How is an album defined and what art is displayed

[blaubär]

If I use a browser to add FLAC files with multiple covers to my device’s Music folder, the arrows on the Now Playing screen appear and I can scroll through these covers whether it is an Android, IOS, or Windows platform. However if I look at the same files added this way that are in ALAC format, they do not have the arrows. But on IOS devices, if I use the iTunes method to transfer these same ALAC files, then the arrows appear and work as expected. Of course this doesn’t work for the Android or Windows versions of Neutron.

Perhaps iOs also transfers image files when iTunes transfers alac files with images included ?

[blaubär]

If I use a browser to add FLAC files with multiple covers to my device’s Music folder, the arrows on the Now Playing screen appear and I can scroll through these covers whether it is an Android, IOS, or Windows platform. However if I look at the same files added this way that are in ALAC format, they do not have the arrows. But on IOS devices, if I use the iTunes method to transfer these same ALAC files, then the arrows appear and work as expected. Of course this doesn’t work for the Android or Windows versions of Neutron.

Perhaps iOs creates image files when iTunes transfers alac files with images included ?

[MotleyG]

Perhaps iOs creates image files when iTunes transfers alac files with images included ?

These are embedded covers in both th ALAC and FLAC files. It is almost like these are ignored when scanned in. I'll send a message to the dev with the symptoms.

[selection7]

You know how you can have one album, but different songs on it have different artwork? And in the Now Playing screen Neutron correctly displays each song's individual artwork that's unique to that song? But what about in the list of an artist's albums, how does Neutron know which artwork to show for the icon for the whole album in such a case? In other words, which song's artwork get's preference? I'll explain further...

I've not been able to find anything that makes clear how Neutron seemingly arbitrarily (but consistently) chooses which artwork to display for an album (not talking about for an individual song here) if an album's songs don't all have the same artwork. On one album it'll be track 11, on another album it'll be track 6, but for a particular album it'll be consistent. If I delete the 'offending' song (to trick Neutron into doing what I want), of course Neutron picks artwork from a different song (but from the same album), but then if I put the song back on Neutron goes "Oh, goody! That song's back! I'm going right back to using its artwork. Who cares if the reason the end user took that song off was to try to convince me to use a different song's artwork instead?"

But when I try to figure out what Neutron is actually looking at to decide which artwork to display for the album, all these things turned out to not be it: File title, song title, song length, date modified or created, file size, artwork size, artwork dimensions, track #, year, order that I added the songs onto my phone's SD card.

But what's left?? It's got to be using something to decide.

FYI, I edit the mp3 tags appropriately to ensure I don't have any problem with the grouping of the songs or artist and their albums, so I don't think that has anything to do with the problem. Also, each song has only one artwork embedded per song, so I'm not talking about having multiple artworks per song.

[blaubär]

But what's left?? It's got to be using something to decide.

What the users know is probably documented in this topic here, into which I merged your post. If need be feel free to ask neutronmp@gmail.com, perhaps they'll tell us the algorithm they've implemented.