DeaDBeeF's handling of "chapters" metadata

[garuffalo]

I noticed something peculiar about the way DeaDBeeF was handling a few tracks that were originally multiple tracks that I had encoded to single files in fre:ac. They were showing up as separate tracks, although some were mislabeled, either as a letter or symbol, or as "chapter <#>". After much sleuthing, I discovered that fre:ac was embedding chapter information during the merge, and once I disabled that in fre:ac's settings, I could get a file of combined tracks to display properly in DeaDBeeF.

At first I thought this was exclusively a DeaDBeeF issue, because most players I tested disregarded the chapter info, and displayed the combined tracks properly. However, I found that foobar2000 on Windows also displayed multiple tracks (although not with the weird names). I tested the files on Strawberry, Rhythmbox, VLC, MPV/SMPlayer (Linux); iTunes and iOS (Apple); MusicBee and foobar2000 (Windows). All but DeaDBeeF and foobar2000 handled the combined tracks properly.

Although this seems like a fre:ac issue, I am wondering if DeaDBeeF needs to acknowledge this chapter information. Most players seem to ignore it.

I'd like to continue to use fre:ac for my ripping and encoding needs. As a linux user, I don't have venerable programs like EAC (Windows) or XLD (Mac). I am going to report this issue to the fre:ac developer, and suggest that they turn the chapter settings off by default. I assume they are there because of their use with audio books.

Although my problem appears solved, I'd appreciate feedback on this issue. Thanks.