A CD Box Set is composed of several albums compiled in a single box. There are several ways to catalog them under Audirvana so that they appear either as a box set of several albums or as independent albums.
Here are the advantages and disadvantages I found for each method:
Cataloguing several albums as belonging to the same box set.
Each record has the name of the box set, they are numbered sequentially from 1 to N (N being the number of records in the box set). Each title of each record is composed of the track title followed by a dash and the album name (or which can also be put in brackets). The image attached to each album is the one of the box set. The date of each record must be the date of the box set so that they are not dissociated when sorted by artist and release date.
Advantages: In the Audirvana library, the consistency of the box set is preserved and appears as a compilation of records.
Disadvantage: It is difficult to quickly identify an album in the box set. The images of the different albums are lost.
Cataloguing of the albums independently of the box set.
Each record has the name of the album followed by a dash and the name of the box set (or which can also be put in brackets). The image attached to each record is that of the album. The date of each record is that of the album.
Advantages: The albums appear clearly in the Audirvana library with their covers and the actual release dates of the original albums.
Disadvantage : The coherence of the box set, its cover and its release date are lost.
What solution do you use and do you have other cataloguing methods?
The method 1 is the standard way, just mark each track as [disc]/[track]. There is a specific tag for that.
The album art can be set on album level as long as you use a “album” tag like [collection] CD [n], or something like that. It just needs to be distinct for each CD in the collection.
After a few tries I succeed to get the name of the album in addition to the name of the Box Set with the Tag Grouping edited with Mp3tag. The result is the following (sorry my GUI is in French):
Thanks for your help bitracer. Sorry but in the album view I don’t see every record but only the Box Set. So I can’t modify the record covers of this Box Set.
Make sure that every disc in the set has a different album name, something like [album name] [disc n], Then you’ll see each disc as a separate album and will be able to change the cover art image.
If I give each record a different title I can indeed put a cover on each one. However, I lose the association of the discs in the Box Set. I tried in this case to give all the discs the same Box Set name with the Tag Grouping but the discs still appear dissociated. In the album view it is however possible to activate a filter on the Grouping field and thus see all the albums in a Box Set but it is not very user-friendly anyway and it does not allow to have the Box Set cover.