Better Classical Music Tagging

[EliC]

I have a lot of albums that are various different composers and conductors for classical music. Currently there is no easy way to do per track composers and conductors. I know GD3 says they have good Classical meta-data. I look forward to seeing this when GD3 support is added to the ripper.

Also, when Intelligent Meta-Data is more advanced it would be nice to be able to write rules for the meta data, especially for Classical, so that composers always get the same name, and when composers are identified as Artist in various databases they can be correctly re-mapped to composer.

[EliC]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

Additional Fields:

Work (remap Title?)
Ensemble
Instrument
Period
Venue

Am I missing any?

[EliC]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

www.fortunaclassical.com claims to have excellent classical metadata, but I cannot find more info on their site.

[pls1]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

I was aked to comment on this thread. The reason that I didn't jump in here earlier is that I have given up on elaborate classical tagging.

I think at this late date in digital audio, the situation with classical music is not fixable. It's too bad that tagging of audio files became the standard technology just before something extensible like XML became practical.

I've looked at all the various classical collector sites, tools sites and technology sites and read all the long threads on everyone's forums (See the Hydrogen forum thread for many tales of woe). There are no easy answers. All the meta data sources are inconsistent. That's even before the guy who was complaining about not being able to tag genres of Renaissance Italian madrigals (not to mention opera singer fanatics).

Since I only need to identify my own collection, I have essentially given up on elaborate tagging. Composer/work(title)/Conductor/band/artist/label/CD ID is all I really care about. For compilation albums if I care, I hand correct. Otherwise corrections are just: last names, work name and reasonable movement/section IDs. Trying to do anything more is too painful and if the meta data gives you anything more, that isn't contradictory, it is a bonus.

But the reason I don't have to care is I have my own relational data base built up over the years since 1985, now converted to Access. The data base correctly IDs all my discs so all I need to do is cross reference the audio file to CD ID to the DB if I need really accurate data. Even then just making sure the tags aren't stupid can take longer than it takes dbpoweramp to rip a clean CD. Every room in my home and home office complex has network access and I carry an EXCEL extract of my music DB on my smartphone . The DB also contains my want list which has been rather constant at about 1500 discs eventhough I buy several hundred per year.

There is a commercial DB called Magnificat which is rather cool. I bought a copy and have be desultory deciding whether I should convert. But I'm at 2000 ripped with 3000 to go so I'm not doing anything until the end of the concert season.

Sorry for the rant but this topic is frustrating to every serious classical collector moving to audio files. Schwann, Gramophone, Penguin, etc. had better naming standards fifty plus years ago.

Phil

[Listener]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

> Composer/work(title)/Conductor/band/artist/label/CD ID is all I really
> care about. Otherwise corrections are just: last names, work name
> and reasonable movement/section IDs.

I would settle for tools that do that much and do it well.

> I think at this late date in digital audio, the situation with classical
> music is not fixable.

I'm not as pessimistic as Phil. I've tagged my library of about 1500 classical CDs and perhaps 700-800 other CDs. I tagged the classical CDs by hand. Although I'm over the hump, I'd like to see better tools for rippimg, tagging and playing classical music. I've got some strong opinions about the current situation and about what needs to be done to improve things:

- More tools need to support using Composer, Conductor and Band/orchestra tags on a first class basis as they do the Artist and Album tags. When I rip a CD with dBpoweramp, I can't set all the tags I want to use when I rip.

- On-line tag databases should offer Composer, Work, Performer and Movement information as separate values rather than mushing them into Artist, Album and Track title tAgs. Many ripping and tagging tools allow the user to specify a template for constructing file names from tag values. How about treating the raw information as input to a similar process with templates showing how to map raw values into actual tags:

My templates would be

raw ID3 tag

[Composer] Composer
[Work] Album
[Performer(s)] Artist
[Movement] Track Title

OR it you want to mush things together

[Composer] Artist
[Work] - Performer Album
[Composer] - [Work] - [Movement] Track Title

- The user interfaces of tools should be more configurable so that each user can use the tags he prefers in the way he wants. I use J. River Media Center 12 for playing music files. I can use as many iTiunes style browser panes as I want and assign any tag to any pane.

I have an iPod which allows me to browse wstarting with the Composer tag. However, the sequence of menus is

Composer => Album => Track Title

This is just adequate if I limit the amount of classical music I have on the iPod AND combine all movement of a performance into a single file. I've mapped Composer tag = Composer value, Artist tag = Performer, Track Title tag = Work_performer

I'd like to be able to change to menu sequence to be

Composer => Album => Artist => Track Title

- Nothing I want is impossible. Most isn't that difficult. However, at present the conversation is dominated by know-nothings, brain-dead developers, people who can't see past the limitations of current s/w and portable players and people who just want everyone else to give up on any progress. (This is not directed at you, Phil. It is directed at the people who go on and on in forum threads beating down anyone who wants to look for a way forward.)

ID3 already supports the basic tags we need. Flac and Ogg are much better formats for classical music: actual tag names are stored in Flac files rather than ID3 style abbreviations. With flexible support from tools, you can define whatever additional tags you need such as ones for musical period or sub-genre.

That's my rant.

Bill

[Spoon]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

>CD with dBpoweramp, I can't set all the tags I want to use when I rip.

You should be able to, if you add a custom tag of " " then the name will appear in the meta section for manually editing.

[Listener]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

Thanks, spoon. I was able to create a few custom tags.

I note that I can't add any of these fields as columns in the track list. I can only see the values of the custom tags for the tracks that are currently selected in the metadata area. If those tracks have different values, I just see "<various>..." displayed.

When I'm setting tag values before I start to rip a file, I need to be able to see the current values for all tracks. I found that putting some tag in the track list and others just at the top of the window was already confusing.

I'd like to be able to specify what tags appear as columns in the track list and to have a separate area where I can edit values of all tags for the currently selected files.

I also find that I run into trouble because the file name generated from the tag values is too long. Somewhere in the middle of ripping a CD, dBpoweramp decides that a truncated name is the same as the truncated name for a previous track. The tag names from AMG are often long but I don't think it is reasonable to expect the user to count characters before he starts to rip a CD.

Bill

[Spoon]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

Select 1 track and edit the meta dat in the 'metadata' area for that one track.

[pls1]

Re: Better Classical Music Tagging

To summarize, my rant was that as Listener said, to get classical music right, it is all manual data entry. The existing sources of data are too inconsistent for automated tagging.

I don't have any problems with basic classical data entry IF I visually inspect every tag attribute and hand correct many attributes on every disc (far too often on every track).

I don't even have much beef with the dbpoweramp tagging or editing capabilities. They are straightforward if I don't make a data entry mistake. Its the continual time waste of hand tagging that often takes longer than for dbpoweramp to rip the CD.

My pessimism is based on classical music as 2%-5% of the market depending on whose numbers you believe. At least the popular recordings of the standard Germanic works often have useful attributes from freedb as long as you don't mind your tags in German.

Phil