Recognize "/" as Separator for Multiple Artists

[TRex74]

Dear all,

The ID3 v2.3 standard defines "/" as a separator for multiple artists. I would appreciate if the Wiim Home App would use this character to create a list of artists.

The Emby Media Server does here a very good job. When you have a song with artist tag "Artist A / Artist B", then in the list of artists entries for "Artist A" and "Artist B" are created. And the song is displayed in the song list of both artists. Most astonishing is, that "AC/DC" is recognized as a single artist and not as a list of artist "AC" and "DC".

 

[simbun]

The ID3 v2.3 standard defines "/" as a separator for multiple artists. I would appreciate if the Wiim Home App would use this character to create a list of artists.

As you're probably aware the ID3v2.3 "standard' is a mess, with many variations of multi-value delimiter in use e.g. '/', ' / ', nul e.t.c.

Not to detract from your request, but have you considered moving to ID3v2.4?

 

[simbun]

@TRex74 your other post gave more context; are you talking about content served by Emby?

 

[TRex74]

@simbun It is once more both, in the content served by Emby buit also in the Wiim Home App on my PC for the songs locally on my PC.

Regarding the '/' as separator, I found, this is the best compromise regarding different file formats.

Up to now most of my songs are mp3, but I am re-ripping all my CDs in Ogg Vorbis using Exact Audio Copy and oggenc2. I use mp3tag for editing the meta data. The mp3tag help says in mp3tag you should enter '\\' as separator. This would create multiple artist entries in the Vorbis comment. And this is how it is supposed to be done. I tested my complete workflow and here are the results:

In Mp3tag:


In Kid3 (Tag Editor for Linux) you then can see the multiple artist tags (German translation):


In Emby:

The same as with '/' as separator, all four artists are separate entries. So everythig is perfect in Emby.

And here is what you get in The Wiim Home App:

Only the fist artist is recognised.

Also other apps have problems with this, so I decided to further use '/' as separator.

 

[d6jg]

In mp3tag if you use \\ the result is that it writes multiple tags. Whereas using some other separator you get one tag containing g exactly what you entered which leaves the server to interpret it.
I’d say that you should stick to \\ which most servers obey and WiiM should recognise and fix the fact they are only displaying the first tag.

 

[simbun]

@simbun It is once more both, in the content served by Emby buit also in the Wiim Home App on my PC for the songs locally on my PC.

ID3 stores multi-value tags in a single field separated by a delimiter, which for ID3v2.3 is / and ID3v2.4 is nul. Unfortunately / clashes with AC/DC so when parsing would become two artists "AC" and "DC", so other delimiters became commonplace - most notably nul from Mp3tag.

I tagged a couple of albums using ID3v2.3, one using / as the multi-value delimiter and the other using nul, and the desktop WHA only processed the nul, the artists in the other album remained together e.g. "Artist1/Artist2".

When accessing Emby from the WHA it's a completely different story as the WHA doesn't index your files at all. In Legacy mode, the WHA simply displays the next page of results from the server (whether it's the root index or any level underneath), unlike "Advanced" mode where it pulls all available metadata from Emby and transforms it to produce a standardised WiiM browsing experience - it makes all servers look equally bad

Regarding the '/' as separator, I found, this is the best compromise regarding different file formats.

/ is only a delimiter in ID3v2.3, though there are apps that allow you to split on that - or any other - character no matter what tagging standard is in use, though you do limit your options if you choose to tag this way.

Up to now most of my songs are mp3, but I am re-ripping all my CDs in Ogg Vorbis using Exact Audio Copy and oggenc2.

I doubt you'd be able to hear a difference but why are you ripping to a lossy format?

I use mp3tag for editing the meta data. The mp3tag help says in mp3tag you should enter '\\' as separator. This would create multiple artist entries in the Vorbis comment.

\\ is the UI token that tells Mp3tag to produce a multi-value tag, the implementation of which depends on the file format:
ID3v2.4:
ARTIST: Elton John NUL Dua Lipa
Vorbis:
ARTIST: Elton John
ARTIST: Dua Lipa

And here is what you get in The Wiim Home App:
View attachment 24854
Only the fist artist is recognised.

Also other apps have problems with this, so I decided to further use '/' as separator.

In general avoid the desktop WHA and "Advanced" mode in the mobile WHA, but if you want compatibility you really need to move to ID3v2.4, which is pretty easy to do in Mp3tag - though if you're currently using / (which Mp3tag doesn't recognise as a delimiter) it might require a couple of steps.


I did look briefly at the Emby DLNA responses, and I think the Artist index isn't populated because Emby classifies the Artist objects as 'object.item' whereas most servers use 'object.container.person.musicArtist'. I'm sure it's DLNA compliant, it's probably just something WiiM have overlooked. This should be raised as a ticket (More > feedback) not a feature request.


EDIT: If you're on Android take a look at Symfonium; it's compatible with Emby and plays to WiiM over UPnP (up to 24/192 I think).