Track Order is Not Ordering Correctly

[caffeine]

Album is Dio's "Holy Diver". I ordered the listing by Album.

The track ordering is mostly correct but something weird is happening -- the tracks are ordered as:

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 2, 8

I've played around with the interface. This weird ordering consistently happens, and when I order the listing by Track #, the order is correct.

Why is MM doing this?

[MaximusPrime]

Make sure the tag #disc is set correctly to the whole album

[MMFrLife]

The ordering scheme in MM is typically "Album Artist" first. Even if that field already looks the same and in order, just click on that column first
and see what you get. You may need to click on it more than once to toggle between ascending and descending.

[Peke]

From above pic after sorting by Album you should use CTRL+CLICK on Track# column and sort albums by Track Number as secondary sort order.

[caffeine]

Make sure the tag #disc is set correctly to the whole album

This is something I'm not familiar with -- is there a tagging system in MM other than mp3ids? Where does one set #disc?

[caffeine]

The ordering scheme in MM is typically "Album Artist" first. Even if that field already looks the same and in order, just click on that column first
and see what you get. You may need to click on it more than once to toggle between ascending and descending.

It wasn't the issue here (AA and Artist are both set to Dio), but this is a really good thing to know. Thank you!!!

Sorting on AA is definitely the right thing to do (if the files are tagged correctly). I should be exposing AA as well as Artist. Thank you for mentioning this!

[caffeine]

From above pic after sorting by Album you should use CTRL+CLICK on Track# column and sort albums by Track Number as secondary sort order.

This did the trick. Thank you for mentioning this. But two followup questions --

First, MM usually does the right thing. The Dio example is notable because it's one of the only times I've seen track order not correct when viewing multiple albums. Is this just dumb coincidence? Or is there a rational explanation why Track is *usually* (but not always) ordered when viewing multiple albums?

And second, shouldn't "secondary order on track" be a default? I usually don't like generalizing, but it seems like most people, when ordering on some key, would want Track to be a secondary order key.

Thank you for the reply. I'm really happy to see Dio put back into numerical order!

[MMFrLife]

So, "album artist" alone doesn't work?

[Lowlander]

Album sort is Album > Album Artist > Disc# >Track#. This takes care of multi-disc Albums as well as Albums with the same name from different Artists (like Greatest Hits).

If Albums show sorted incorrectly it almost always is a tagging issue. Sometimes it can be a database corruption issue or a bug.

[caffeine]

Album sort is Album > Album Artist > Disc# >Track#. This takes care of multi-disc Albums as well as Albums with the same name from different Artists (like Greatest Hits).

You are my hero, and this explains everything.

It turns out that Disc# was blank for the whole album except for 2 and 8, where Disk# was set to "1/1". Everything is good now.

OK, this was a very good lesson for me, and I learned from the experience, thanks! The sort order is a very specific piece of trivia. How did you know about it? Did you have a similar problem? I can't picture reading the docs and making a mental note of the column sort field order!

[MMFrLife]

Kudos to MaximusPrime as well, as he hit the nail right on the head.

I assumed you had the Disc# set as well.
I usually just use the Album Artist because multi-disc set ordering isn't an issue with me as I consecutive order the tracks on all sets,
then I keep a record of the original order at the end of the track. I also don't have tons of greatest hits albums. I just forgot about all that.

Anyway, glad you got it working .
I don't believe I've ever seen it written somewhere on the site other than being mentioned in posts.
I just figured the ctrl thing out myself, back in the day.