Seperating multiple versions of same album (MP3, M4A, FLAC)

[Gumbee]

Hi just started using musicbee and i am wondering if this is possible.

I know that you can create filters so that you can separate your library to only show FLAC or MP3's etc.

What i am asking is if i just want to have no filters in my library and just show every file is their a way that if for example i have 3 versions of a album that have different file types, when they show up in the library the flac version of the album is grouped together separately from the mp3 version and so on.

Right now they are all grouped together so if i have 3 versions track 1 will play 3 times of each format then track 2 3 times and so on.

For example this is how an album with different fill types shows up in WMP12 which is what i am hoping is possible.

http://i.imgur.com/utKFnJX.png

And this is how it shows up in Musicbee for me.

http://i.imgur.com/BT2hqHc.png

[phred]

I think this is something that can be handled by creating a Custom Tag and then envoking Grouping.  But since I don't use Grouping, I'm not the person who should tell you how to accomplish it.
Custom Tags info on the Wiki: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Custom_Tags
Grouping info on the Wiki: http://musicbee.wikia.com/wiki/Sorting_%26_Grouping

And perhaps one or more MB users will chime in with suggestions.

[Pingaware]

The first thing I would try would be going to Preferences>Sorting/Grouping and then setting ".Ext" as one of the fields which defines an album. That should hopefully work without having to do anything else.

[psychoadept]

You might also need to use Ext or Kind in your sorting,  You can create a custom sorting rule in that same preferences page.

[UK82]

I've accomplished similar to this by doing the following:

Preferences / Tags (1) / Define New Tags /

Label = YearLPKind
Formula = <Year> - <Album> $If(<Kind>="MPEG audio file",,"- "$Left(<Kind>,4))

After saving this <right click> your library's displayed columns and choose 'Set Displayed Columns'.

I choose:
Genre
Artist
YearLPKind (the virtual tag you've just defined).

You will now see all the albums listed for a selected artist in year order and with 'flac', 'ape' etc appended to any album that isn't MP3 (mpeg).

If you have an album in both flac and mp3 you will see them listed separately - even if they have the same album name.

I'm sure it must be possible to get the 'specify how files are grouped to an album' setting to do this but I wasn't able to get it to work - so ended up doing the above....

[Gumbee]

Thanks for the replies guys

I couldn't get the suggestion by UK82 to work so i must be doing something wrong there. Might try and get that to work again.

I did have some success with sorting/grouping as mentioned, using either Kind or Ext worked in separating the file types and it looked like this.



I then went into "custom panel settings" and then selected Ext from the drop down menu in sub grouping header, messed around with font, boldness etc and ended up with this.



This would have been ok if it was only for albums i have multiple versions of but it made the library look ugly to me having every album have mp3 above it. I then lowered the font and contrast to the lowest setting and got this.



it's not perfect and i will still prefer if they were completely separate but it will do for now until there is a better way to do it.

[Bee-liever]

Are all your albums organised into separate folders for each album?
If they are, you can select "files for each album are organised in their own folder" in
Preferences> Sorting/Grouping> grouping
and they will be sorted like WMP12

[Gumbee]

Are all your albums organised into separate folders for each album?
If they are, you can select "files for each album are organised in their own folder" in
Preferences> Sorting/Grouping> grouping
and they will be sorted like WMP12

That works great, thank you very much.

[psychoadept]

Yay!

...and the rest of us are smacking our foreheads.