Give the meta data on the tracks and what each app is showing a close look.

Um, ​@Stanley_4 not sure I follow.

My ‘point’ is that the S1 app seems to work, well, properly, so my question is why is the S2 app making such a mess of what the S1 app is just doing. And of course the album I referred to above is just a specific example of a bug that has affected many albums that I have.

A bit more research seems to indicate that this was a problem that was resolved in a recent firmware update (?) but everything seems to be on v16.5 which I believe is well after the ‘fixed’ update.

 To make the S2 app show that album correctly you need to have an entry in the Album Artist tag.  That entry needs to be the same for all the tracks in the album or it will not show as a single album.  Sonos has yet to solve the tag reading issue that works OK in S1 but not in S2.

 It’s a good idea to use the Album Artist tag which will work better for all software that reads those tags.  This is very important for classical music where the Album Artist tags can be vary a lot.  After a rip or download purchase of a classical album the Album Artist tag could be anything from Orchestra, conductor, performer or composer.  Makes it very difficult to find a particular composer’s work.  Yes there may be a Composer search category in most software, but maybe not.

So if it’s a Miles Davis album my Artist & Album Artist tags are both Miles Davis.  If it’s Gustav Mahler composition  my Artist & Album Artists tags are both Mahler.  If it’s a compilation album where there is a mix of artists my Artist tag is the performer and my Album Artist tag is “Various Artists”.

The two appear to be using the meta data differently. MoPac’s post makes that clearer.

Why? Well the S1 App and the Sonos App (the S2 seems to have quietly been dropped) differ is because the Sonos App was completely rewritten from the S2 App which evolved from the S1 App, so finding anything that appears to be common on the surface is actually from completely different code under the hood.

Timeline looks like: S1 (updates) S2 (complete rewrite) Sonos App.

This bit is only a tiny fraction of the issues falling out of the rewrite.

​@Stanley_4 ​@MoPac many thanks for your explanations and answers.

Setting the Album Artist tag worked in that Sonos S2 (or just ‘Sonos’) now sees just one album with all the tracks. Of course this work-around isn’t applicable to compilation albums etc etc.

I therefore await, in little hope, for Sonos to fix this most basic of issues.

As ​@Stanley_4 says, ‘This bit is only a tiny fraction of the issues falling out of the rewrite.’

Sigh.

Compilation albums need to be set as “Various Artists” in the “Album Artist” tag. I use an App called Bliss, is simple and quick to make changes such as this.