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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
Check no anti malware, or firewall, or anti phishing software is not interfering on the 8.1 machine.Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
There's an incorrect assumption in your question, which implies that all the "correct info" is out there in some database and dBp isn't letting us get to it. This is not the case. The only "definitive" source for album information is probably the CD packaging. The online databases....all of them....are plagued with errors, omissions, and inconsistencies, since they are massive collections of primarily user-submitted information. It's not like there's an official or authoritative repository that has all the good data and you can have it if you're just willing to pay enough. If it were that easy, a lot of us would probably be doing it. But it just doesn't work that way....Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
Brody,
The whole music industry is plagued with metadata issues. The smaller ethnic labels particularly. I can't tell you how many CD's I've run into where the number of tracks on the CD didn't match the packaging (I'm not talking about "bonus" tracks, either), the tracks aren't in the same order as the packaging says, etc. And don't talk about spelling errors or inconsistent names for artists. Some labels are so bad at this that I look at every CD they have issued with suspicion.
Then, on the databases, particularly AMC, the data that came from manufacturers is often more full of errors than the crowd sourced freedb. The big issue with freedb is that its actual database is very poorly designed, and keeps nothing beyond titles and artists; genres and years per album, not track. No composers, the same field in the database contains artist and track name, with an inconsistent delimiter. Go on their website and examine the database by searching and getting ID numbers.
None of the older databases can deal with duplicate PQ data on different discs, which happens regularly on short, few track CD's. Musicbrainz has a better database and a "fingerprint" detection system which works well using Picard, but seems to have few entries for the Caribbean music that is most of my collection. Also the server at Musicbrainz (and only Musicbrainz) has often gotten so slow in responding to the dBPoweramp ripper (over a minute on occasion, I thought the ripper had hung when it first happened) that I have to deselect it. (Spoon said it checked OK, but it keeps intermittently happening.)
I think a lot of the data on AMC was provided by various "professional" parties when CD's were added to Itunes, and other download sites and metadata had to be added to the files when they were converted to mp3, etc. The "year" dates in their database (including month and day) seem to correspond to the dates the downloads were made available, years after the older CD's were actually put out for sale. Sometimes the "data" has the name of the album and absolutely nothing else.
Sorry for my rant. Accurate metadata is the bane of my existence.Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
It is certainly the most challenging aspect of creating and managing a digital music library. And this is why many on this forum point out the critical nature of paying lots of attention when ripping CDs as that is the best time to think about the metadata.Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
++++100 !
And as you point out, schmidj, even the record companies manage to screw it up! Similarly, I've seen artists' sites that post album info that differs significantly from what appears on either the packaging or the disk itself.... For me, there have been a few albums where getting the proper metadata felt like a research project.
I feel for those newcomers who come here and ask how to bypass all that, including the ones who imply that the rest of us are perhaps cheap, "hack-y" types who like to jump through a bunch of hoops just to get something for free, while they'd happily pay up to "do it right."
I feel for them because I know the letdown they're in for as reality sets in...good metadata management takes time and effort. No shortcuts. :(
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
I've been involved in digitizing my music library for about 11 years (unfortunately ripping 4 or 5 thousand CDs to mp3 initially before I learned what I was doing) and I think that getting all my metadata, genre lablels, albumartist tags for artist with lots of variations, etc. will be a lifetime project. I picture myself in the nursing home clicking on folders to change the genre in mass on subsets of files!++++100 !
And as you point out, schmidj, even the record companies manage to screw it up! Similarly, I've seen artists' sites that post album info that differs significantly from what appears on either the packaging or the disk itself.... For me, there have been a few albums where getting the proper metadata felt like a research project.
I feel for those newcomers who come here and ask how to bypass all that, including the ones who imply that the rest of us are perhaps cheap, "hack-y" types who like to jump through a bunch of hoops just to get something for free, while they'd happily pay up to "do it right." I feel for them because I know the letdown they're in for as reality sets in...good metadata management takes time and effort. No shortcuts. :(Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
I initially ripped CD's for my Ipod, started about 5 years ago, ripped to m4a using Winamp. I did pay some attention to metadata (not enough, as it turned out), I wanted to know what I was listening to. My collection is centered around Caribbean music, particularly Calypso and Steelband, but includes many genres, Jazz, African, Classical, some Rock, etc. I initially ripped the steelband and older Calypso. Winamp uses Gracenotes, I think. I submitted a lot of metadata to them. Probably 3/4 was not in Gracenotes, what was had wrong genres (there was no Calypso or Soca, still is no Steelband, but the genre field as stored in the metadata is just text, so I fixed it in my metadata.) Also many other obvious errors. I paid no attention to album art. I quickly discovered that about 5% or more of the rips were bad, very annoying. Winamp was also a very annoying program, kept crashing. In particular, if it couldn't contact Gracenotes, it hung so badly that you could only recover by shutting off the computer. The cursor froze, control/alt/delete did nothing. Very annoying. But, I ripped over 1000 CD's.
Then I bought a new Yamaha TV receiver and good speakers after I couldn't stand the sound on my new HD TV. After I got it, I discovered it would play back DLNA indexed files from my home network. I had stored the m4a files on a NAS server. I didn't even realize it supported DLNA, I didn't even know what DLNA was. But I found that after I plugged the receiver into my Ethernet network, I could play the files through the Yamaha system. Controlling it from the Yamaha remote control was another exercise in frustration, and listening to the bad rips was annoying, but it was more convenient than playing CD's in the DVD player.
I did a little experimenting and discovered that with some (but by no means most) CD's I could easily hear a difference between the CD and the m4a (~128kb VBR) files, particularly with the jazz and classical tracks where there was a wide dynamic range. (I'm no golden ear, first, I'm in my 70's and my HF hearing isn't what it was, but I worked in audio system design for many years and appreciate what sounds good.) So I did some research, realized that while m4a was good for the Ipod, FLAC was a much better choice for the Yamaha. I also read about Accuraterip and dBPoweramp, and bought it. I purchased a rather expensive large QNAP NAS server, set it up in Raid 6 (the old NAS had mirrored drives, but was mostly full of photographs, not audio).
I started over ripping, (after a couple of short false starts) although for the most part I'm doing the stuff I had never ripped (a few thousand CD's) first, only replacing the old rips now if I hear a bad one (and can find the CD, they are in random order in cartons), eventually, I'll rerip everything, and digitize my large record collection (a much more time consuming task, if done well). I pay a lot of attention to metadata, even more than before, and album art. In fact I'm beginning to wonder if I should have scanned the backs of the CD's, booklets, etc. Not yet. I should mention, one of the biggest issues with metadata, too many people, even professionals, confuse the artist and the composer. Beethoven didn't perform that symphony, he's been dead for a long time!! It is just as big an issue with some pop music, in fact sometimes it is an issue on the CD artwork, I've had to research some.
Now only about 5% of the Caribbean stuff is in Accuraterip, so I'm careful about secure rips, and have become more so after discovering that tracks with rerips that said secure and weren't in Accuraterip are often bad. I'll try them now in a different make CD drive, and often get a good rip, if there weren't too many bad frames. I now try to listen to any questionable rips. If it won't rip secure at all I'll try burst, and listen. If it is a unlistenable track, I'll delete it. If it has defects, but is "listenable" or even if it sounds OK, but had ripping issues, I add "Bad Rip" to the comments field in the metadata, so I can easily find it later (yes, I now know that the metadata also contains the ripping results, but looking for "bad rip" in a comment is easier, particularly if I hear something when playing back.) I also put all the CD's that had issues ripping in a pile, so I can look for replacements, or (if recently purchased) take them back or report to EBay seller and get my money back).
About 70% of the Caribbean stuff has some source of metadata, but it is often erroneous. Only about 25% or less has art, but I have the scanner next to the computer, and it is far easier to just scan the art than to go looking around the Internet for art. I do look on the Internet for release/copyright date, often missing even when there is other metadata, and often left off of Caribbean CD's. Sometimes I coincidentally find artwork, and drag it to dBPoweramp. As I said before, I often have to listen to part of the tracks to determine if the titles are for the correct tracks, and to determine what genre to call it.
I have dBPoweramp set up in Secure to scan from 1 to 8 "ultrasecure" passes, 2 successive good to accept, a maximum of 100 rerip attempts. These settings are important to me, as so many of my CD's are not in Accuraterip. I found that too many rerip attempts seemed to give "false OK's" from random results. I now generally rip any tracks with rerips in a different CD drive, and see if the checksum comes up good (green). If so, the rip is almost certainly good. If not, it isn't, and I listen to it and add the "bad rip" comment.
I typically run three simultaneous instances of dBPoweramp, three CD drives three monitors on the computer. Each rip of a non-Accuraterip CD takes about 15 minutes, that's for a 60 minute or so CD. If the metadata isn't a total mess, I can usually keep all three going. That gives me a throughput of close to 20 CD/s per hour. If it's in Accuraterip, the rip time is only about three to four minutes, as it is one full speed pass only. If the CD's aren't in Accuraterip but have good online metadata, I could probably run five instances simultaneously. I have four CD drives (one is USB, the others SATA) and have occasionally used four instances of dBPoweramp simultaneously, without issues. Of course, if I get a bunch with no or very bad metadata, particularly compilations where i have to enter artists for each track, everything slows down drastically.
I multiple rip, to FLAC and m4a. The m4a stuff ends up on my smart phone for car listening now. I store directly to the NAS drives. I had an issue with the encoding completely bogging down, but it turned out it was when the NAS antivirus was scanning, so I rescheduled that to even later, after my night-owl ripping sessions ended.
Enough for now, I've put this up as "guidance" for new users based on my experiences, particularly if you have a lot of CD's not in Accuraterip. Sometime I'll describe my playback software setup, and some plans for the near future.Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
Good description! Thanks.Comment
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Re: Database tag lookup sadly weak
I had a problem where it seemed that PerfectMeta wasn't working. DBPoweramp only showed what came from cache. After reading the post quoted above I looked and PerfectMeta was checked. I was contemplating uninstalling and then re-installing the whole program but instead I decided to uncheck PerfectMeta and then I re-checked it. Now all is working.Comment
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