s swing from 1978 whatever

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i had teh same problem it would rename the tag data to pnM, here is the solution I employed use sonic stage instead.

Something is funny about the connect software

Mp3nity is a good app to manage tag info, if yuo want to repair your files

Edited by userno2
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The Artist Link feature only works when the "correct" tag data is used. Guess where that tag data comes from? Gracenote.

So, unfortunately, if you want Artist Link you also have to take some bad tags. This one isn't Sony's fault it looks like. In fact, if you've tried the Yahoo Music Engine it does the same stuff. I've turned off the feature in both apps and I tag things by hand.

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i had the same problem, as soon as i registered with gracenote it went through my library and completely destroyed the tagging... songs by system of a down became by groove armada, jennifer lopez suddenly had an album called uno duè and bjork's vespertine became gledys collins: the greatest hits...

in the end i just gave up having the artist link feature, which didn't work anyway, and disabled all network features in the options and i'm still in the process of fixing my poor tags

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The Artist Link feature only works when the "correct" tag data is used. Guess where that tag data comes from? Gracenote.

So, unfortunately, if you want Artist Link you also have to take some bad tags. This one isn't Sony's fault it looks like. In fact, if you've tried the Yahoo Music Engine it does the same stuff. I've turned off the feature in both apps and I tag things by hand.

I have that turned off now as well, and did the test of keeping CP on overnight to see if it would update my tags right, like it was mentioned in one thread and like everyone else, I had to go and fix all my tags again.

Sadly, if that is the case, and the artistlink function won't be working, sony should seriously fork over some compensation for this, otherwise release some new firmware for wma DRM and atrac gapless.

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I noticed that! However, there is an option where you can stop it from updating your ID3 tags. I think you can find it in the properties of a track and somewhere in the options menu.

CP will still update and change everything in the library (if you have that feature turned on) but will not update your tags so will stay all nice and not affect that actual files.

I really hate the huge amount of wrong info on gracenote.

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  • 2 weeks later...

mrbdamien:

Just out of interest, are you talking about the option Write metadata changes into files automatically (enabled / ticked by default), found in the 'Preference Window' Under the 'Library' tab?

If so, changes to the library don't affect what's on the player, you say? Hmmm.

SONY should give us an option so we can manually use Gracenote as and when we (the user) see fit. Just giving us the (vague) options that disable gracenotes automatic activities so that it doesn't mess our explicitly labelled tags up is just silly.

So, what exactly do the following options do (found in the 'Preference Window' Under the 'Internet' tab) ?

1) 'Enable network features'

2) 'Enable Artist Link background service'

I feel more confused than ever - it'd be nice if the software had tooltips to explain, or more detail within Connect's help...

Edited by Obli
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I'm not entirely sure but doesn't Gracenote 'operate' (read this as 'change tags') on all files in the library (existing MP3's etc.) and not just on music ripped from a CD...?

I'm pretty sure it does (and has to various tracks in my library) - any idea how I can fetch data for any album in my library, regardless of whether I've just ripped it from CD (or not) ?

Also, what is 'metadata writes'? Is it making changes to the music file data (tags) ?

Edited by Obli
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This is a bit off topic, but not too much.

When I import my files to Connect, it's like it doesn't read the tags correctly.

Eg. I have 11 albums under a genre called "Various" even though they all have a specified genre in their tags. This only affects some albums, while others work fine - even though they have the same string under "Genre" in their tags.

Also, some albums (compilations), which I'm sure have "Various Artists" as Album Artist, are read as a lot of seperate albums - Ie. it doesn't read the "Album Artist" tag correctly.

Anyone tried anything similar?

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