I did make another post here recently, but figured two seperate issues should get two seperate topics.
Basically, let’s say I 5 star a song from a Judas Priest studio album. Then, the Greatest Hits version is also getting 5 starred. I had read somewhere that this was intentional as a feature. I would like to request that an option be made to toggle off this feature, so only the rated song gets rated, not other versions. The reason for this is, it is not always ideal (in my case, usually not ideal) to have multiple of the same songs 5 starred from 1 rating. If the album version getting 5 stars also rates the greatest hits album version as 5 stars, I have found usually the greatest hits is a different master, ie. the album version will be a quiet, not very compressed master, while the greatest hits version can be brickwalled+super compressed, so sounds different from a mastering standpoint. So in that case, I only want the album version rated. Or, sometimes, rating the album version also rates the live version, when I don’t want the live version rated either.
Is this something that could possibly be implemented?
From what I understand, Plex will already distinguish releases – if they have a separate recording ID on Musicbrainz (one of the main sources for music related metadata in Plex). If Musicbrainz recognizes a song on a compilation is the same one also released on a “regular” album, it’ll assign the same unique ID to both tracks.
This can easily happen with best-of albums, e.g. if the songs were just picked from those other albums and not re-recorded.
This shouldn’t happen with different versions of a song (e.g. a live recording vs. studio album tracks).
Well, as another example, the Led Zeppelin Deluxe editions have bonus tracks that are different versions of the studio album versions. And sometimes, when I 5 star a studio album track, it also 5 stars the alternate version (which will be a different length, different mix, sometimes an actual demo version so sounds different in other ways). I would just like a way to have it so Plex only assigns the 5 star to the track it was assigned to, not searching for similar metadata and applying it to that too.
Also, I mentioned this in OP, but basically, greatest hits albums, especially modern ones, are usually way different masters compared to the original studio album. If you go hard with your audiophile journey, you eventually start hunting for the best master of albums you really like… this is why I started collecting CDs again, to own the best masters and then be able to rip them to FLAC to preserve them… so, in my case, I have CDs that are the best master, ripped to the server, and then I 5 star those songs. Then, the greatest hits version that is a far worse master, also get 5 starred, and I don’t want that. Yes, I could get rid of the greatest hits album from the server… but, it’s a shared server, with people who are not always going to be as picky as me, that are OK to just hit play on the lesser greatest hits album version for the easy collection of a band’s most popular work, while I don’t want that greatest hits involved in my collection at all. And the only way to effectively ignore that is to not have it getting favorited and put in my favorites shuffle. I had read they planned on adding a “no duplicates” feature to the shuffle, but would this guarantee the greatest hits versions wouldn’t get played, or would it sometimes make it so that version was chosen over the superior master version I prefer was only favorited?
I use Symfonium synced with Plex, since it fits my use case (wanting a downloaded media organizer and player, the downloaded media organization/search/only show/smart playlist functions etc. Symfonium has being something PlexAmp is still seriously lacking in, otherwise I’d just use it). But since it syncs with Plex, when I favorite 1 track in Symfonium, Plex will still take that info and favorite the similar metadata track(s). So if this feature gets implemented, I would hope it would just work with Symfonium sync as well.
So, I would like a way to disable this behavior as a toggle, if possible. You can have the same performance on multiple albums, but each album can be mastered differently, which changes how the song sounds. Or, in some kind of weird cases (I guess it is MusicBrainz labeling it as the same recording when it isn’t), like in the stated case of some Led Zeppelin deluxe version bonus tracks, alternate versions of the same song (so different recording) get rated when the original version is rated.
My understanding with code is, pretty much anything can be done, it is just whether or not it makes sense to commit the time to doing it. If you mean the Plex devs don’t want to invest the time into doing this, you can just say that. I just find it hard to take “it is not designed to be that way” as a hard “no” because design can change. It is like if I write and record a song, then decide I want to change a part, yeah it takes time, but it is just a person having to do extra effort, it isn’t like it’s some hardcoded law of the universe. Unless it is literally mountains of code that would have to be altered, in which case, yeah I get it.
Yeah, my understanding is, sometimes it seems something can’t be done, then there is progress in a field or someone just learns something new to them that makes them progress, and then it can be done. I will take your response as it is just not considered worth the time to develop this feature, right now.
