List albums by chronological order

[TheEmpathicEar]

0) Wifi sync will only do anything if you start it in MMA. As long as you don't start it in MMA it's settings are irrelevant.
1) You can disable bi-directional sync in the Device Profile in MMW. This way you only sync from MMW to MMA.
4) Just select the folder you want synced in the Device Profile. The sync will only sync this folder.
5) This means you're relying on Android Media Scanner to pick up tags. It's been known to do a poor job. Doing a sync from MMW bypasses this problem and either a USB or wifi sync will do.

Just walk through the tabs in the Device Profile. Select what needs to be synced, disable sync from device to PC and set where it needs to be synced to. Most other settings don't matter for a working sync (ie. defaults are fine).

Are there screenshots in any of the documentation? These would really help me. "A picture is worth a 1000 words"?

Galaxy A51 - Card is displayed,
Summary, nothing is checked
Auto-sync > Device, only Music is checked
Auto-sync > LIbrary, nothing is checked
Click on Apply
Click on Sync Now
What I should I be looking for to indicate that the sync is going from PC to phone? Bottom right - seems to copying from A-Z? I thought it would just sync the music that had changed on the PC to the phone? If this is true, I wasted my time copying via Windows Explorer from PC to phone?
EDIT: MMW just crashed again. It got as far as 5156 out of 14880. Is this because this is beta software? Should I just restart the sync and hope for the best? Even the bug report froze. I had to kill the process.
EDIT2: I guess what I am asking, is should I downgrade to the last stable version of MMW? And, how would I do that?

[Lowlander]

Restarting sync should only sync what is remaining.

You can set DBGView to log to file (from File menu) if you want to capture log, but DBGView crashes. That should leave you a file with the log on your PC.

[TheEmpathicEar]

Restarting sync should only sync what is remaining.

You can set DBGView to log to file (from File menu) if you want to capture log, but DBGView crashes. That should leave you a file with the log on your PC.

But, this is not the first crash/freeze. MMW beta has crashed a number of times now. That's why I asked if it would be better to downgrade to the last stable version? I am using build 2229 and 2249 is available. Do you know if the more recent beta would fix the crash during sync?

[TheEmpathicEar]

I have been examining what happened on Android after the aborted sync. Keep in mind, on my PC hard drive, all my music is in the format:
Artist Folder
[Date] Album Name
[Date] Next album name
IOW, each folder representing an album has the release year in [ ] before the actual album name. I hope this is clear. The sync essentially duplicated each of these albums on android. Now, for each album, you have what I listed above, and another album w/o the date. It's now taking up twice the space. Is this normal behavior? And, if it is, am I going to have to reformat the SD Card, and start the sync again from MMW, with a SD Card w/o anything on it? Or, delete the contents of the music folder on the SD Card?

[Lowlander]

Definitely update to the latest beta, there have been many fixes since that beta release.

It looks like the copy you did from File Explorer is your duplicate. Updating to the latest beta and starting with an empty SD card may be the best way forward to troubleshoot sync.

Perhaps MediaMonkey is doing the dateless Album folders, in which case you need to update the Mask used for sync destination to include Date in it for the Album folder name.

[TheEmpathicEar]

Definitely update to the latest beta, there have been many fixes since that beta release.

It looks like the copy you did from File Explorer is your duplicate. Updating to the latest beta and starting with an empty SD card may be the best way forward to troubleshoot sync.

Perhaps MediaMonkey is doing the dateless Album folders, in which case you need to update the Mask used for sync destination to include Date in it for the Album folder name.

If you look back, I asked if it was possible to use a date in [] in front of each album name. But, is this really wise? If MMA is not going to use this, is it really worth the effort? In MMA browse folders, it would allow you to figure out the dates. But, you still can't sort by date in MMA.
EDIT: This mask, ['['%date%']'] %album%, was used in Foobar with iPod Manager. What would it look in MMW?

[Lowlander]

[<Date>] <Album> or [<Year>] <Album> : https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index. ... ormats/4.0

If you don't use Folders in MMA the underlying folder/filename organization is irrelevant. However if you have multiple Albums by the same Artist with the same name than it could be useful to separate them on Date (if they're released in different years).

[TheEmpathicEar]

[<Date>] <Album> or [<Year>] <Album> : https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index. ... ormats/4.0

If you don't use Folders in MMA the underlying folder/filename organization is irrelevant. However if you have multiple Albums by the same Artist with the same name than it could be useful to separate them on Date (if they're released in different years).

I have been doing this for years because I like to able to view my music in windows explorer. And, with a date in front of every album name, the only sorting is by date, unless use underlying tags to do it another way. What is the difference between Date and Year in your post? I just checked. It seems as if date is an option, but not year?
EDIT: I don't use my SD Card for anything else than music. If I reformat, is android going to "complain" about anything?

[Lowlander]

Date can be full date (if that's what's in your tags) whereas Year always takes just the Year from Date.

Your device should not complain, but you can just remove the music files using a file browser, a format isn't needed. If you do format you may end up with a new Device Profile in MMW for the card.

[TheEmpathicEar]

Date can be full date (if that's what's in your tags) whereas Year always takes just the Year from Date.

Your device should not complain, but you can just remove the music files using a file browser, a format isn't needed. If you do format you may end up with a new Device Profile in MMW for the card.

I am deleting everything in music as you suggested. It is very slow, very slow. And, besides the From ... there is a "To Trash". In Android, what is "Trash"? the idea is to free up space and not move the files elsewhere? This reminds more of recycle bin in Windows. This is just more complicated that it should be...
EDIT: I am using Total Commander in Android. I don't know if this matters.

[Lowlander]

You''l have to check if Trash now has the files. I haven't used that App.

[TheEmpathicEar]

You''l have to check if Trash now has the files. I haven't used that App.

I am using Root Explorer now. The deletion is still taking a long time. Why so long? I guess I have never deleted so many files before. It was much faster that TC. Now, I have to let MMA rescan to notice that there are no longer any music files on the SD Card? How long does this take?

[Lowlander]

SD cards are slow to access in this fashion. You might be used to hard drives in computers.

[TheEmpathicEar]

SD cards are slow to access in this fashion. You might be used to hard drives in computers.

almost everything is gone... Under Albums and Artists/Album Artists is (djweetart.com) which can't be deleted? Also, under folders, Library which is SD Card/Music has 935 tracks. If you click on this, it says, "No files in this folder". Is this a case where you have to clear cache/data? And, what are the consequences of doing this?

[Lowlander]

In the MediaMonkey/files folder there is a file mmstore.db. You can delete that to reset the MMA Library. I believe it's currently only on the internal storage.