Separator Characters and Serato DJ?

[FreudianLisp]

Hey there

I use Media Monkey 4 Gold to sort and organize my music library, Mixed In Key 8 for analyzing Key & BPM, and Serato DJ Pro for, well, DJing. Many of my songs contain multiple genres and artists, separated with the ";" character in MediaMonkey. However, when I bring those tracks into Serato it is hit or miss how they are displayed. Sometimes I see the semi-colon, sometimes I see a slash (/), and sometimes the separator is just deleted entirely. To make things worse, if the track is saved in Serato it updates all the tags! It has been ruining all of my genre categories by deleting semi-colons, which MM then interprets as a single genre.

I've been reading a bunch of old threads and I think the issue may be with how MM handles the separator character. I know that MM will display the separator as ";" but then "behind the scenes" will enter the tags as whatever it deems to be the standard for the filetype. Sometimes that will be a "/" for the artist field, and sometimes a "Null" character for the artist & genre fields.

The slashes aren't much of an issue because MediaMonkey still handles them correctly, but I think Serato has trouble with the Null character and ends up just deleting it. My question is, is there any way to force MediaMonkey to stop entering the "Null" character into the tags? Other solutions would also be appreciated. I know the Null character is standard practice, making this more of a Serato issue, but I haven't had any luck fixing it on that front, so I am hoping there is a solution or work-around with Media Monkey.

Also, it seems like it MIGHT only be happening with FLAC files. However, the majority of my library is FLAC so that could just be by chance.

Thanks for any help,

[Lowlander]

No, there is no user setting on how multi-values are written to the file tags. You're correct that this is done according to the tagging standard.

[FreudianLisp]

Dang, I kind of assumed that's what the answer would be..

Is there a reference for what those tagging standards are? Especially in regards to FLAC files, because those seem to be the big issue, and I am having trouble finding clear documentation on standard tagging practices for FLAC. I assume MM is not writing the same ID3 tags that it would for an MP3, because according to FLAC documentation the usage of ID3 tags is "strongly discouraged".
https://xiph.org/flac/faq.html#general__tagging

Does it perhaps follow this recommendation for Vorbis comment fields, and create multiple artist/genre fields?
https://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

Field names are not required to be unique (occur once) within a comment header. As an example, assume a track was recorded by three well know artists; the following is permissible, and encouraged:
ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie
ARTIST=Sonny Rollins
ARTIST=Sonny Stitt

[Lowlander]

The following is the MediaMonkey documentation on this: https://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/WebHel ... erties/5.0

[FreudianLisp]

Thank you.

I just learned that this is a longstanding issue with Serato and FLAC files. Not a MediaMonkey issue, and there isn't really any workaround unless Serato fixes their software.

In case anyone else finds this thread looking for an answer, see here:
https://serato.com/forum/discussion/1573783

Only solution at the moment is to convert library to another format like AIFF or MP3 because Serato has very poor and destructive handling of FLAC files.

[Lowlander]

FLAC is lossless and MP3 is lossy, so be aware of the quality loss when going from FLAC to MP3.

[Peke]

Only solution at the moment is to convert library to another format like AIFF or MP3 because Serato has very poor and destructive handling of FLAC files.

How abouyt FLAC -> ALAC conversion AIFF are bit outdated almost like WAV

[FreudianLisp]

Thanks for the suggestion. I likely will go with ALAC format, but I'll do some testing and make sure it doesn't have any issues of its own. I know AIFF is fully supported but hopefully ALAC is too. First I need to find some good conversion software that will preserve Serato cue point and beat grid metadata correctly (Maybe MM will do this, I haven't tested yet).

It's a shame because I quite like the FLAC format, but this is the 4th and most egregious issue I have encountered between it and Serato/MiK so it looks like the last nail in the coffin. Apparently industry standard is to use 320 MP3 or WAV, which seems preposterous to me now that good lossless formats are so ubiquitous and half the size of WAV. Behind the times I guess.

[Peke]

Hi,

It's a shame because I quite like the FLAC format, but this is the 4th and most egregious issue I have encountered between it and Serato/MiK so it looks like the last nail in the coffin. Apparently industry standard is to use 320 MP3 or WAV, which seems preposterous to me now that good lossless formats are so ubiquitous and half the size of WAV. Behind the times I guess.

Yeah I feel your pain, as 30 years in Broadcasting I was one of advertisers and adopter for BWF and heavy user. But Apple marketing prevailed and their forced AIFF (as only lossless solution for Apple devices) made things very hard. HINT: unless you already knew, FLAC is still not official supported format for iPhones even they play it (as of iOS 11) and iTunes (last time I checked) do not use native FLAC. While all other devices natively support it (Android native support is I think from v3.1). I suggested ALAC as it Apple alternative to FLAC.

Re: MM can convert FLAC to ALAC, but I am not sure about Special data Chunks Serato makes in FLAC, try few and if you want us to investigate Create support Ticket and supply us with DL link for one FLAC and Converted ALAC in order that we can compare what MM trimmed and what can be done.