How to stop Windows from assuming an Audio file indicates a music album is in the folder

[raino]

When Windows finds Audio Files in a folder it assumes that the folder contains tracks on an Album instead of just some files sitting in a folder and wants to show you stuff like the artist and album name for each file instead of info like file size & creation date which is more useful for audio engineering. Then you’ve got to futz around setting it to show what you want.

So I asked Claude if there was a way to turn this behavior totally off, and there is via editing the Registry. Here’s the specific instructions.

[Nico5]

Great tip for making a system wide change.

And when desiring to be more surgical and just change part of your system, right click on the containing folder and choose Properties

and on the Customize tab choose to Optimize this folder for: General Items

[MrSoundman]

@raino

I asked Claude

… desperately restraining myself from saying something I’ll regret here … … and not wanting to de-rail the topic …

For those that prefer not to poke around in the registry, I would just change the properties of a top-level folder, and you can apply it to just that folder, or optionally to all subfolders as well. I do this for e.g. the folder containing my live Cubase projects (and also nick the Cubase icon from the Cubase executable).

[valvehead]

There is also WinSetView. The interface is clunky, but it is quite powerful.

[Googly_Croft]

@MrSoundman

I would just change the properties of a top-level folder

This is what I do, but I think Mr @raino is trying to avoid doing this with many folders.
I’m not averse to messing with the Registry (some of the programs I’ve written for my self mess with it) but I don’t want to do it unless I really have to.

@raino

Then you’ve got to futz around setting it to show what you want

[raino]

@Googly_Croft

trying to avoid doing this with many folders.

Yes, exactly. While changing the folder properties works, you end up having to do it again & again as circumstances change. Basically that happened yesterday, I’d had enough & wanted it to stop forever.

[ASUNDER]

I was going to say about changing the “optimize folder for…” but he beat me to it.

But for all of those who haven’t found Directory Opus yet, here’s a look at one of my sample folders. Click this pic to full screen it.

See all the columns that are there to read the metadata on the files. I first was upset with Steinberg over “writing metadata to files” because ultimately I want to fill in all this info. For some things Dopus uses their own Dopus alternate file stream (proprietary), but some things are universal, like rating, comment etc.

Then I can sort and search files very easily. I can favorite them, rate them, add tags… I can’t even write a full list of the things you can do, it would take me an hour just to write the list. Everything is custom. The buttons, the script columns etc.

You can have dual panes, multiple tabs, app launcher, file collections, bookmarks, script plugins, on and on.