Hi,

I have had the same issue with all media players as you describe above. I have now decided on a definative (for me) file naming system to largely overcome this issue - although at a price:-

I use the following nomclementure when tagging files in WMA:-

1.  Albums are as stored in folders i.e. C:\Music\Various Chill\Chillout Lounge Vol1 \ Tracks1...n

2. In WMP, Album Artist is tagged as "Various Chill"

3. In WMP, Artist is tagged as "Various Chill" (this is because a lot of compilations for me seem to have twenty artists associtated which really messes the groupings up.

4. In WMP simplify Genre (although BS5 does not use this tag, I keep it down to 12 or so groups.

Some information is lost, but for me, the importance of playing albums - as the CD was cut is paramount.

This solves all my filing probles with all MP3 players I have ever used.

10%

@10%,

again, thank you for sharing your experience.

Yesterday, I"ve made a little research on how BS5 displays (=uses the tags of) cd-samplers:
BS5 has a very strange sorting order... within its groups "album" and "cover" it sorts by the wma-tag "contributing artist", and not by "album artist" which results in a huge mess of double/multiple album entries.

Unlike WMP, BS5 does not support common 1:n relationships (1 Album : n Artists) when grouping by albums or covers.

The workaround - as you described - costs its price: once you replace the "contributing artists" tag with the "album artist" tag, you are one logical step away from finding one track of a special artist which was sold on a cd-sampler.

I'm very unhappy with this...
One should know if the cleanup of the a.m. "logical potential" is on B&O's todo-list. A possible workaround which should help to keep the "contributing artist" information might be the following workflow (using a tag-editor:

1. copy "contributing artist" to any other unused tag field (maybe: "composer")

2. copy "album artist" to "contributing artist"

3. copy the tracks/albums to BS5

once B&O matches the a.m. logical relationships between artists and albums, the contributing artist might be copied from its parking position back to its native tag field in one simple batch process.

Do you know if there are the same troubles when you're using BeoPlayer ?

I think despite the long time it takes to copy the music, it could be the only solution to find correct tags ?

Anyone tried iTunes ?

If I understand the question correctly, iTunes has a checkbox which when checked identifies all tracks as part of a compilation album and so keeps them all together and plays them in the correct order, whilst maintaining the artist's different names.

@ steph:

BS5 supports WMA lossless, itunes does not (as far as I know)

Beoplayer provides real poor functionality, especially when transferring multiple albums to BS5.
But - I tried to transfer one sampler to BS5 via Beoplayer. And yes - same outcome.

OK vogelr, thanks.

Hi, I have the same bad problem:

Samplers with multiple artists are showing up as multiple albums, mulitple covers etc. I have one album but 10 covers etc.

I'm VERY UNHAPPY with this, as every 40,- Euro MP3 player does sort correctly based on ID3 tags.

It only seem to work if an album has just ONE artist.

This is realy embarassing for Bang & Olufsen and a 5000 Euro Soundsystem!

I'm gonna experiment to find out how I can solve this problem.

Btw it is VERY easy to copy all files to your system: Just enter service mode, enter the windows desktop, connect an external USB harddisk and a mouse and copy your music inside the "music" folder on the Beomaster 5.

Easy and fast.

Puncher wrote:

If I understand the question correctly, iTunes has a checkbox which when checked identifies all tracks as part of a compilation album and so keeps them all together and plays them in the correct order, whilst maintaining the artist's different names.

Correct :)

Although sometimes the details from Grace Notes do not have "compilation" ticked.

Like everyone else here, I have had to tweak my tags to get the results I want ... which include playing by "composer" when I am in that sort of mood ... and SWMBO likes to select "Puccini" for example ... so what is most desireable is a flexible system for sourcing, editting, and then using the tags.