Sorting by last name rather than first

Answered
Paul Harmon
Hi. We have just bought a vault I and ripped about 2,000 CDs. We love our vault, but find one feature frustrating. When the controller sorts artists or composers, it lists them alphabetically by their fist name by default. Is there a way to instruct the controller to list by last name? There must be a way, but I can’t find it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Comments

6 comments

Date Votes
  • Official comment
    Tony W.
    Product Support Manager

    The easiest and simple answer to the direct question sis this.

    Composer in universal ID3 tags is a single field, not two as in COMPOSER and not COMPOSER_LAST_NAME, COMPOSER_FIRST_NAME.

  • Curt A

    There are a number of discussions about metadata.

    Read the last post in this discussion:

    https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/18904712922135

    It is extremely important to be rigid in your naming conventions. For example, I use track artist for the primary artist, and if a name, it is last name first. I use album artist for the Primary artist, first name first, and all other artists included (to a point). Admittedly, classical poses a challenge. I have over 13K albums, but I can always find music since I am very careful about how I enter metadata. Now that you only have 2000 CDs it is a good time to organize.

    There a number of good programs out there but I use EX CD Audio Converter. Good Luck!

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  • Paul Harmon

    Thanks everyone for your input and helpful advice. I understand the challenges of metadata and the advantages of taking control of it, but I am still confused why Bluesound have elected to sort names with first rather than last names and do not give us a preference to change this.

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  • Ian Shepherd
    • Edited

    I tried to explain why I thought this was the case in my response to your post in the General Discussions forum. Please see the link below.

    https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/18904712922135-Proposed-change-to-search-for-future-BluOS

    I would also suggest that not that many artist names actually fall into the category of having first name and last name. Band names certainly don't. Artists that use a single name don't. Orchestras don't.

    And then there are Prince and (Harry) Nilsson. :)

    And, as I have indicated, metadata can be inconsistent even for an artist with a first name and last name.

    If all artists' names fit into first name/last name format, if first names and last names were stored separately, if everyone's metadata was perfect, and if everyone wanted the same approach as you irrespective of the software that they use for accessing their FLAC files, then perhaps there might be a case for what you ask. Since, instead, there's a bit of a free-for-all out there, I can't see it happening even though it would be very handy.

    It's also the case that Bluesound don't own the metadata format, so they have to work with what's already there, just as we all do.

    This suggests that the only way to achieve what you are asking for would be for you to amend the contents of the Artist Name field for each track in your own metadata to put second name first, perhaps followed by a comma. Before you do, however, it would be worth trialling it on paper or in Excel or similar to see whether or not it's even possible to achieve in a usable way and on a consistent basis.

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  • Paul Harmon

    Thanks so much for the time and trouble you have taken with your responses to my question. I don’t think we have the stomach to amend the metadata so we will limp on with what we’ve got. Thanks again.

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  • Ian Shepherd

    Prego!

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