FWIW, the Artist tag in MP3 uses a different separator than FLAC: MP3 uses a forward slash (e.g., /); FLAC uses a double backslash (e.g., \\).

Strange, I've never heard that FLAC files can store multiple artists by storing multiple artist fields, rather than by parsing the single "Artist" field. That makes sense, but I've never looked at the tagging specifications for FLAC files.

The funny thing is that most tagging software that I've used doesn't support multiple artists this way... at least I've not seen it yet. I did, in fact, save the test FLAC file tags in MM and it worked in MM afterward, however, several tagging programs I use still only see one of the artists (perhaps despite multiple artist fields existing for FLAC). When I use these other tagging programs, saving the tags after the artists being correctly split by MM then get erased.

I think this is carry-over behavior from MP3 tagging, unfortunately, but it's pretty wide spread -- hence the usage of split artist parsing in the single artist field. Unfortunately, this seems to be a fairly common scenario at this time, so this will prevent me from really using MM until the rest of the world catches up!

It would interfere current behavior, e.g. if user seperator would be "/" and artist "AC/DC", it would parse it as two artists, even if read from one ARTIST field. I would prefer to use current standard way, one FLAC file now can have multiple artists (in multiple ARTIST fields) and MM4 (or other SW) can show them separated by any user separator. But in your case, if you change your separator to something else, or get FLAC file which already has some different separator, it won't be parsed correctly again. User separator is primarily used for displaying multiple values, not for saving/parsing them to/from files.

Thanks for the response, MiPi.

Would it be inappropriate for MM to parse multiple values based on the separator without writing the tags back to the file? That way users could have the benefit of multiple values entered incorrectly by other software but the original file is maintained.

The problem is in the source FLAC files - their tags are saved in tagging program, which did not save multivalued fields as recommended by standard (http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html [^]). I.e. for artist tag it should use multiple ARTIST fileds, not one with some custom separator.
The solution is to resave tags for problematic files in MM4. I.e. open problematic node, e.g. "Jay-Z / Kanye West", select all files - edit Properties - change some field (e.g. write and delete space in some unused text field) and save.

Thanks!

Also, I've just noticed that my test mp3 file had a '/' in the genre which hadn't been parsed. This was also parsed when I changed it to a ';'.

Further, although the mp3 artist was parsed into two artists correctly initially, MM actually changed the tag to show a ';'. When I changed it back to '/' it was no longer parsed and showed as a single artist.

Basically, on import the artist fields for mp3 files respect the separator setting, but flac files always use the default. On editing tags, all fields for both formats use the default.

You are correct, fnwc, and I can now second the bug report.

I just tested it on a virtual machine with a complete fresh install of Windows. I had one mp3 file and one flac file that had both previously been tagged with two artists separated by a '/' using my main MM install which has the default separator. I imported these files into the virtual machine install after I had changed the separator and the mp3 file was correctly parsed into two artists while the flac file remained unparsed.

When I edited the flac file with the VM install to replace the '/' with a ';' it was parsed into two artists, so the problem is that the custom separator is ignored for flac files.

I can't remember but what I just did was go into 'C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\MediaMonkey' and renaming MM.DB to reset the database. I then relaunched MediaMonkey, which rebuilt the MM.DB database.

I checked the option for the ' / ' separator, and verified that the library is empty.

Then I added the music files that I uploaded earlier.

I got the same result, with the mp3 files artists split correctly and the flac file artists not split at all.

fnwc, Lowlander means did you import the files before you changed MediaMonkey's settings to use '/' as the separator?

MediaMonkey parses the tag into multiple artists at the point of importing the file and editing the tags, so any files that had been imported before you changed this setting won't show as you'd expect for the new setting. If this is the problem then it is easily fixed by changing the tag now that you have set MM to split using '/'. Try adding '/test' to the artist field for all affected files to force MM to parse the artist. Then you can remove the 'test'.

Yeah, they were tagged previously (XBMC uses this format for split artists).

I imported some of my library into MediaMonkey to test how it would work (I have a very large library) and noticed that some of my artists were split correctly, whereas some were not. The only difference I could tell was that the FLAC files were not separating correctly.

Were the files added and tagged as such prior to the seperator change?

Yes, specifically to " / ".

In other words, "Jay-Z / Linkin Park", for example.

MediaMonkey seems to recognize the separated artists properly in MP3, but not for FLAC files, but that's just a guess. Either that or there's something different about the tags in the sample files I posted.

Are you saying you changed the separator character in MediaMonkey to /?