Different Album versions merged as one.

[LPL]

What does it take to keep different album versions separated?
I’m not so keen starting to update Album in the meta just to keep all my local versions as separate albums.



The albums are located on the same server but with different paths and in separate folders.

 

[Stephen Healy]

What does it take to keep different album versions separated?
I’m not so keen starting to update Album in the meta just to keep all my local versions as separate albums.

View attachment 172

The albums are located on the same server but with different paths and in separate folders.
View attachment 173

If the metadata, format, and resolution are all identical then the system would only be able to tell them apart on the assumption that the tracks are in different folders. In update 3.1 we actually introduced a change in the behaviour during Import to help prevent this, but for music already in your library this will need to be manually addressed.
I am assuming there is a legitimate difference between the two version of the album you have? If not written in the Album Name or the Track Titles, how would you tell these two albums apart normally?

 

[LPL]

Thanks Stephen!

If the metadata, format, and resolution are all identical then the system would only be able to tell them apart on the assumption that the tracks are in different folders.

Yes or checking the product like barcode/UPC/EAN/catalog attributes.

In update 3.1 we actually introduced a change in the behaviour during Import to help prevent this, but for music already in your library this will need to be manually addressed.

I tried to remove the albums, sync, adding them again and sync but the result is the same. Would it be needed to clear the complete library and what do you mean with manually addressed?

I am assuming there is a legitimate difference between the two version of the album you have?

It is different releases of the same albums, might not be that big of a difference but some releases of some albums there are a significant difference.

If not written in the Album Name or the Track Titles, how would you tell these two albums apart normally?

In Roon, as an example, you can check which release it is.


or directly look at the path if the albums are arranged in that way.


Now I only can see NAS and not the rest of the path.

 

[Stephen Healy]

Actually i misspoke, the change we made in 3.1 was to prevent undesired splitting of albums like compilations, rather than preventing undesired merging of albums that appear identical and only separated by folder paths. Sense tends to look more at metadata than folders.
At the moment, only using the browse by Folder would reveal the fact you have the two versions in different locations. But Sense will not go as low level as barcodes or EAN codes to analyse points of difference. If the resolution, format, artist and album names, and year of release are all the same across the tracks then Sense will treat them as the same album.
There's no shortcut around this I'm afraid, my suggestion is to go into Sense and go to the top-right corner for the 3 dots to get more options. You should see a Split Album option. This would let you choose specific tracks and let you separate them out into another entry of the album where you would then need to allocate a different year of release, or put something in the album title that helps you identify such as '[Japanese Edition]' etc.

 

[LPL]

Thanks Stephen for clarifications.

Then I know that it won’t come any solution for this problem and the limitation of attributes and path checked by Sense. As a work around, it’s probably easier to back to square one and adjust the meta on all merged albums and make a new import.

 

[Stephen Healy]

There won't be a strict need to reimport - you can adjust metadata on files where they sit and then just do a NAS rescan if you wish and Sense should adjust to the changes, but either approach is absolutely fine so whichever is easiest for you.