flac albums out of order

[marktheshark]

Interesting.  I am also using the WD as a music player.  Since I saw no audio feature improvement listed in the release notes for the recent firmware release, I haven't been in a rush to install it.

I suspect that the release notes are really a major feature summary rather than an explicit list of every little thing corrected/changed, as that would be a long, boring document.

In playing around with sorting orders on the WD, I noticed that for any given sorting method (alphabetical, etc.) the order can be ascending or descending.  Somehow this setting on your unit may have been reversed after the firmware upgrade.  I suggest revisiting and playing around with that.  Also, are your .flac files properly tagged with the track number (in the filename doesn't count)?  If your .m4a files are tagged with the track number but your flacs aren't, it could be that the latest WD firmware is trying to sort based on tagged track number, then alphabetically (reverse alpha in your case at the moment).  This might explain the Tchaikovsky double album you mentioned, since the first two you listed are both track 1 of each disc.

I had actually mentioned a while back that I think songs should be listed in the order of tagged track number, since this is surely the purpose of that tag in any audio file format.  As a work around, I have changed to naming my files with the track number in front and this has worked so far.  Perhaps WD implemented sorting by track tag in this firmware release, but didn't feel it worthy of publishing in the release notes.

I can suggest 'mp3tag' as a very useful tag viewer/editing tool for all audio formats.  Other posters have mentioned Media Monkey as another good one.

-M

[aIvar]

Thanks for your suggestions, marktheshark.

I too had noticed the sorting method, but it appears to affect only the order the albums are listed, not the track order once you're "in" an album.

Also, I checked the tags with Media Monkey (that's what I used for the flac rips in the first place). They are all correct. And the tags for the Tchaikovsky album are correctly numbered for both track and disc number.

For what it's worth, the setting: Setup->Music Settings->Audio Track Display has two options: "By File Name" and "By Title." Changing this has no effect on how the tracks are displayed. The Live Hub does not appear to be able to read the track Title from the flac tags.

[Tinwarble]

As for the flac track tags, you should try using Winamp.  I don't have any flac's myself, but I did help someone before to get their flac metadata show up and they did have better results ripping and tagging with Winamp than using Media Monkey.

[hawkster27]

I have the same problem: albums sort alphabetically, A -> Z, and individual tracks in formats other than flac sort in descending numerical, 01 -> XX.  Flac tracks sort in ascending numerical, XX -> 01.  However, this occurs only when viewing files in Genre mode.  In Files mode, all tracks in flac and other formats sort in descending numerical. Firmware is 2.06.10

[TonyPh12345]

Hawkster,  you're confusing me!  

01, 02, 03...  XX  -->  That's ASCENDING.

XX, .. , 03, 02, 01 -->  That's DESCENDING.  

[hawkster27]

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TonyPh12345 wrote:

Hawkster,  you're confusing me!  

01, 02, 03...  XX  -->  That's ASCENDING.

XX, .. , 03, 02, 01 -->  That's DESCENDING.  

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You're right, of course.  Sorting is still screwed up, though.

[Wolfman74]

I've already replied in the thread regarding the new firmware 2.07.17, but  that reply regarding this issue will probably drown among all the other issues regarding the firmware.

So i have now taken the plunge and updated to 2.07.17, but the bug with individual tracks of FLAC music albums sorted out of order (descending numerical instead of ascending) that was introduced in fw 2.06.10 is still there. Mp3's is still sorted correctly. 

My setup (and settings in the Live Hub) is almost exactly the same as alvar who started this thread. It's set to "All Local Storage" & Music: All Albums. On the internal HD i have the music stored as: \\WDTVLiveHub\Music\Artist Name\Album Name\XX artist name - song name.flac,where "XX" is the track number.  

As an example i have the album "The Suburbs" with "Arcade Fire", with 2.05 the album listing was like this:

01 Arcade Fire - The Suburbs.flac

02 Arcade Fire - Ready To Start.flac

...

16 Arcade Fire - The Suburbs [Continued].flac 

With 2.06.10 and now also 2.07.17, same album, I now have:

16 Arcade Fire - The Suburbs [Continued].flac

15 Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyound Music).flac

...

01 Arcade Fire - The Suburbs.flac

My setup for the Music Settings in the Live Hub:

Music Playback Sequence: Normal

Audio Track Display: By File Name

Background Music Info Panel: On

Resume Music longer... : Off

Browser Display: Grid View

I've checked all settings now after updating to 2.07.17 (specifically the music settings) and there is nothing new there regarding sorting of files in the music settings.

I have also tried ripping some more Cd’s from my collection using different programs than EAC that I normally use and at the same time also tested different ways of adding the meta data to the FLAC-file (with/without ID3 tags) , but nothing affects the sorting. 

If I browse to the same FLAC-files via the Files menu in the hub, there the FLAC-files are sorted correctly in ascending order. 

So what got broken for the sorting of FLAC-files in the 2.06.10 fw is still broken in the 2.07.17 fw, I hope that someone at WD can check this issue and fix it to the next firmware relase.

Edit: I should add that i have also checked my files with the Mp3 tag program and they all have the tracknumber in the meta data.

[hawkster27]

Thanks, wolfman.  You saved me from rolling back to 2.05, again, because of this bug.

[badmem]

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aIvar wrote:

After upgrading to 2.06.10, several of my flac encoded albums had the songs out of order in apparently a random fashion. The file names in my albums all begin with the track number, ie 01 song.flac, 02 song.flac, etc. I tried clearing the media library and letting it rebuild. Now all my flac encoded album tracks are listed in REVERSE order when I go to the album, ie 11 song.flac, 10 song.flac, 09 song.flac, etc. I have other albums from iTunes and whatnot that are .m4a files. Those albums are still in correct numeric order, except for one, which was from a 2-disc album. It's files are now in this order: 2-01 song.m4a, 1-01 song.m4a, 2-02 song.m4a, 1-02 song.m4a, 2-03 song.m4a, etc (the tracks from the two discs are now interleaved!).

I suppose I can try downgrading to the previous firmware, unless someone has another suggestion.

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This is interesting or rather disappointing - another fundamental feature that is bugged. I only use the FOLDER view in Media Library usually and so I haven't had this problem. After reading your post, I tried changing to ALL ALBUMS view and sure enough all of my FLAC albums have tracks listed in reverse order. This is with the latest 2.07.17 firmware and files played from a network share.

Is there any way we can get bugs in fundamental features bumped up to the top of the priority list for fixes? Surely fixing things like this should be a higher priority than adding games or other new features?

[RenderBender]

I can also confirm the problem with the order of FLACs. I just purchased the Hub product and connected it to my network. I then upgraded to the latest firmware. I then copied several (FLAC - properly tagged) albums to its internal 1 TB hard drive. No matter what I do, when I go to 'Music', it wants to play the tracks in reverse order.

Now, in folder mode, it displays the files in correct sequence (my track names begin with the track number). However, when I select the FIRST track to play, it plays it just fine and then stops. I MANUALLY select the second track and when it completes, goes on to the third track and plays the remaining tracks in that folder as expected. But not when you select the first.

WD - we need some software fixes to this fundamental problem. Thanks!