Hi Digerati
thanks for your post, and sorry to be a bit slow to respond, real life etc.
Okay,
An example of WMP "splitting" albums is a recent acquisition, Reba McEntire Duets. I edited the ID3 tags to add the other person under album artist, along with Reba. The library then showed 12 different albums with one track each. Other examples of this are splitting Massive Attack's singles collection into several files when it was issued as one release and AMG which WMP seems to use lists it that way, though I can see how it would get confused with multiple releases - it is trying to be smarter than it is, seems to me.
Re not wanting a database of my music, I am quite happy to open My Music, or another file containing music and clicking on "play selection" I don't see any advantage in accessing the music via the player.
Re albums, I use the term interchangeably with CDs. I think CDs are still referred to as albums unless they are singles. Some of my music did originate as vinyl and some as tape, they are all music files as far as My Music or WMP is concerned.
Re Options, I don't have any boxes checked. I use dB Poweramp Music Converter for ripping (as well as tag editing and a lot of other things - a very capable little app the makers accurately describe as deceptively simple), and Nero for burning.
Re the library "picking up" new music, I have stopped it creating a full library by unchecking all the boxes I can. When I add a music file to My Music the library also gets hold of it, and sometimes makes a complete hash of it as the example of Reba's Duets, and Massive Attacks singles collection. But even in simple releases with one album artist it has on occasion recognised all but one track as what is supposed to be, and leaves one lonely track as "Unknown album." It is this last function I would like to disable, as I said I don't want a database of my music files, and having one or other music folders open while the player is playing is not an inconvenience.
I hope that has made things clearer, in a nutshell I want to keep using WMP as a music player, I have even persuaded it to play flac files, but I don't want it managing my music collection; I will muddle through that on my own.
