Adding new audio albums corrupts existing album meta data

[whitedb]

Server Version#:1.15.4.993.bb4a2cb6c
Player Version#: Web App

A problem has arisen recently when adding new files to my server (on a Synology 214p). The new addition corrupts the meta data on existing files. The album artwork changes to that of the new addition. If I force a meta data refresh on the old album, it gets its artwork back but also changes that of the new album! More than one, I have seen up to 6 affected.

I have a large number of audio plays, represented as albums, that have embedded meta data and, until now, everything has displayed correctly. As the plays come from a number of sources I have set the “Album Artist” = “BBC Drama” and the Artist is the author along with all dates, information and the artwork embedded in the files. Everything has been working fine, until now. I have another server running on a DS412+ and everything continues to work fine on it with exactly the same file naming convention and file structure.

Out of frustration I completely removed the old server, deleting everything including application, the plex user and PLEX volume. I started from afresh and have added data back but the problem comes back with the audio plays. Currently I have 66 “albums” under the Artist "BBC Radio. I also notice that when I issue a scan library, it seems to update the metadata on all the “albums” even though they have not changed.

The new library was set up to use embedded meta data and I have the agents set up as

1. Local Media Assets
2. Persona Media Artists
   under both Artist and Albums

I have tried the “Plex Dance” of

1. Delete offending file/s or library
2. Optimise
3. Clean bundles
4. Empty trash
5. Re-add file/s or library
6. Update library/libraries if needed

but nothing seems to help. I know that I am “stretching” PLEX by using a single Artist name to represent my BBC plays and then having each play as an album but this works fine on my other Plex server.

After two days working on this I have gone backwards with only a partial library now that still does not work. I would appreciate any suggestions for what to try next.

[whitedb]

Thank you Trump81 for your helpful comments.

I need to clarify a couple of things and then ask you a couple of questions. I have religiously completed the tags you list in your reply. I am also using I am using the Plex Naming convention:
/Music
/BBC Radio (the artist name)
/BBC Radio - Play Name
/BBC Radio 01- Episode 1
/BBC Radio 02 - Episode 2

The only difference to a music cd is that these “albums” do not appear in any Music Database.
I understood the possibility of “lingering” images and so completely deleted the plex installation to start afresh. I can confirm that there are no hidden images in the folders with the music. I do not use Windows but checked on the NAS under Files Station to assure myself that none are present.

I had thought that Plex could use the embedded meta data for albums it could not match. My iTunes library can read and display these files correctly and everything works correctly with another Plex Server running off the same files on a different NAS.

Interestingly, for an author with several plays I tag them separately under the Author as the Album Artist and everything displays correctly. It seems that once the number of Albums under BBC Radio gets large the problem occurs. So to my questions:

1. Can Plex read embedded metadata if no match is found? If so what is the best order of the agents to achieve this and is there anything I should do to make sure this works consistentl?
2. So is the reason the plays are re-scanning each time because there was no initial data base match and so it checks again each time?

Thanks for your time.