Cache music database? (1 Viewer)

[Requiem]

Hi,

I have a multiseat configuration with MP1.3.
I have quite a large Music collection (used to be in music journalism some years ago and got looots of CDs for free in that time), which is organized in a
Root
- Artist A
-- Album A
-- Album B
- Artist B

(and so on) way on my harddisk.
When I go back from Artist to Root level, it takes MP quite a long time (up to 20 seconds) to display the directory listing. I want to stick with directory view. Is there a way to speedup things, like caching the music directory on first acces and only refresh it every x minutes?

 

[mbuzina]

Why do you want to stick with the directory view? I would recommend scanning the DB and copy the music db to each client (use the same UNC naming convention to acccess the files on all clients). That is MUCH quicker than browsing directories and you can do views as you like (your Artist / Album ordering is already there).

 

[Requiem]

Because I have my directories sorted perfectly. I also have tagged my whole collection with a standard scheme (using MusicBrainz Picard), but when switching to an database artist view, there still is too much confusion (double entries like "VA" and "Various Artists", it does not recognize my "thematic special folders" like "OST", "Classic", "EPs" and so on). Therefor navigation is much better for me when using directories instead of a database list view.

 

[mbuzina]

Then you have to live with the "slow" reading of large directories (so your statement of Artist/Album is a little simplified ;-)

If you have double entries, you do not have it tagged correctly (as MusicBrainz is a crowdsourced effort, the data is not standardized enough for my taste). Use Picard to standardize your VA / Various Artists and other things. Create your own views for thematic folders (to me they look like genres). Believe me, DB is much more flexible than pure file structure (like multiple artists, just separate them by a semi colon, multiple genres, showing new items or by year).

There is no cache - try to improve the NW connection would be my only suggestion.

 

[mbuzina]

Here a sample of a classical only view (of course you can add composer or artist as another level, no problem):

 

[Requiem]

Okay, then it seems like I'll have to redo some tagging and configuration. Thanks a lot for your effort.