What is this?

[Shawn Rosvold]

On the right, there is a listing for an album that exists in Various artists. But there is this separate listing with - COVER added to the album title. Why is this showing up? And should I erase it?

I also have others showing up as log in the album list.

Thanks!

[Daniel Taylor]

It looks like the name of the Album (and hence the Album folder) is "100 HITS - THE BEST JAZZ ALBUM - COVERS"

If you don't want the word COVERS in the album title, click the three dots to the right and select Rename.  Then you can edit the title and remove the word COVERS.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi Daniel.

What's weird is the album appears in its entirety (showing all tracks) in the Various Artists category. This one with -COVERS at the end shows no tracks and is not under Various Artists. I am also seeing listings as ART and LOG for other albums. 

I have never seen these things before in the album listings. I'm afraid to delete them unless I can find out why they're suddenly appearing. I don't want to cause problems with the albums.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi sros

This is how I interpret your B2's Web UI (other will correct me if I am wrong)

This bit is what is currently playing (and the B2 remember where it left off between sessions). Note your B2 is currently "Paused".

This bit is looking at your B2's HDD - the annotation shows which Artist you last clicked on as highlighted by me

This bit shows that there is only one album under that Artist.

This bit shows the Tracks in that Album (currently there are non)

Finally this bit shows that you are trying to upload music from your PC - On the B" you will be calling the ARTIST "art", the ALBUM "Alabama Shakes ....." and you have not yet picked any music files.

When you have chosen the files and pressed "send to Brennan"

the files you have chosen will be uploaded to an Artist called "art", in an Album called "Alabama Shakes ....."  

You may need to Do a "Scan Disk" after the upload.

Does this help?

Fred

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Sorry the final screen shot should have been

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi Fred,

Thank you for all that work!

I have two albums with the same name, except one says -COVERS at the end of the album title. 

The other is the full album with all the tracks that I uploaded.

I don't know where the album with _COVERS at the end of the title came from. I did not upload it. So, my question is, can I delete it without it affecting anything?

I also have an album in the list called Data which I did not upload. It appears to contain an album cover. Where did this come from and why is this happening?

Thanks!

Shawn

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Shawn

I think the trouble is that your "source" for uploading (your PC?) may contain come files/directories that you are not expecting/aware of.

I would suggest that, rather then using the Web UI to merge or delete stuff, you turn on the B2's NAS function.

This will enable you to see the B2's music as a normal file system so that you can look into all the folders and decide what you want to do.

From the front B2 display got to maintenance and select "Start NAS"

 
Then on your PC (I assume you are using a PC), here are Paul's (from Brennan) instructions on how to set it up.

--------------------------------

Here are some instructions for getting your B2 to show as a network device on your computer -

NAS mode using a Windows 10 computer:

On the B2:

• Make sure the B2 is connected to WiFi - displaying an IP Address - something like 192.168.1.127

• Using the front control go to the Maintenance menu and select Start NAS - the display will return to the clock and then show 'done' after a couple of seconds.

On your Win10 computer:

• In the 'Type here to search' box type - Turn Windows features on and off (you don't have to type all of this as you will be prompted by the computer).

• Click on 'Turn Windows features on and off'

• Scroll down to 'SMB1.0/CIFS File sharing support' and expand the section - click on the '+' box

• Select the second item - SMB1.0/CIFS Client - it may already be selected so no need to select again

• Click on OK.

On the Win10 computer:

• In the 'Type here to search' box type View network computers and devices

• Click on 'View network computers and Devices'

• BRENNANB2 should be displayed on the 'computer' line - if not wait a while (it can take a while to show the first time) and try refreshing the 'View network....' page.

• Double click on BRENNANB2 - a pop up panel will open

• Enter user name = root

• Enter password = brennan and click on OK

• The B2's 'music' folder will be shown - double click to open it - this can take a while as the computer needs to load all of the files on the B2's HDD.

• Once loaded a list of Artist folders will be shown

• Double clicking on an Artist folder will show the Album folder/s associated with the Artist

• Double clicking any Album folder will show the Tracks and Album Artworks

You can then edit these folders and files as you would any folders/files on your computer e.g. create new folders, copy and paste, cut and paste, rename, delete, etc.

You can also copy music from your computer (iTunes, etc) to the B2 whilst in NAS mode - make sure you maintain the correct Artist - Album - Track folder format so the music is correctly displayed on the B2.

Please note - any changes you make on the computer are local to the computer and must be transferred to the B2 by running Scan Disk - Settings menu - on the B2. If you leave the computer session without running Scan Disk, any changes will be lost.

Paul

Brennan Support.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can then use "File explorer" to look at the B2, It music is held Thus.

You will find you have an "Artist" called (circled in red)

look into it and if it is empty then simply delete it. If it contains stuff, cut and paste this to where it should be.

Similarly you will find an "Artist" level folder called "Data"

ONCE YOU HAVE SORTED YOUR B2 out using the NAS, you MUST then do a "Scan Disk".

Hope this helps

Fred.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Thank you, Fred! I really appreciate all your help.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

My pleasure,

Do keep us informed as to how you get on.

Fred

[PMB]

Hi Shawn,

If you still have the original 'Best of Jazz' album safely stored on your computer I would try deleting the 'COVERS' version and see what happens. NAS would probably be the best way to see what files you have and delete from there - run Scan Disk after editing on your computer to update the B2.

If it is a complete album stored by   Artist - Album - Tracks and cover art   on your computer you should use the Bulk upload option and point the B2 to the 'Artist' folder.

I wonder if the B2 upload doesn't like you using 'art' as s destination name.....

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi Paul,

I did delete all the odd albums that weren't albums, including the COVERS version of the 100 Jazz Hits. It and the others are all working fine when played from the B2. So, that's good.

I do use the bulk upload feature to load the albums I have downloaded to my computer. The folders usually look something like this: Rory Gallagher - Blues (2019) (FLAC, Universal UMC 5386809, CD) and contain photos, cue, playlist, etc. files as well as folders containing all the artwork of the album booklet. I bulk upload the whole thing and the B2 chooses what it wants and ignores the rest. I then change the title and artist from unknown. I'm wondering if some of the odd files are occasionally creating some sort of brain hiccup because I have never created a folder or file called Art. I never saw these files until I did a scan disk. That's when they appeared. So, from now on, after an uploading session, I will run a scan disk to see what appears and manually clean it up.

I really appreciate all the help all of you provide us.

Thanks!

Shawn

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Shawn,

Some of these problems may be caused if you are deviating from the following 'rules'.

1.  The 'Artist' level folder MUST ONLY contain sub-folders; no files (music & non-music) can be held at 'Artist' level.

2.  The 'Album' level folder MUST ONLY contain files (music & non-music); no sub-folders can be held at 'Album' level.
3.  If you create an 'Album' level folder and only put 'non-music files in that folder, then the B2 will ignore it (because there is no music to upload).

If you have files held at 'Artist' level, the B2 does some very strange things (usually not good!).  It tries to convert the filename to a folder which is not good.  I ran into this problem a few years ago when I loaded up my not-very-well-formatted mp3 collections in my first B2.  It took me a while to sort out the mess, but I got there in the end.

Regards,

Peter.

[lesliebr...@gmail.com]

Hi Peter and Shawn, I have some music files given to me by a friend many moons ago. Within the album folder along with the tracks and coverart.jpeg, there was a folder called Covers. This folder had jpegs images of the front and back of the CD case booklet and of all the pages of the internal booklet too. In Shawn's case if there was something similar to this, the B2 might think the Covers folder is an album and name it as an album, but also find no tracks in it

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Leslie,

Yes, I think that your situation was probably very similar to Shawn's.  There is also a folder named 'Data' in Shawn's listing which is likely to be another 'stray' folder case.

Any item that the B2 finds in the 'Artist' level folder will be processed as a potential folder.  So the music folder hierarchy needs to be checked at 'Artist' and 'Album' levels and adjusted as necessary.

I have just remembered what happened to me in 2017 after I got my first B2.  I copied my various badly structured collections from my PC and laptops using NAS.  This appeared to be OK until a while later when I found that some popular albums were 'missing' on the B2.  On closer examination, there were over 2000 'missing' music tracks (nearly 200 albums).

The problem, of course, turned out to be not having the artist & albums levels properly structured.  I had single level folders, three level folders, etc.  When I reorganised these, the 'missing' files then appeared in the B2 listing and all was well.  But it took a few months to sort them out.

Regards,

Peter.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Peter,

Will running scan disc after each day's uploading confirm that the uploads are really there and will play?

Shawn

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Shawn,

To get a quick result I would do the following:

1.  On the B2, plug a USB stick (a small capacity stick formatted to FAT32 will be fine) into USB C.

2.  On the front panel, navigate to 'Settings' --> 'Maintenance' --> 'b2db to USB C' and click to select this function.  This will copy a text file to the USB stick and is a listing of every artist, album and track that the B2 has found after running 'Scan Disk'.  The file is named 'b2db'.

3.  In the 'Maintenance menu, select 'List Albums'.  This will copy a text file of every artist and album to a a file called 'B2AlbumList.txt'.
4.  Remove the USB stick from the B2 and plug it into your PC.

5.  Open up both of these files in a text editor (I use Notepad++ because it is so flexible and is a free download)

6.  Compare the listings with what you estimate should be there.  The 'b2db' file is a definitive list down to track level of what the B2 has found.  This is the B2's 'master index file'.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards,

Peter.

[Shawn Rosvold]

Hi Peter,

Thank you! I just did that and everything seems to be there. That was very educational. My only beef with these lists is with B2AlbumList.txt. It would be nice if each album was numbered as it is on the b2db list so it would be easier and faster to match the lists. Not a big deal, but this exercise is worth a few minutes of time.

Shawn