Using Bubbleupnp to select music from MyCloud

[stugriff84]

Hello,

This will probably come as a massively newbie question but wherever i look and whatever i do, nothing solves my problem.

I own a WD MyCloud which contains all my music library. It is connected obviously to my home network and i select music to play and create playlists from this with the bubble upnp app on my LGG4 Android phone which i then steam to my Denon music streamer connected to my hifi seperates system.
I cannot install the actual bubbleupnp server to my NAS WD MyCloud because it is the slimmer version so not compatible and i won’t install it on my laptop because i don’t want this to be on all the time and also don’t want to have to turn this on every time i want to stream my music from my NAS.

The simple problem im having is that even though I’ve ordered and setup all my music in my WD MyCloud in folder orders with all album tracks numbered 1-10 etc, when i select them via the bubbleupnp app on my phone some of them come up alphabetically and some tracks are duplicated. I tried all the settings in the bubbleupnp app but nothing sorts this (sort tracks by number etc). It’s very frustrating especially as when going through the WD MyCloud on my computer it is all in order. I’ve since noticed that’s its only the albums with duplicated tracks (seen only on the bubbleupnp app on my phone) that seem to then put the albums in alphabetical order.

This is most important to me as most of my music library is mixed dance music so album order is really important.

Can anyone please help me with this?

Thanks
Stu

[mike27oct]

Here is a way to do this:

All my music is arranged in artist order folders in my MC NAS. (It is a copied folder from my iTunes Media folder). So, it is easy for me to find albums I want, even with Bubble app on an Android tablet, but the tracks of albums are displayed in alpha order as many DLNA devices do. I, too, wanted the tracks to display and play in track order. Bubble is so feature-filled that figuring out how is a bit of a trick. Here is what to do

In the main menu panel under Library, of Bubble, select your media source (your My Cloud) and the menu will display more options. Notice Settings shows, so tap it to open, and then notices another category in caps also labeled SETTINGS, tap it and notice DISPLAY and tap to place a check mark next to Track number, Duration and Smart sort.

Now, back up and with main arrow a few times until you see your Music, Photos, Videos folders at top of menu, and tap Music.

At the next menu, I select Folders, and go to my folder Shared Music, and there are two choices, and since all my music is in the folder named iTunes Media I select that and all my artist folders are shown as they are in iTunes program.

I select an artist, and from within that folder I select the album I want.

If I want to hear a track or the complete album, open the album and see all the tracks in TRACK ORDER. If I want to hear the complete album I put my finger on the first track and hold down for a second or so until I see the display say Select Items – Select All and the track names box turns orange.

Now it will be ready to play all tracks when you hit the Play icon arrow. Notice the track playing is shown at the bottom of the list.

Now, switch to Now Playing and you can tap the double arrow icon to advance to the next track. At this point practice these procedures a few times to get the hang of it and explore how else you can control Bubble in this mode.

Lots of steps, I may have missed something, so if you can’t do some of this let me know.

[stugriff84]

Thanks Mike,

You explain that very well and i have followed it and it’s works for most albums so thankyou.
The ones it doesn’t work for are albums that, for some reason, have some duplicated tracks. It is these albums which only display in alphabetical order, I have no idea why this is as the tracks are not duplicated in my MyCloud.

However… I have since discovered that if i browse through my music via album order instead of my preferred method, folders, although the duplicated tracks are still present, they are, at least, in the correct track order and once i select them for the playlist they play correctly and without the duplicated tracks.

Using the album cover works better but is a lot more difficult to browse my catalogue as in folder form i have all my music in genre folders.

Is not perfect but it is much more useable

Thanks again for your help,

Stu

[cpt_paranoia]

@stugriff84

a lot more difficult to browse my catalogue as in folder form i have all my music in genre folders.

Genre folders are unnecessary if you use a media browser that supports viewing by metaata (including the genre tag). Since genre can be track-dependent, lumping an entire album under a genre heading can be tricky.

I think a simple artist/album/track structure works best for the physical library, leaving all the metadata tags for the logical views.

A DJ did once almost convince me that genre physical structure worked best for him…

[mike27oct]

Stu,

Glad to know that for the most part, you got it working well. As you play around with this, you have already discovered that you can work around some issues. Keep at it.

As for above comment from “cpt”: “I think a simple artist/album/track structure works best for the physical library, leaving all the metadata tags for the logical views.” is very true. All my music is arranged by iTunes program, and I have always felt it was done the best way as cpt described. Any music made from my CDs or my downloads from legit sources also come to me in this structure. I find that genre is very often incorrect, and I would never sort my music that way.

I found a problem this morning with Bubble when using it to test a new Bluetooth speaker for first time. I was playing from a playlist on my NAS, and after each track music would advance, but many times it would just stop playing in the middle of a track, and after a few times of this action, I switched to using the Avia app to see if it was the app or the BT speaker having the issue. It all played fine with Avia so I can only assume it is the Bubble app having an issue, but I need to check things further. There was a new version of Bubble recently, and maybe there is a new bug.

Meanwhile, if you experience this issue, you will know you are not alone with it.
–Mike

[mike27oct]

Update on my last reply above: The problem I described with Bubble really was caused by Bubble. I apparently found the solution, because it played non-stop for a couple of hours on my (Android) Kindle HD tablet after I “fixed” Bubble. It seems I cannot just load and play one of my previously prepared m3u playlists, like I can using the Avia app on the Kindle. After loading in the playlist to play, I then also had to import it into a new Bubble-specific playlist and save it with a name. Then, the Bubble playlist would play perfectly and without any issues.

I don’t recall this being an issue with Bubble before this latest update of the app. It seems stupid to add this extra step, so I likely will use Bubble less, and Avia more, to play my music playlists.

[Keith_Clarke]

May I revive this thread with another BubbleUpnp question? I newly have all my music on a WD My Cloud, using Bubble to play through a Pioneer music server. All works far better than I could have hoped, but for one oddity: on some albums, Bubbleup fails to show Track 1. I tried another program, which did the same thing, so I suppose it must be something to do with the way I have the music on the NAS drive. Would it be that the album artwork is attached to the first track, or something like that? And how do I get to see (and play) those elusive first tracks?

[mike27oct]

Suggest you see if there is a Bubble user forum where you can ask this question, as it is an app issue and not a MC issue.

[cpt_paranoia]

How did you rip the music? If you used WMP, it may not have found the album info before it had finished ripping, in which case, it often fails to write correct metadata to the file.

It will also depend on which ‘view’ you use to browse your files; the ‘By Folder’ view uses the physical file hierarchy, and is probably the ‘safest’ way to check your music collection, since you can compare that view with the view provided by a simple file manager. The other views use metadata. If the metadata is incorrect (e.g. album title or artist not written correctly), the tracks will not appear in the right place (they’ll be listed under another artist or album name; look for ‘Unknown Artist’ or ‘Unknown Album’).

Use a good metadata editor to examine and correct the metadata of the offending files (e.g. MP3Tag, MediaMonkey).

[Keith_Clarke]

That’s brilliantly helpful information, thank you. In truth, the library is a hodge-podge from various sources, though largely ripped using iTunes. As an experiment, in MediaMonkey I removed the artwork from one of the offending albums, which immediately cured the problem. And Track 1 didn’t disappear again when I reinstated the artwork. However, there are some Track 1s missing where no artwork exists, so there I’m stumped. But your ‘By Folder’ suggestion is clearly the answer.

[cpt_paranoia]

If there’s a difference between what you see in the ‘By Folder’ view, and in the metadata-based views, then it’s a metadata problem. Since it appears to be associated with artwork, it sounds like whatever tool you used to add the artwork to the offending files has written metadata in a format that Twonky hasn’t understood.

MediaMonkey is good at sorting out metadata issues, if the path/filename has all the information needed (‘auto-tag from filename’ is the function you need).

[Keith_Clarke]

Thanks. This is all new to me. In MM ‘autotag from filename’ I get a choice of ‘Update empty fields only’ or ‘Remove underscores’. Neither of these mean a thing to me, but I suspect they do to you!

[cpt_paranoia]

Update only empty fields mean don’t overwrite any existing metadata tags.

Remove underscores means what it says; if the path and filename includes underscores in place of spaces, then replace the underscores with spaces…

You ought to get a dialogue that allows you to create parse strings to tell MM how to convert the path to metadata tags. See the help.