Mp3 files tagged with multiple genres

Support
1

Hi,

In my set up (build 70), for the [Genre] file tag, Roon seems to ignore the “;” separator in mp3 files. This problem does not occur with flac files.

For example, when Roon imports an mp3 album whose files are tagged with [Genre] = “Rock; Pop”, this album displays as “Rock Pop”.

Can anyone reproduce this issue ?

Thanks !

2

Hey @JP_,

The best way to do this is to have multiple Genre tags in the file, but we support a few other ways of formatting this and I believe the formatting you describe should work.

Could you upload a track or two to Dropbox (or similar) and PM me a link? I’ll see if we can do better here.

Thanks for the report!

3

Mike,

PM sent.

Thanks for looking into this !

4

Got them, and I can see the issue here.

When a FLAC file’s tags contain a genre Ambient; Drone, you end up with two genres in your library; Ambient and Drone. With the MP3 you sent, I get Ambient Drone, which is a bug.

As a general rule, we recommend multiple GENRE tags, as opposed to multiple genres in a single tag, but we should be able to do better and support this. We’re going to look into it, so thanks again!

5

Hi Mike,

Any development for this issue ?

I must add that my DSD files are affected too.

Since I got around 30 000 .mp3 files and 2000 DSD files using the “;” as a separator for genre tag, my Genre view in Roon is a bit cluttered :confused:.

Thanks in advance !

6

Hey @JP_ – thanks for the nudge here. This issue got sent back to me by one of our developers a while back, and I missed it.

So, we do in fact support semicolon delimiters for MP3 files, but the MP3 you sent is not quite right, and it seems like different applications are handling the non-standard formatting in a slightly different way.

When I initially looked at the file in dbpoweramp, they looked pretty standard:

However, when Roon extracts the genres from your file, we’re getting Ambient<NULL>Drone, which Roon does not support.

Using Windows 8.1’s built in file properties, I can confirm something’s not quite right either:

Windows is offering to add a second genre after a semicolon, but it’s not picking up the Drone tag, presumably because it’s seeing the <null> too.

So, clearly dbpoweramp is parsing this in a way that makes it appear standard, even though it’s not. What’s interesting is that if I use dbpoweramp and I edit the Genre tag (meaning I explicitly save the semicolon and overwrite the <null>) everything works, including Roon:

So, that’s the latest. Any idea why the files are tagged this way? Where did they come from?

Supporting this formatting could have some unintended consequences, so I would need to know more about how your files got this way before we would consider this standard enough to support. I know that’s not the best news if you have 30k files tagged this way, but let me know the details and we’ll see how we can get this working for you.

Sorry again for the delay!

7

Hi Mike,

Good catch !

I use JRiver to tag most of my files and it seems that it is the source of my issue.

Rewriting [genre] with dBPoweramp and forcing a re-scan in Roon solves the problem.

As a verification, I used Mp3Tag:

  • .mp3 files tagged with a ‘’;’’ in JRiver: [genre] appears as Ambient\\Drone - incorrect presentation in Roon
  • .mp3 files tagged with a ‘’;’’ in dBPoweramp: [genre] appears as Ambient;Drone - correct presentation in Roon

I’m not sure if I understand the reason why JRiver tagging is ‘‘faulty’’, but I guess I’m gonna have to change my workflow.

Thanks again !

8

I’ve made some tests tagging files with dBPoweramp, JRiver, and Mp3tag.
Just to be clear, only .mp3 and .dsf files tagged with JRiver are problematic (that’s sill A LOT of files for me :disappointed:)

FLAC files are not affected (weird).

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9

Hi JP_,

I’m a recent concert to Roon and have the same issue coming from JRiver. Involving many thousands of files. Do you work out any way of doing bulk upgrades of JRiver tags to correct the problem?
I shudder at the idea of doing it all manually!

10

Hi Gafflyn,

Here’s how I did it:

  1. In JRiver: Create a smartlist collecting all your .mp3 and .dsf files.

  2. In JRiver: Use the following command on the files : Right click -> Send To -> Send To (external) -> Mp3tag
    ( Like you, this involved thousand files so I proceeded by smaller batches)

  3. In Mp3tag : Select all files -> Actions -> Actions (quick) -> Merge duplicate fields (Field: GENRE; Separator: ; ) -> OK

  4. Mp3tag will then modify the GENRE tag for all selected files, i.e. “Pop \\ Rock” should become “Pop; Rock”.

  5. Close Mp3tag.

  6. In Roon: Focus on all .mp3 and .dsf albums, select all albums and use “Re-scan albums”. This should do the trick, hopefully.

It worked for me.
Also, it seems that if I use JRiver to update any tags for .mp3 or .dsf files, GENRE will revert back to its original format, i.e., “Pop \\ Rock” :frowning:

Hope this helps!

11

Hey, thanks JP_

Really appreciate you taking the time out to explain that. I’ll give it a go!
Fingers crossed…

12

Mate… You’re a legend! All done. Good solution. Cheers.

1 Like