Artist vs. Sort Artist on multiple artists tracks with semi-colon separator

[stopbrickwalling]

Everyone has been very helpful and I appreciate it.

So I'm not ready to convert my 50,000 wav files to flac yet, but I have been playing around with an album of flac files today and have run into some issues there as well. Maybe someone can point me in a good direction that will complete the sale to flac.

I have come to realize that my dBpoweramp ripper/converter/ID Tag Update codec can affect how music players read the multiple artist tags.
I've achieved much of what I would like testing flac but can't seem to overcome the following:

All the files have Album Artist, Artist, Artist Sort (Sort Artist is MB's term) and Album Artist Sort (MB = Sort Album Artist).
The MB tag inspector reflects reading the multiple artists semi-colon separators and even reading the sort tags appropriately as last name, first name....BUT, the MB library stills shows all as first name, last name.

In other words, MB tag inspector shows correctly but the MB player library does not show them the same way as shown in tag inspector.

Why the disconnect between MB tag inspector and my library?
What is shown in the tag inspector is actually what I want but it's not translating to the MB flac library.

[psychoadept]

I think what's happening there is that your tagger is not writing the sort field the way MusicBee expects. If I add a sort artist value through MusicBee, it shows up in the tag inspector with tag code ARTISTSORT, not Artist Sort.  If I enter something under the tag name Artist Sort, MusicBee doesn't see it.

Update: Looks like there might be an option you can set to fix this in dbpoweramp: https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?23288-Get-Sort-Tags-to-FLAC

[stopbrickwalling]

So if a tag is showing in the MusicBee Tag Inspector, that doesn't mean that MusicBee is actually "reading" the tag?

I can see where if I add sort tags without spaces like ArtistSort then MusicBee does seem to read them as expected with last name, first name.  I guess even though dbpa's own tag editor displays Album Artist, it is actually written as ALBUMARTIST with no spaces behind the scenes so that explains why it works for ALBUMARTIST because it's actually written as MusicBee is looking for it. (Thanks to Hiccup for telling me about Hex editors today.)

As for that guy that posted in the dbpa forum, I really have no idea what he is babbling about. The dbpa ripper has fields at both the top and bottom of the screen for metadata and you can input tags to be written during the rip in both locations. Not sure what he was talking about otherwise.

So I now see if I add a tag thru MB, it formats tag code as ARTISTSORT.
i know that flac tagging is not standardized, but I am surprised to find there is a discrepancy between how dpba and MusicBee are handlng these 2 specific sort tags.

I wonder should I just add a 2nd set of tags ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT to run parallel with my existing tags with the space.....or should I batch convert to rename those existing to tags to remove the "space"?

[hiccup]

So if a tag is showing in the MusicBee Tag Inspector, that doesn't mean that MusicBee is actually "reading" the tag?

Correct. That's why Tag Inspector is so useful. It allows you to see all present tags in a file. Sometimes a file can even have more than one tagging protocol included, e.g. both idv3 and APE. You would not be able to see that if you didn't use Tag Inspector.

Psychoadept is right; it's because of the difference in tag names that different software programs may use for vorbis.

In this case, MusicBee (and both MP3Tag and MusicBrainz' Picard) read and write ARTISTSORT, while dBpoweramp writes Artist Sort.

You can set a mapping for that in dBpoweramp.
It's under DSP effects. (yeah, a bit unexpected)

Add 'ID Tag Processing' as a DSP, and under it's settings you can add your mappings:



This should work.
 

[hiccup]

P.S.
In case you decide to start batch converting to flac, be sure to test if there are perhaps other tags that you may need to set a mapping for so that they are carried over correctly.
It will be rather difficult to fix them after the files have been converted to flac.

This may be of help:
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=26177.msg148929#msg148929

[stopbrickwalling]

Thanks everyone for your time and guidance.

I recently got a new Windows 10 computer. Up until that point, I had been cruising along just fine with my old Windows 7 machine and using my dbpa and MB with my wav files (I hadn't updated my old PC OS because my motherboard/video card wouldn't support high res on W10). What really stirred up this recent flurry of issues was wanting to start sorting my library by last name instead of first name that I had been doing forever. I guess the Album Artist and Artists tags are more "standard" than the Sort Artist and Album Sort Artist tags, so I had not been having any problems in my old configuration and usage.

At this point, since I am dealing with a new computer and some newly purchased 5TB hard drives for storage/backup, I think I better make sure everything is tight before I start converting files because I could never find the time to re-rip and re-tag these 50,000 files. I just need to make sure I'm backed up and don't screw anything up in the conversion process if I do it.

Thanks again. Y'all have been wonderful. I'll post back if more q's arise. 

[hiccup]

I now see I completely overlooked you are a long-time user, and even contributed with skins.
Sorry for that.

I just need to make sure I'm backed up and don't screw anything up in the conversion process if I do it.

Does that mean you had 50.000 music files without backups of them?
Living on the edge, oi?

Good luck with the transitions!

[stopbrickwalling]

No and sort of temporarily yes.
My music files are over 2TB.

My old W7 computer was limited to reading only up to a 2TB hard drive...even though I tried larger, my system couldn't see the larger storage capacity. So I was was limited with 2 completely full 2TB  external drives plus a certain part on my internal system drive and a partition for back up (not ideal but it was what it was.)

Along with my new W10 PC, I bought 2 5TB external drives to use with my new PC.
So the "no and yes"...I successfully transferred all 50k files over to one of my new 5TB drives, but I haven't backed that one up to the 5TB backup because I wanted to finish updating my sorting tags before writing the the backup.

If disaster hits, I still have those older 2TB drives, just not with my tag updates I have been doing plus some recent new rips on this new PC. So I'm not flying totally backup-less, but it is a fact that I would have some work to do if I had to reconcile backing up from those old drives vs. what has been added to my new ones.

Probably TMI...but since you mentioned it...LOL.

[stopbrickwalling]

It's only 145 days worth of tagged files with almost every track AccurateRip confirmed accurate. 
Storing on computer is a lot easier than finding places for all those phyiscal CD's.

MusicBee has been my favorite player by far.