Albums show multiple copies of the same songs

[stevewilson]

This has gotten ridiculous.  I went for a walk today to play music.  I wanted to see if the stuttering and pauses occurred when I played an album as well as when I was just playing a playlist.  No matter what album I try and play, PA thinks there're 4 or 5 copies of each song.  I mean, I look at the folder that contains the album and there's just ONE copy of the song.  I look at the album with PA and there's a bunch of copies of each song.  I've done a full rescan.  I've killed the app.  I've restarted the phone.  There doesn't seem to be a way to convince PA to play just the songs that are actually there.  I give up.  I'll use an inferior player that actually works.  One 3 hour walk was enough.

I added the album(s) by the ALBUM category in PA.  Multiple copies of each song.  I went to the ARTIST category and then ALBUM with PA.  Still multiple copies of each song.  Then I just went to the FOLDER category.  ONE copy of each song.  So I can't go by ALBUM or ARTIST.  I have to go by FOLDER.  It works.  It just makes no sense to me.

[andrewilley]

@stevewilson Have you enabled the same top-level folders multiple times in Settings=>Library=>Music Folders? And are you using regular Android file access, or Legacy File Access Mode (in Settings=>Misc).

Are there any spurious/unnecessary CUE files in your Music Folders?

After checking all of those, try a FULL Rescan in Settings=>Library.

If you still see duplicates, long-press on each duplicate item in turn and see if the path and filename details are actually the same in each case.

Andre

[stevewilson]

"Have you enabled the same top-level folders multiple times in Settings=>Library=>Music Folders? And are you using regular Android file access, or Legacy File Access Mode (in Settings=>Misc)."

Nope.  I've enabled just FLAC or MP3.  I'm using regular Android file access.

"Are there any spurious/unnecessary CUE files in your Music Folders?"

I don't even know what those are.  The music folders contain nothing except the FLAC (or MP3) files.
 

 

[MotleyG]

5 hours ago, stevewilson said:

"Have you enabled the same top-level folders multiple times in Settings=>Library=>Music Folders? And are you using regular Android file access, or Legacy File Access Mode (in Settings=>Misc)."

Nope.  I've enabled just FLAC or MP3.  I'm using regular Android file access.

"Are there any spurious/unnecessary CUE files in your Music Folders?"

I don't even know what those are.  The music folders contain nothing except the FLAC (or MP3) files.
 

 

If you are on Android 13, there is no “regular file access” without enabling it from the folder menu. This is a Google thing with SAF file handling. Especially if you moved from an older device to this one, you can’t easily use a backup file. You probably have to go to the folder menu and delete all previously used folders there, then restart the app and add your main music folder again. You should get a prompt from the OS requesting permission to allow this. Then all should behave. Poweramp will then do a FULL rescan as well, and your library will be rebuilt with all current music files in that permitted folder.

[andrewilley]

@stevewilson Please could you post a screenshot of your Music Folders list (from PA Settings=>Library=>Music Folders).

Also, once you have done the Full Rescan I suggested, could you post screenshots of the Info/Tags display (just the filename/path details) for a couple of the duplicated items? 

Is your new phone using a restored Settings file from the old one, or did you start from scatch? Restoring might have simply copied the problem over, so a fresh start for your music folders, as suggested by @MotleyG , would probably not be a bad idea either.

Andre

[stevewilson]

My installation was - I got the new phone.  I installed PA from the playstore.  I copied the library over from my PC.

My phone IS Android 13.  File Legacy Mode is turned off as shown in the FileSettings.jpg.

My library is set to select everything except collections, soundtracks, and cuts in the Flac directory.  If I just set the library to the Flac folder, everytime I select an album that has a song in a collection, soundtrack, or cuts folder, that song gets repeated even though it's not in the albums folder more than once.

[andrewilley]

So there are presumably a lot more folders selected (covering C to Z), and only those four "-" items are deselected? It would probably be easier to simply move those four unneeded subfolders out of the FLAC hierarchy completely (maybe put them into a separate "FLAC Extras" folder for now?) and then you could just select the one master top-level 'FLAC' folder only. Same with 'MP3' if that's another master folder. That would automatically pick up any new artist folders that you might add later, as currently you'd have to add any new subfolders manually.

What about the long-press=>'Info/Tags' path and filename details for a set of the duplicated songs, so we can see if they are actually the same physical file, or some sort of odd file-system duplications - e.g. deleted files that might have remained scannable from a recycle location.

Andre

[stevewilson]

I like to listen to collections, soundtracks, and cuts a lot.  I drive a lot at times, and it'd be a pain to pull over - switch the library and then start driving again every time.  I ended up leaving everything where it was and switching back to a root directory of Flac.  That way the folders I want are accessible without changing the library.  If I try and play an album like that, it WILL have duplicates if duplicates are included in any of the collections, soundtracks or cuts.  But if I load folders, the duplicates aren't there and since each album is a separate folder, it works.

And info/Tags details show that the duplicates being loaded are songs included in the collections, soundtracks, and cuts folders.  PA must be reading the METADATA of every file in its library and adding them.  I just have to remember to add folders instead of albums.

 

[andrewilley]

12 hours ago, stevewilson said:

  PA must be reading the METADATA of every file in its library and adding them. 

Well of course it does, how else do you think the music library works? So are you saying that after all this discussion you actually do have multiple physical copies of the same songs scattered throughout your various music folders? If so, then it should come as no surprise when the duplicates are all neatly listed within their correctly assigned Albums, as defined by their metadata tags. What else is Poweramp meant to do with them?

Perhaps it might be an idea at this point to refer to the FAQ on Tagging and Albums:

Folder browsing is a separate feature, where you can organise your songs a bit more manually and view them independently of their tag data. I happen to configure my folder views to sort the contents by path/filename for example, meaning I can use leading numerical digits to arrange them all how I want - often that's just a track number, but it could be a date/year, a disc number, or some other arbitrary value.

Andre

[MotleyG]

11 hours ago, stevewilson said:

I like to listen to collections, soundtracks, and cuts a lot.  I drive a lot at times, and it'd be a pain to pull over - switch the library and then start driving again every time.  I ended up leaving everything where it was and switching back to a root directory of Flac.  That way the folders I want are accessible without changing the library.  If I try and play an album like that, it WILL have duplicates if duplicates are included in any of the collections, soundtracks or cuts.  But if I load folders, the duplicates aren't there and since each album is a separate folder, it works.

And info/Tags details show that the duplicates being loaded are songs included in the collections, soundtracks, and cuts folders.  PA must be reading the METADATA of every file in its library and adding them.  I just have to remember to add folders instead of albums.

 

The whole point of using playlist files is to have just a single copy of the actual music file, but have many different ways of attaching that one file to a group of tracks that each playlist builds. These are likely going to be unique to every user, and can be changed any time. But the concept remains that only a single file is required, saving you from having multiple copies of the same song, eliminating unnecessary missed tag edits, and potentially a great amount of drive space.

If you make this change to your work flow, you can then have many more different songs on your device with the extra space, and truly only have one copy that would appear in your Poweramp library browser.

[stevewilson]

<sigh>  No.  Other media players play the album without adding the extra files in that are in other directories.  When the library is exactly the same as it is in PA.  Regardless, PA WILL play the album with no duplications if I say to play the folder - since every album is in its own folder.  The point is, I don't need to do that with other media players so I was surprised that I had to do it with PA.

Regardless, this whole thread started because of the constant "stuttering" and pausing I was getting with Android Auto.  It turns out that it's an Android Auto issue.  Android Auto used to default to displaying maps as soon as it started.  I always switched it to the music right away.  There was no stuttering.  The last "upgrade" of Android Auto changed the default to one of a split screen, so it showed the maps AND the music.  That's when the stuttering started.  If I switch off the map display the stuttering stops.  No idea why Android Auto can't let the user specify what startup screen they want, but that's not a PA issue.

[MotleyG]

14 minutes ago, stevewilson said:

Other media players play the album without adding the extra files in that are in other directories.  When the library is exactly the same as it is in PA.  Regardless, PA WILL play the album with no duplications if I say to play the folder - since every album is in its own folder.  The point is, I don't need to do that with other media players so I was surprised that I had to do it with PA.

I’m lost, and have no idea what you are trying to do here. Extra files in other directories? Either you do or you don’t have duplicates of songs in your library. If you do, Poweramp will show all of them.

16 minutes ago, stevewilson said:

Regardless, this whole thread started because of the constant "stuttering" and pausing I was getting with Android Auto. 

You started this thread with the title “Albums show multiple copies of the same songs” and that is what has been discussed. So I think you are referring to another thread about the stuttering.

[andrewilley]

7 hours ago, MotleyG said:

I’m lost, and have no idea what you are trying to do here. Extra files in other directories? Either you do or you don’t have duplicates of songs in your library. If you do, Poweramp will show all of them.

From the recent messages from the OP, I think that is exactly what he has done. To make browsing of songs which fall into multiple subject groupings easier, he has duplicated the same physical audio files into different folders, so he can listen to the same songs in different groupings by Folder ordering.

As stated earlier (and in the relevant Guide/FAQ) any audio file that contains the exact same Album Title and Album Artist tags will be considered as being part of the same Album. That is exactly by design, as a lot of people and/or apps don't use folders very logically (e.g. iTunes) so the tag data is the only thing that defines how the tracks that form an "album" are collated. So if you copied the same audio file into different music folders ten times, you would expect to see that song title appear ten times in the same Album view. As I said, that is completely intentional and won't change.

One reason that could be valid for having the same song in your storage twice would be if you had (for example) one high-res FLAC and also a low-res MP3, or one live version and one studio version. The correct way to handle those would be to make sure the Album Title tags are different. For example, one set of MP3 ELO songs could have an Album tag of "Out of the Blue", while separate higher quality files could have the Album tag set to "Out of the Blue (192kHz)". They would then each show within the Albums category as separate albums, rather than with all the songs grouped together under "Out of the Blue".

Two better solutions for creating different playback sequences for the same audio content (where the content is stored correctly as one-off files) would be to use Playlists or Genres.

Playlists would be easiest to use, as you just build a a list of all of the songs that you want to hear in one type of listening session. The songs exist only once in physical storage, but can be accessed via multiple playlists depending on your mood at the time. 

Genres would be harder to set up, as you'd need to edit the tags in each file first- ideally using a batch tag editor. As there can be multiple Genre tags in one file, for one song you could set Genre to something like "Rock ; Progressive ; Night-Time Listening ; All-time Favourites". So the correct genre category definitions for the actual music (i.e. "Rock" & "Progressive") are still present, but also two extra user-created "genres" of your own that could be used for listening by specifically chosen subject matter - such as any songs with the added tag "Night-Time Listening", or a separate Genre list of all songs tagged with "All-time Favourites".

 

7 hours ago, MotleyG said:

You started this thread with the title “Albums show multiple copies of the same songs” and that is what has been discussed. So I think you are referring to another thread about the stuttering.

Actually that was me. The OP's original post was about audio stuttering (which was a comment to someone else's thread in the first place) which then diverted off at a tangent about multiple songs appearing in albums. As that makes conversations really hard to follow, I separated the two conversations into their own threads. Any conversation about the stuttering issue should be in: 

Andre