Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming dBpoweramp Plug-in

It ought to. My reading of the blurb is that the plugin creates an XML file that sits in the album folder with the Sooloos metadata in it. It's this XML file that Sooloos uses to import the metadata into it.

I really don't see how this would be a "laborious" process.
I'd think the vast majority of Sooloos owners back up their data.

So any major update could/has to be tied in to a system update followed by a reload of the users data. The trick would be how to do this with the appropriate warnings to the end user. That's easy. The opening window: "DO NOT INSTALL THIS UPDATE UNLESS YOU HAVE A CURRENT BACKUP OF YOUR MDS SYSTEM ON AN OUTBOARD DEVICE! YOU WILL NEED TO RELOAD YOUR DATA AFTER THIS UPDATE IS INSTALLED. THIS UPDATE ERASES YOUR COMPLETE SYSTEM! IF YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR Meridian DEALER OR GO TO THIS LINK FOR INSTRUCTIONS" Next window:" DO YOU HAVE A CURRENT BACKUP? YES (check) PROCEED, NO (check) CANCEL UPDATE"
Another way would be to charge for the update with appropriate warnings.

Done deal.
Now, M, rewrite the software.

Without knowing the specific queries that are run 'behind the scenes', I wouldn't like to guess at how difficult it would be to change all the lookups to point to a field in a different table, which is essentially what Ronnie is pointing out.

I can think of another workaround, which would require converting compilation albums into playlists of individual tracks from their parent albums. There would have to be a way of working out where each track came from and adding it as an individual track for this to work.

Or you could just stop buying 'Now That's What I Call Eclectic Jazz' etc!

Well yes, but many 'serious' classical albums are compilations in the sense that many classical concerts are: they contain a number of shorter works along with a bigger piece to make up the programme. To suggest not buying them is to essentially write off half the classical catalogue! This lack of functionality within Sooloos when it still lays claim to being the most powerful, flexible music playback system in the world, and at the premium it still attracts really is not acceptable.

I actually received an email from Meridian support the other day, having emailed them to moan about the lack of such features for organising a classical collection after having moved to Sooloos. They told me they'd updated to dBpa for metadata and hoped this would help. Well, how is it helping? If none of the extra features dBpa allows in terms of track level data etc are carried over once imported I don't see how this changes things in this regard...?

Sorry, but I'm also in the camp that doesn't see it as being a difficult task. Compared with migrating a companies accounting system to a new software sytem, where the transaction count can be 5 or 6 figures and the audit trail must be perfect, a 15,000 or 20,000 entry music database is relatively easy. Ok, it's not as simple as adding a couple of extra fields to the existing system, but to change to a new piece of software, create a routine to export, re-map, re-import and populate the additional fields is a fairly routine process. Meridian have the ability to rebuild our Sooloos database remotely already so I can't see any real barrier.

Okay, obviously that joke wasn't quite explicit enough!

On the 'classical' (I hate the term) front, are we not actually looking for track level composer information, the artist field would be either the orchestra, the conductor or in the case of certain virtuosi, the lead X player? Where X is a violin/flute/etc.

In addition to Album Name and Album Artist, iTunes has the following at track level:

Name (of Track)
Artist
Composer
Grouping
BPM (?)
Comments
Genre

If BPM is beats per minute then I don't need it. All the others are needed on track level IMO.

EDIT: I hate iTunes but it's a well-established standard and Sooloos should undoubtedly try to better it in this area, as in all others.

The key difference is that the Sooloos Library would need to populate Fields with Extra Information for every Track in the Library.

By my estimate, Meridian would need to add about 20 Fields for true Track Level Metadata (some would demand even more).

For the sake of argument, assume that the average Sooloos user has 5,000 Albums at 13 Tracks per Album

That means that a minimum of 5,000 x 13 x 20 = 1,300,000 Pieces of Information would need to be ADDED to each User's database.

Of course, many will say that this can be done "automatically", but given many Users' experience of how AMG (and others) wrongly identifies already Tagged Albums, which in turn need to be corrected by the User, I for one wouldn't be happy with this.

In simpler terms, ask yourself "Would I have been happy to allow Sooloos / AMG to Automatically Import my 5,000 Albums and accept the Default Metadata they arrived at"?

If your answer is Yes, then maybe you would be happy with such a Track Level Metadata Conversion Routine

If the answer is No, as it likely would be for many here seeing how the Metadata wrongly identifies Albums (and Versions) then essentially the User would need to Supervise or Audit each Album as it's re-imported into Sooloos, repeating what they have already done to create their Libraries initially

Track Level Metadata can be achieved, but only after some considerable ReDesign from Meridian and then a lot of Re-Import work by each User, essentially duplicating the Import process they have already gone thru to create their current Libraries.

Actually, it's a little more detailed than that. Here are the fields:

Name
Artist
Album Artist
Album
Grouping
Composer
Comments
Genre
Year
Track No.
Disc No.
BPM
Part of a Compilation [Y/N]
Artwork

I have no idea why you would enter BPM. Perhaps it was a feature requested by DJs for ease of putting together various playlists for gigs. I have never seen the field populated by metadata from Gracenote.

Yes and no. It depends on the situation, but the point is having the ability to control none of the above on a track level, particularly when dBpa permits it, other low-cost, or 'free' solutions like iTunes allow/use/read such things seems like a serious oversight for those of us with a large classical collection who paid a serious amount of money for a 'powerful' organizational system like Sooloos. It needs sorting.

I removed the ones which are (or would generally be) Album-wide, which you list. It's otherwise the same list. Or do you propose different covers for each track?

dBpa, XLD, iTunes already Default to saving the Artwork in EACH Track file and I would advocate Sooloos following that practice as well.

It adds more flexibility for "Compilation" Albums and it also adds "Portability" in that the Tracks can be easily used outside of Sooloos in other playback systems.