Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

I have a top level "Music" folder. Then underneath I have two folders: FLAC and LOSSY. Within each of those two folders I have folder for ARTIST (or ALBUM ARTIST), then underneath that I have a folder for ALBUM. So for example:

music/FLAC/The Beatles/Abbey Road
then the Abbey Road files are in that "Abbey Road" folder.

The only exception is for my Compilation/Various Artists albums. There is no "artist" folder. So all of these are in a single folder called Compilations, with subfolders for each album. For example, consider the various artist CD called "Opera Goes to the Movies"

music/FLAC/Compilations/Opera Goes to the Movies/....

Thanks, garym. So exactly the same as what I’m doing, except I have a "Various Artists" folder instead of "Compilations". My "Lossless" folder only contains FLAC files, so I might change the name to "FLAC" (or change the "MP3" folder name to "Lossy", just so things match up).

I was thinking about having alphabetical folders above the artist folder, but I suppose that’s only really necessary for huge libraries of music. For example:

Music/Lossless/B/The Beatles/Abbey Road

Regarding creating mp3 and FLAC simultaneously, yes dbpa has ability to do that. Instead of setting "encoder" to, say, FLAC, set it to "Multiencoder". But then within that you need to setup the naming string, etc. and other settings for each of the codecs you'll use in multiencoder (e.g., FLAC and mp3).

OK, I don’t think I’ll bother then. It sounds like more trouble than it’s worth as I don’t really need the mp3s anyway.

[garym]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

I know several people use the alphabetical folders (subfolders for A, B, etc.). I don't, even though I have a good size library (as of today, 115,659 tracks, 8,245 Albums). Frankly, I'm rarely looking at the library using file explorer. I am almost always looking at it via my music server/player. And in that context, tags are what matter, and I can easily search, browse, quickly go to any letter in the alphabet, etc. So having folders for A,B,C.... would be redundant.

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

I know this really comes down to personal preference, but how do people prefer to deal with the unnecessary (unwanted) metadata that often appears when ripping? What I mean is, do you permanently disable the metadata fields using the checkboxes in settings, or just delete it manually as and when it appears?

Not long after I started ripping my CD collection last year, I decided to uncheck the 'composer' box for everything except classical and orchestral music as it was taking far too much time trying to get everything the way I wanted it. I then found unwanted metadata sometimes appearing in the 'conductor' field, so I did the same for that. I now have to check those boxes again when I rip classical CDs, but this seems easier than deleting it manually each time for the majority of my collection.

Now I'm considering deselecting these other checkboxes, as so far none of this metadata has shown up, and if it does I'm not sure that I really need it.

Instrument
Custom
Period
Orchestra
Soloists
Chorus

Again, I'm just curious as to how everyone else does things.

[garym]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

Uncheck the tags you're never going to need, then add the 'ID Tag Processing' DSP, and under the Deletions tab, use the action 'All Except' to specify which tags you want on the output. Unfortunately each tag needs its own 'All Except' (rather than a delimited list), but you only do it once, and this way you could create a Classical ripping profile and a non-Classical ripping profile and avoid the need to navigate through the menus to select/deselect the tags you need based on the individual rip.

agree! I uncheck the tag fields I know I NEVER want. Pretty easy for me to decide, as I have only a handful of classical music albums. I like @simbun idea on different profile for classical if you have tags you only use there.

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

Uncheck the tags you're never going to need, then add the 'ID Tag Processing' DSP, and under the Deletions tab, use the action 'All Except' to specify which tags you want on the output. Unfortunately each tag needs its own 'All Except' (rather than a delimited list), but you only do it once, and this way you could create a Classical ripping profile and a non-Classical ripping profile and avoid the need to navigate through the menus to select/deselect the tags you need based on the individual rip.

Thanks for the advice, I didn't even know that was possible! As the tags will stay the same for the vast majority of my CDs, I'll probably just stick to unchecking the unwanted tags in settings and then checking [Composer] and [Conductor] again when I rip classical. It may seem a bit awkward, but it doesn't happen very often.

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

agree! I uncheck the tag fields I know I NEVER want. Pretty easy for me to decide, as I have only a handful of classical music albums. I like @simbun idea on different profile for classical if you have tags you only use there.

While we're on the subject, how does the [Custom] field work? It looks like something I'll never need to use and may as well be left unchecked.

[garym]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

While we're on the subject, how does the [Custom] field work? It looks like something I'll never need to use and may as well be left unchecked.

You use this if you want to create some custom tag fields. I've not needed to use this, so have no experience with it.

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

You use this if you want to create some custom tag fields. I've not needed to use this, so have no experience with it.

I imagine you must also be able to change the name of the field from [Custom] to whatever you want it to be, and possibly create multiple custom fields, e.g., [Copyright], [Organization], [Publisher], etc.

It doesn't look like something I'll ever need as I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible. Adding extra metadata would slow me down even more!

[garym]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

I imagine you must also be able to change the name of the field from [Custom] to whatever you want it to be, and possibly create multiple custom fields, e.g., [Copyright], [Organization], [Publisher], etc.

It doesn't look like something I'll ever need as I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible. Adding extra metadata would slow me down even more!

correct.

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

You use this if you want to create some custom tag fields.

I'm really glad I asked about these settings, as I almost didn't. After saying I couldn't ever see myself using the [Custom] field, something came to mind that might actually make things simpler for me.

At the moment, if an album features various artists on individual tracks (but is not a compilation), I keep the [Artist] metadata the same as the [Album Artist] for all tracks and put the featured artist details into [Comments]. This is just the way I've found works best for me. For example:

[Artist] Raekwon
[Comment] Featuring: Ghost Face Killer, Master Killa, Method Man, The RZA

But if I create a custom [Featuring] field, I could have it like this:

[Artist] Raekwon
[Featuring] Ghost Face Killer, Master Killa, Method Man, The RZA

This would free up the [Comment] field for anything else that it may already populated with (recording venues, dates and other such things), and I think it also looks tidier. I'll give it a try and see how it works.

[GBrown]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

I'm really glad I asked about these settings, as I almost didn't. After saying I couldn't ever see myself using the [Custom] field, something came to mind that might actually make things simpler for me.

At the moment, if an album features various artists on individual tracks (but is not a compilation), I keep the [Artist] metadata the same as the [Album Artist] for all tracks and put the featured artist details into [Comments]. This is just the way I've found works best for me. For example:

[Artist] Raekwon
[Comment] Featuring: Ghost Face Killer, Master Killa, Method Man, The RZA

But if I create a custom [Featuring] field, I could have it like this:

[Artist] Raekwon
[Featuring] Ghost Face Killer, Master Killa, Method Man, The RZA

This would free up the [Comment] field for anything else that it may already populated with (recording venues, dates and other such things), and I think it also looks tidier. I'll give it a try and see how it works.

Just be aware that most media players won&*8217;t be able to use these custom fields. In the case of multiple artists, the whole point of the two different tag fields is to let you put all of the performers in the Artist field while leaving just the AlbumArtist as the main performer. Even if it is just on one track.

[garym]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

Just be aware that most media players won&*8217;t be able to use these custom fields. In the case of multiple artists, the whole point of the two different tag fields is to let you put all of the performers in the Artist field while leaving just the AlbumArtist as the main performer. Even if it is just on one track.

Exactly. Test it with your Player and Server to see if they can read/use the custom tag. I do exactly as @GBrown. That is, in your example I would have multiple values for ARTIST:

ARTIST: Raekwon; Ghost FAce Killer; Master Killa; Method Man; The RZA
then use
ALBUM ARTIST: Raekwon

In my server/players (LMS and Squeezeboxes), I would see a library entry for each of these artists for this song, but would also see the entire album grouped together under ALBUM ARTISTS for Raekwon. I mostly keep ALBUM ARTIST field empty, except in cases like this.

[GBrown]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

I mostly keep ALBUM ARTIST field empty, except in cases like this.

Note that this is fine for some players, but many are not able to properly flip between AlbumArtist and Artist if the the former is missing. There is no harm if they match, and many batch editors can fill blank AlbumArtist with Artist in a single action. Depending on your preferred player, you may have to make this update.

[Supernaut]

Re: Need advice before ripping collection to FLAC

Exactly. Test it with your Player and Server to see if they can read/use the custom tag. I do exactly as @GBrown. That is, in your example I would have multiple values for ARTIST:

ARTIST: Raekwon; Ghost Face Killer; Master Killa; Method Man; The RZA
then use
ALBUM ARTIST: Raekwon

That's exactly the way I was doing it before. I primarily listen through my portable music player (although this may change in the future), and it doesn't recognise each individual artist when separated by semi-colons. During playback all the names just show up as one long list. This is also how they show up in the artist selection tab, which just creates a mess of artist names to sort through. The example I gave looks like this:

ARTIST: Raekwon Ghost Face Killer Master Killa Method Man The RZA

I also tried adding multiple genres, but in that case it would only read the first entry in a list and ignore the others. I'm sure my player won't be able to read any custom tags I create, but I was thinking it would just keep things looking tidy in the [Artist] selection tab without disregarding the featured artists completely. It might be an idea to separate the names with semi-colons rather than commas just in case I use software in the future that can read custom tags, i.e.:

ARTIST: Raekwon
FEATURING: Ghost Face Killer; Master Killa; Method Man; The RZA

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll keep testing it and see how it looks/works.