Sonic Stage Folder view?

[Nemo1966]

I am using Sonic Stage with a JE780 deck and all is good, however when you import flac files from a folder and the folder contains tracks from different albums, then the program splits the tracks into different albums rather than giving you a FOLDER view.

Very annoying if you have folders with various artists from different albums.

Anyone know a way round this?

 

thanks

[sfbp]

Don't sort by Artist. It's an option over on the left pane. Use "Album"

[Nemo1966]

Hi, thanks - but it does exactly the same by album. e.g. if the folder contains tracks from different albums (various artists) then it splits them all over the place.

 

thanks

[kalkie]

Folder View is not possible in Sonic Stage.
You can choose All Tracks and click on File Path to sort the tracks by folder/filename.
Or you can make a playlist for every folder but both methods are not very nice to work with.

How can you import flac files in Sonic Stage?
As far as I know you can only import WAV, MP3, WMA, AAC and ATRAC files in Sonic Stage.

[Nemo1966]

2 hours ago, kalkie said:

Folder View is not possible in Sonic Stage.
You can choose All Tracks and click on File Path to sort the tracks by folder/filename.
Or you can make a playlist for every folder but both methods are not very nice to work with.

How can you import flac files in Sonic Stage?
As far as I know you can only import WAV, MP3, WMA, AAC and ATRAC files in Sonic Stage.

OK thanks, good tip about the file path - yeah a sonicstage is a bit limited - it's ok if you are working one or two albums but after that it's a mess, you certainly cannot use it as a library.

 

Flac files - yeah my mistake, I do usually use Flac files with MPD server etc but have to use Flacsquisher to convert to MP3 (320 bitrate) for Sonic Stage.

 

thanks again

[sfbp]

Those of us with 100+ GB of ATRAC might argue that point.

The solution is quite minimalist. Don't use Artist Names.

Or set an entire album to be by one artist (you can always make a new "Artist" consisting of several artists together)
At least SS allows you to keep tracks ordered by the order they were added (or rearranged to). No other librarian will permit that. When you want to transcribe a SS folder to/from some other medium, it's helpful to prefix by <nnn-> complete with leading zeroes. This forces an order but the leading zeroes make sure that dumb software and hardware which only knows about alphabetic string sorting will get it right. When transferring from files, SS knows the <nnn-> notation and hides it in the SS display of information. Play with it - you'll be surprised. Just try to remember that SS file storage is managed by a database.

 

 

[Nemo1966]

2 minutes ago, sfbp said:

Those of us with 100+ GB of ATRAC might argue that point

100 GB of ATRAC - whats that, about 11 tracks?  :-P haha

 

thanks I will have a play

 

 

[Nemo1966]

mmmm well still doesn't really do it for me - I would never use it for a Media Storage/indexing app. OK it uses a database, but in all honesty that is a massive overkill for something that is achieved by storing the tracks in folders and displaying them in the app in the folder you import them in. If you import a CD then it would simply create a folder for it. The if you needed you could create playlists based on the files in the folder. The sonic stage system is messy and over complicated for such a simple premise.

 

I found the easiest way was to knock up a little C# app to recode the ID3 tag (Album) for MP3's in a directory and the import it into Sonic Stage. So for compilation Albums of my own design I just copy all the relevant tracks into a directory and then run the app on that folder, it changes the ID3 tag for the album to the same for all tracks. Then in SS it appears as a single album. Works like a charm.

 

 

thanks again

[Jimma]

Nemo, I would really like a copy of your app if you'd be willing to let me have it.

It drives me mad when you import a compilation album into SonicStage and it splits the album up according to the artist metadata.

 

[sfbp]

Doesn't it amount to the same thing if you:

1. Import the tracks in "Album" view.

2. Change the "artist" for the album either to <nothing at all> or some suitable general descriptor?

When I do this it always asks me if I want to change all the tracks in the album to have the same metadata or not, IIRC.

My point is that by doing it from the list of albums rather than the list of tracks, you don't have to retype anything.

[Jimma]

The problem I have is that if you import an album such as, for the sake of argument "Now That's What I Call Music! 93" in MP3 format and each track has the album title and artist metadata then SonicStage splits it up into 44 seperate albums called Now 93, one by each of the 44 artists.  Unless I'm missing something then the only way to transfer the album onto MiniDiscs with the tracks ordered correctly is to read through the tracklisting and painstakingly select each track individually before transfer.

To change the album to a the same artist or no artist at all would in this example require changing the artist on all 44 "albums" individually.

I have played around with this a lot and have found no way around it apart from erasing the artist data from the MP3s before importing, which is also a pain.

Maybe I'm just being clueless Stephen.

 

[Nemo1966]

56 minutes ago, Jimma said:

The problem I have is that if you import an album such as, for the sake of argument "Now That's What I Call Music! 93" in MP3 format and each track has the album title and artist metadata then SonicStage splits it up into 44 seperate albums called Now 93, one by each of the 44 artists.  Unless I'm missing something then the only way to transfer the album onto MiniDiscs with the tracks ordered correctly is to read through the tracklisting and painstakingly select each track individually before transfer.

To change the album to a the same artist or no artist at all would in this example require changing the artist on all 44 "albums" individually.

I have played around with this a lot and have found no way around it apart from erasing the artist data from the MP3s before importing, which is also a pain.

Maybe I'm just being clueless Stephen.

 

Exactly - however I wrote a little application that will change all the Artist and Album info on the MP3 ID tags in a directory automatically :-)

You can pick your own Artist name - e.g. "Various" and your own album name etc

Take but a few seconds now.

 

[sfbp]

Haha this is the trendy phrase used in comedy shows such as "Curb your Enthusiasm" - Too Much Information..

I see now. I just never worked with large numbers of MP3 files and ATRAC files always naturally GROUPed themselves into albums owing to the nature of MD.

The other way to do it is, as kalkie says: view all tracks, sort by file path, select all the ones you want, and set the artist or album as desired. This requires you to find the magic menu that shows the file path in displays, but it's standard WinStuff. Assuming that works with an MP3 file in the SS database. I don't see why it shouldn't.

[kalkie]

2 hours ago, Jimma said:

Nemo, I would really like a copy of your app if you'd be willing to let me have it.

It drives me mad when you import a compilation album into SonicStage and it splits the album up according to the artist metadata.

 

You can use the free app "Mp3tag", import a folder and select all the tracks and give them the same artistname and/or albumname and then import them in Sonic Stage.

But as Stephen wrote you can do the same in SonicStage.

[Nemo1966]

31 minutes ago, sfbp said:

Haha this is the trendy phrase used in comedy shows such as "Curb your Enthusiasm" - Too Much Information..

I see now. I just never worked with large numbers of MP3 files and ATRAC files always naturally GROUPed themselves into albums owing to the nature of MD.

The other way to do it is, as kalkie says: view all tracks, sort by file path, select all the ones you want, and set the artist or album as desired.

Dunno about Curb your enthusiasm - took me half hour to knock the app up in C# and it works like a charm. Saves messing with sonic stage.

[sfbp]

I wasn't suggesting that your enthusiasm need to be curbed. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[Nemo1966]

No problem :-)