Ripping Compilations

[Simon Moakes]

Re: Ripping Compilations

Hello
I have just purchase dBpoweramp/CD ripper to Rip my CD collection to my NAS.
I have managed to successfully rip FLAC to one folder and MP3 to another. I have set things so that it dynamically saves as [artist]\[album]\[artist] - [title]and so far so good. (everything looks nice and tidy )
Then when I tried to rip Now 89 I noticed it has saves each individual artiest in a separate folder, when you click on the artiest it has an album called Now 89 and then inside that folder is the individual song.
The program recognises that its a compilation but does not save it as one. To save me hours of reading can any tell me how to get round this?
Thanks for your help.

The simplest way to solve your problem is to substitute [artist] at the beginning of your string with [album artist]. This will primarily sort all your rips under the album artist you choose. Therefore single artist albums will be ripped to a folder named after the sole artist and/or band name, and compilations will be ripped into a folder under whatever input you choose: "Compilations" or "Various Artists" respectively. The rest of your string can remain the same.

If you are importing and/or listening to your tracks in iTunes then I would recommend naming multi artist CD's as "Compilations", as this is Apple's standard sorting format. If using a NAS drive use "Various Artists" instead.

I don't see why anybody should have to over complicate the string by inserting any [IFVALUE] [IFCOMP] [IF!COMP] [IFMULTI] nonsense. Clean and simple is best.

I use [album artist]/[album]/[disc]-[track] [title]. This maximises sorting order compatibility with all operating systems and NAS drives when browsing the original files on a Mac (Finder), PC (Windows Explorer), NAS, or smart TV. You should note that music software will always use the embedded tags and not your file naming convention, so I do not see the need to add [artist] anywhere within the string. However, if you feel you need to have the artist displayed within the file name use [album artist]/[album]/[disc]-[track] [title] - [artist] instead.

Hope this helps.

[garym]

Re: Ripping Compilations

I don't see why anybody should have to over complicate the string by inserting any [IFVALUE] [IFCOMP] [IF!COMP] [IFMULTI] nonsense. Clean and simple is best.

It is not "nonsense" when a user doesn't use ALBUM ARTIST except for compilations or wants to automatically deal with multidisk CDs. In any case, beauty of the software is that it is flexible enough to meet many users needs. The following dynamic string works automatically to deal with compilations (or noncompilations) and for single disk and multdisk CDs. copy and paste it in. Simple! If you prefer "Various Artists" directory instead of "Compilations" directory, replace "Compilations" below with "Various Artists".

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album] [IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

edit: you mention naming the track as "artist - title". You might consider using "track - title - artist" so that the track number is at the beginning of the track file name. That way when you look at the files in something like file explorer, they are sorted by track order. I use the setting to make the track numbers 2 digits (so 02 comes before 10, etc.).

[mville]

Re: Ripping Compilations

The simplest way to solve your problem is to substitute [artist] at the beginning of your string with [album artist]. This will primarily sort all your rips under the album artist you choose. Therefore single artist albums will be ripped to a folder named after the sole artist and/or band name, and compilations will be ripped into a folder under whatever input you choose: "Compilations" or "Various Artists" respectively. The rest of your string can remain the same.

If you are importing and/or listening to your tracks in iTunes then I would recommend naming multi artist CD's as "Compilations", as this is Apple's standard sorting format. If using a NAS drive use "Various Artists" instead.

I don't see why anybody should have to over complicate the string by inserting any [IFVALUE] [IFCOMP] [IF!COMP] [IFMULTI] nonsense. Clean and simple is best.

I'm not sure I completely agree here. Clean and simple may be best for you, but does not always work, given the plethora of media players and servers out there.

IMO, it is better to get your tags right from the start, in a way that makes your tags as compatible with all media players and servers, as they can be. What you don't want is build up a huge media library and later down the line find you need to edit thousands of tags.

I suggest you try to use the tagging standards that have developed over many years, instead of shoehorning your tags for a specific software developer, especially not Apple who haven't got a clue.

Yes, use the Album Artist tag instead of the Artist tag in your naming string. But, IMO, when ripping compilations you should set Album Artist to "Various Artists" AND set the Compilation flag (post ripping, add the Compilation tag with a value of 1).

[Simon Moakes]

Re: Ripping Compilations

As already suggested above, you should always tick the "Compilation" field when ripping compilation CD's, otherwise all the tracks will not sort under the same album name when viewing in any music software.