SoulSeek + Lidarr: Complete Configuration Guide (Search Templates, Custom Formats, Quality Profiles)

[flowcool]

SoulSeek + Lidarr: Complete Configuration Guide

A practical guide to configuring Tubifarry, Lidarr quality profiles, and custom formats for optimal SoulSeek music downloading.

Table of Contents

• Search Templates
• Indexer Advanced Settings
• Custom Formats
• Quality Profile
• Recommended Configuration Summary

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Search Templates

The Search Templates field allows you to customize the search queries sent to slskd. When empty, Tubifarry uses its default strategy: {Album} {Artist}.

Syntax

• Use {{Property}} placeholders to insert metadata
• Separate multiple templates with ; (semicolons) or newlines
• Lines starting with # or // are treated as comments
• Templates are tried in order — the first template where all placeholders resolve to non-empty values is used

Available properties

Property	Description	Example
{{ArtistQuery}}	Artist name	Radiohead
{{AlbumTitle}}	Album title (raw)	OK Computer
{{AlbumYear}}	Release year	1997
{{Disambiguation}}	MusicBrainz disambiguation	deluxe edition
{{AlbumQuery}}	Album title + disambiguation (joined with +)	OK Computer or 9+single
{{CleanAlbumQuery}}	AlbumQuery with accents removed, punctuation replaced by +	OK+Computer
{{Artist.Name}}	Same as ArtistQuery	Radiohead
{{Artist.CleanName}}	Normalized artist name	radiohead

Note: CleanAlbumQuery replaces spaces with +, which is designed for URL encoding, not SoulSeek text search. Prefer AlbumTitle for SoulSeek.

Fallback behavior

Templates are evaluated in order. If a placeholder resolves to null or empty (e.g., {{Disambiguation}} when no disambiguation exists), that entire template is skipped and the next one is tried.

Important: The fallback only triggers on empty/null properties, not on zero search results. If all placeholders resolve but the search returns nothing, no further templates are tried.

Recommended template for SoulSeek

{{ArtistQuery}} {{AlbumTitle}} {{AlbumYear}};{{ArtistQuery}} {{AlbumTitle}}

How it works:

Album	Template used	Query sent to slskd
Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)	#1 (with year)	Radiohead OK Computer 1997 (46 results)
Nas - Magic 3 (2023)	#1 (with year)	Nas Magic 3 2023 (47 results)
Justin Timberlake - Everything I Thought It Was (2024)	#1 (with year)	Justin Timberlake Everything I Thought It Was 2024 (53 results)

Why include the year?

• Dramatically reduces noise for common or short album titles
• Matches the typical SoulSeek folder naming: Artist - Album (Year)/
• Helps disambiguate self-titled albums, re-releases, and remasters

Why put artist first?

• SoulSeek users typically organize files as Artist/Album/Track or Artist - Album/Track
• The default behavior (album first) is less natural for SoulSeek path matching

Templates to avoid

Template	Problem
{{CleanAlbumQuery}}	Replaces spaces with + — wrong for SoulSeek text search
{{ArtistQuery}} {{AlbumTitle}} {{Disambiguation}} {{AlbumYear}}	Too specific — reduces results to zero on SoulSeek. Disambiguation text like "deluxe edition" rarely appears in folder names

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Indexer Advanced Settings

These checkboxes in the slskd indexer configuration fine-tune search behavior:

Setting	Recommended	Description
Audio Files Only	On	Filter out non-audio files (images, NFOs, etc.)
Normalize Search	On	Removes accents and special characters (é→e, ü→u). Essential for non-English music
Volume Variations	On	Tries alternate volume formats (Vol.1 ↔ Volume I ↔ Vol 1)
Enable Fallback Search	On	Performs a secondary search with additional metadata if no results found
Track Fallback	Off	Searches by individual track names as last resort. Very slow, use only if you frequently search for rare albums
Filter Unfitting Albums	On	Excludes results with wrong track count
Append Year	Off	Ignored when Search Templates are configured. Only relevant with empty templates
Minimum Results	0	Number of results to accumulate before stopping. 0 = take what comes within timeout
Min Peer Speed	50 KB/s	Filters out extremely slow peers
Max Peer Queue	100-200	Skip peers with long download queues
Response Limit	100-200	Max search responses to collect
Timeout	120s	How long to wait for search results
File Limit	1000	Max files per search

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Custom Formats

Custom Formats score each release based on regex patterns matched against the release title. On SoulSeek, release titles are derived from folder/file names, so the patterns match what peers share.

Recommended Custom Formats

Positive scores (prefer these)

Custom Format	Regex	Score	Why
Hi-Res 24bit	24.?bit|Hi.?Res	+15	Highest quality audio
Remastered	[Rr]emaster(ed)?	+10	Better mastering, often louder and cleaner
Preferred Groups	\b(DeVOiD|PERFECT|ENRiCH|BigFLAC|GalaxyLossless|MusiCHI|LoRD)\b	+10	Trusted scene groups with consistent quality
Deluxe Edition	[Dd]eluxe	+5	More tracks, bonus content
CD	\bCD\b	+2	Physical source = reliable quality
Lossless	\b(FLAC|Lossless|ALAC|APE|WavPack)\b	+1	Prefer lossless over lossy
WEB Source	\bWEB\b	+1	Digital source, generally good quality

Negative scores (avoid these)

Custom Format	Regex	Score	Why
Vinyl Source	\bVinyl\b	-5	Variable quality (depends on rip quality, surface noise)
Mono	\bMono\b	-10	Avoid unless collecting vintage recordings
Censored/Clean	\b(Censored|Clean)\b	-15	Edited versions with removed content

How to create a Custom Format in Lidarr

1. Go to Settings → Custom Formats → Add
2. Name the format (e.g., "Hi-Res 24bit")
3. Add a condition: Release Title with the regex pattern
4. Mark the condition as Required
5. Save

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Quality Profile

The Quality Profile combines quality tiers with Custom Format scoring to make download decisions.

Recommended profile: "HQ Lossy + Lossless"

Quality order (top = preferred):

1. FLAC 24bit
2. FLAC / ALAC
3. MP3-320 / AAC-320 (acceptable fallback)

Key settings:

• Minimum Custom Format Score: 1 — This is critical. It means releases must have at least one positive custom format match to be grabbed. This filters out untagged/unknown quality releases on SoulSeek.
• Upgrade Allowed: Yes (to upgrade from MP3 to FLAC when available)
• Cutoff: Lossless (stop upgrading once you have FLAC)

Custom Format scores in the profile

Custom Format	Score	Effect
Hi-Res 24bit	+15	Strongly prefer 24bit releases
Remastered	+10	Prefer remastered versions
Preferred Groups	+10	Trust known quality releasers
Deluxe Edition	+5	Slight preference for deluxe
CD	+2	Slight preference for CD rips
Lossless	+1	Meets minimum score threshold
WEB Source	+1	Meets minimum score threshold
Vinyl	-5	Penalize vinyl rips
Mono	-10	Strong penalty for mono
Censored/Clean	-15	Reject censored versions

Why minFormatScore: 1?

On SoulSeek, many shared files have minimal metadata in their folder names. Setting the minimum to 1 ensures Lidarr only grabs releases that match at least one positive custom format (like "FLAC" or "WEB"). This prevents downloading mystery-quality files.

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Recommended Configuration Summary

Indexer: Slskd
├── Search Templates: {{ArtistQuery}} {{AlbumTitle}} {{AlbumYear}};{{ArtistQuery}} {{AlbumTitle}}
├── Normalize Search: On
├── Volume Variations: On
├── Fallback Search: On
├── Track Fallback: Off
├── Min Peer Speed: 50 KB/s
├── Max Peer Queue: 150
├── Response Limit: 150
├── Timeout: 120s
└── File Limit: 1000

Quality Profile: HQ Lossy + Lossless
├── Min Format Score: 1
├── Cutoff: Lossless
└── Custom Formats:
    ├── Hi-Res 24bit:     +15
    ├── Remastered:        +10
    ├── Preferred Groups:  +10
    ├── Deluxe Edition:     +5
    ├── CD:                 +2
    ├── Lossless:           +1
    ├── WEB Source:         +1
    ├── Vinyl:              -5
    ├── Mono:              -10
    └── Censored/Clean:    -15

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References

• Tubifarry GitHub Repository
• Lidarr Custom Formats Documentation
• TRaSH Guides — Quality Profiles
• slskd Documentation

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Related Issues

• Bug: Fallback search generates malformed queries for self-titled albums #136 — Bug: Fallback search generates malformed queries for self-titled albums
• Feature: Deduplicate artist/album in search query for self-titled albums #137 — Feature: Deduplicate artist/album in search query for self-titled albums

[TheNathanSpace]

Hey, is the "Filter Unfitting Albums" option working for you? I have it enabled, but Slskd still is downloading albums with the wrong number of tracks.

For example, in Lidarr, I'm trying to download this album:

• Artist: mgk
• Album: General Admission (2015)

I have the release set to:

• General Admission (Deluxe Editon), 1 med, 18 tracks, United States, [CD]

But when I tell Lidarr to perform its search, which is conducted through Tubifarry's Slskd indexer, it ends up downloading a SoulSeek album with only 16 tracks.

My expectation is that Tubifarry performs the Slskd search, checks each result, and discards it if it has the incorrect number of tracks for the chosen Lidarr release.

This is just one easy-to-reproduce example, but I keep seeing it happen with other albums as well.

I don't have any C# experience, so I haven't looked into the codebase to see what's going on. Just trying to get a sanity check to see if I'm experiencing a 'bug'?

[TypNull]

Currently this feature retrieves the minimum track count from all available album releases. It does not target the user’s selected release specifically, as I don't know how to do that currently, but I’ll try to find a solution for this in the next release.

int trackCount = albumReleases?.Any() == true
    ? albumReleases.Min(release => release.TrackCount)
    : 0;

[TheNathanSpace]

Oh awesome thanks for the reply!! That makes sense.

I really appreciate all the work you've put into all of this; it's a fantastic tool and all-around works super well. :)

(I'll see if I can learn C# and understand enough to implement it myself, but don't expect too much haha)