Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

[DTF]

Dear all,

I am sure that this question has been answered before, but I need some help.

Sometimes a album consists of several CDs. Each CD has its own numbering of the tracks. Sometimes the CDs are
labled Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3 or CD 1, CD2 etc. In some cases there is a bonus CD.

So what is the correct way to handle this?

I have so far named the album XXX with 3 discs: "XXX, Disc 1" , "XXX, Disc 2" , "XXX, Disc 3"
and set the disc number accordingly, and total number of discs to 3.

Now looking in SongBook Lite I see different behaviour for different multiple disc albums:

The Red by Taylor Swift (2 discs) there are all songs mixed up and there is only one album entry displayed "Red".
So track 1 from disc 1 is followed by track 1 from disc 2, etc. Its a mess. If there should just
be one album displayed, then I think we should see all the tracks from disc 1 first, and then followed by
all the tracks from disc 2.

The 19 by Adele (2 discs) is not mixed up. There I see two albums "19, Disc 1" and "19, Disc 2".

I have looked at the metadata with mp3tag but cannot see any difference between these two, so I am confused.

So my questions are:

(1) What am I missing that can cause this different behaviour?

(2) What is the correct and recommended way to rip multiple disk albums?

Best Regards

[Spoon]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

It would depend on which UPnP server you are using and how it reads those disc tags.

Check you have an album artist set, and that there is disc number and disc total tags set (in dbpoweramp it is set in the tag as disc 2/3 etc).

[DTF]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

I use Asset UPnP 4 on a RipNAS.

Here is the settings as seen by MP3tag. The data in (..) is for the second disc when I look at it.

Red, Taylor Swift (all songs get mixed up):

ALBUM=Red, Disc 1 (Red, Disc 2)
ARTIST=Taylor Swift
ALBUMARTIST=Taylor Swift
DISCNUMBER=1 (2)
DISCTOTAL=2
TRACKTOTAL=16 (6)


19 Adele (the one that shows up as two separate albums).

ALBUM=19, Disc 1 (19, Disc 2)
ARTIST=Adele
ALBUMARTIST=Adele
DISCNUMBER=1 (2)
TOTALDISCS=2
TOTALTRACKS=12 (10)


I notice now a difference. On Adele's album it is called TOTALDISCS and TOTALTRACKS while
on Taylor Swifts DISCTOTAL and TRACKTOTAL.


I use only dPowerAmp for ripping.

[Spoon]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

Yes you need DISCTOTAL

[DTF]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

I have now updated to Asset 4.1

Now everything seems to work. The separate discs show up as separate albums and is not mixed into one playlist.

Is this the intended behaviour?

So I did right when ripping, correct? Or do you have some suggestions?

I will correct the albums that used keyword TOTALDISCS, but they seems to work anyway now.

Thanks for the fast answers.

[Spoon]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

Yes you would want multi discs to appear as separate albums, otherwise they are blended (some people might give all discs the same album name, set the disc number to 1/1 for all discs and put an offset on disc 2 tracks, so they carry on after disc one, but this would be done at ripping time).

[garym]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

There is no "correct" answer here (just personal preference). In my own case, I give all the disks the exact same album name (no disk * included). And then each disk is given disk number and disktotal (when ripping) of 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, etc. I use Logitech Media Server (squeezeboxes) as my player and it has a setting for "group multidisk albums together". So my 3 disk set above would show up in browsing as a single album. But when I play it, it lists the tracks from disk 1 first, then disk 2, etc.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

There is no "correct" answer here (just personal preference). In my own case, I give all the disks the exact same album name (no disk * included). And then each disk is given disk number and disktotal (when ripping) of 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, etc. I use Logitech Media Server (squeezeboxes) as my player and it has a setting for "group multidisk albums together". So my 3 disk set above would show up in browsing as a single album. But when I play it, it lists the tracks from disk 1 first, then disk 2, etc.

+1...as usual! As I reading this thread from the beginning, I kept thinking..."Wait, there's no "right" answer!"

@DTF: As another option, you might want to re-consider the whole "disc" concept in the context of your digital music library, and its functional importance as metadata. Outside of large multi-disc collections (where each disc actually does have a distinct identity and organizational purpose), I think the very notion of "discs" in our music libraries is obsolete. In practical application, this means there's usually no reason to even include that information.

As physical media for distributing music, CD-ROMs have a specific limited capacity. While most releases are within that limit and fit onto one disc, others are just bigger and require more than that. Or sometimes, additional discs are just a way to add bonus material to alternate releases of an album (Deluxe Editions, etc.). With a two-disc album, you really only need to know which disc a track is on if you are using the actual CDs....you have to load the right one. But on your music server? Adele's 19 has 22 tracks.....does it really matter whether they were distributed on one CD or two, or more?

ALBUM is the fundamental organizing concept in digital libraries, and TRACK orders the files within the album. So these are critical metadata. But I'd argue DISC has no utility for most albums of less than a certain number of tracks. (I'm intentionally non-specific here, because I think it depends on what each user considers a manageable track listing. For me, that usually falls somewhere between ~50-75 tracks. But it can be more in some cases.) So in my music library, Adele's 19 has 22 tracks numbered 1-22. Bob Dylan's Biograph has 53 tracks, numbered 1-53. The discs, however many there are, went into a box after ripping and I haven't seen them since.

(If you're old enough, you remember when we had to buy computer programs on floppies, then on CDs, then on DVDs, and now, finally, we often just download the installer file. The "program" is what matters, not the media or how many pieces are in the box. It's the same with music- the "album" is what matters, not how many discs are stowed away in the closet.

Again, there's no "right" or "wrong" answer....it really is just personal preference. If somebody chooses to retain disc info, or even organize their digital albums by disc number, those are workable options. I have found that a "discless" library makes the most sense for me.

[DTF]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

Yes you would want multi discs to appear as separate albums, otherwise they are blended (some people might give all discs the same album name, set the disc number to 1/1 for all discs and put an offset on disc 2 tracks, so they carry on after disc one, but this would be done at ripping time).

To rip a disc set to one album by adding trac offset to disc 2 etc. is an interesting idea. It would help a lot if you in the "Review metadata"
window add an "Track offset" field and an "Apply" button. Adding a number, you add this to read track number and show the resulting
number for each track.

[garym]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

@DTF: As another option, you might want to re-consider the whole "disc" concept in the context of your digital music library

Very good points. I've struggled with this in my own library. Mostly if something is multidisk, I leave it multidisk. But I use a hybrid approach. I have a lot of live shows (some "official disks" some unofficial) where a single show may be over 4 disks. On these, I actually change the name of the album to something like "1969-03-01 - Fillmore East" and then renumber the tracks from 1 to N. So the 4 physical disks become one "album" for purposes of my digital library. Then in the comment section I actually add info about what the name of the actual CD was, and in some cases a note about original disk & track numbers.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Correct way to rip/name multiple CD set.

To rip a disc set to one album by adding trac offset to disc 2 etc. is an interesting idea. It would help a lot if you in the "Review metadata"
window add an "Track offset" field and an "Apply" button. Adding a number, you add this to read track number and show the resulting
number for each track.

You can do this in the dBp main window. Select all tracks, right-click, and select the offset from the context menu. Sometimes you'll need to do it twice to get the specific offset correct. Then delete the discnumber value at the top of the page.

An alternate way to do this is to load it all into mp3tag after ripping, make sure they're all in the proper order, and apply the Autonumbering Wizard. (I use an mp3tag "action" that does this and strips the DISC and TOTALDISCS tags with one click.)