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Before embarking on the task of ripping my CD collection using dBpowerAmp, I am looking for any pointers and advice from others who are more familiar with the nuances of the products as well as answers to a few specific questions below. My eventual goal is to convert my entire music collection to a dedicated "music jukebox" which I can play on my stereo system probably using a notebook computer.
A few notes:
Have the dBPowerAmp products with the power pack option. Works great, though the names of the individual components can be a bit confusing.
230 LP's already entered in My Music Collection. 900+ CD's (~40% classical) yet to be ripped.
Using FLAC for encoding.
Will use the freedb database (already downloaded) for artist/track lookup for ripping.
I like to play my music by album and not pure random music. (An old record mindset perhaps).
A few specific questions:
1) I spent the last 13 months recording and editing my LP collection (around 230 albums worth recording) and converting them to FLAC format. I manually created a folder for each album with a descriptive name of the form "artist album" and in each folder are the individual tracks are stored as separate files. E.g. in the master folder "converted music", I have a folder "Fleetwood Mac Mirage" and in this folder I have 13 files "Book Of Love.flac", "Gypsy.flac", "Hold Me.flac" etc.
(For multi-artist collections, I simply used the name of the album for the folder, e.g. "Instrumental Hits Of The 60's").
When I started experimenting with ripping, I tried a multi-artist album by Kronos Quartet and discovered that the default settings for DMC decided there were numerous duplicates and only half of the album wound up in MMC! I finally settled on [artist] [album] \ [track] as the file creation setting in DMC. So my question is: what determines duplicates? I want apparent duplicates, e.g. live/studio/alternate versions with the same titles. Also, as I tend to play music by album, do the kind readers of these forums have any alternative ideas for appropriate file creation naming?
2) On a related note, what exactly is the dash (-) used for by the various dbpoweramp product for file naming and MMC? When doing my LP collection, I split the individual tracks in to separate files and named them the same as the song title. When converting the tracks to FLAC, dbpoweramp's music converter trashed the title of any song with a dash in it. I fiddled with the settings but didn't get very far.
3) Is there an easier way to randomly play music by entire album with the music player or MMC? In MMC, I can choose "play album" under "selected tracks" or by right-clicking a track, but this seems rather cumbersome. It appears I could create a playlist of each album, but 1200+ playlists seems rather unwieldy. Is there a way to have the music player randomly play by entire album?
4) Is there an easier way to clear queued music besides right-clicking through the player pane in MMC?
5) I intend to record my LP's (already done) and rip my CD's to my main computer and then move the whole collection to another computer. Besides another copy of the dBpowerAmp products and moving the actual music files and the MMC database files, is there anything else I need to move? Is cdplayer.ini needed?
6) What is the more common artist naming convention in freedb: first name last name, or last name, first name? I created most of my records using last name, first name as one would find albums sorted in a store but have found both formats in freedb. I suspect I will have to do a lot of editing.
My apologies for being verbose! I do appreciate any suggestions from dbpoweramp experts.
A few notes:
Have the dBPowerAmp products with the power pack option. Works great, though the names of the individual components can be a bit confusing.
230 LP's already entered in My Music Collection. 900+ CD's (~40% classical) yet to be ripped.
Using FLAC for encoding.
Will use the freedb database (already downloaded) for artist/track lookup for ripping.
I like to play my music by album and not pure random music. (An old record mindset perhaps).
A few specific questions:
1) I spent the last 13 months recording and editing my LP collection (around 230 albums worth recording) and converting them to FLAC format. I manually created a folder for each album with a descriptive name of the form "artist album" and in each folder are the individual tracks are stored as separate files. E.g. in the master folder "converted music", I have a folder "Fleetwood Mac Mirage" and in this folder I have 13 files "Book Of Love.flac", "Gypsy.flac", "Hold Me.flac" etc.
(For multi-artist collections, I simply used the name of the album for the folder, e.g. "Instrumental Hits Of The 60's").
When I started experimenting with ripping, I tried a multi-artist album by Kronos Quartet and discovered that the default settings for DMC decided there were numerous duplicates and only half of the album wound up in MMC! I finally settled on [artist] [album] \ [track] as the file creation setting in DMC. So my question is: what determines duplicates? I want apparent duplicates, e.g. live/studio/alternate versions with the same titles. Also, as I tend to play music by album, do the kind readers of these forums have any alternative ideas for appropriate file creation naming?
2) On a related note, what exactly is the dash (-) used for by the various dbpoweramp product for file naming and MMC? When doing my LP collection, I split the individual tracks in to separate files and named them the same as the song title. When converting the tracks to FLAC, dbpoweramp's music converter trashed the title of any song with a dash in it. I fiddled with the settings but didn't get very far.
3) Is there an easier way to randomly play music by entire album with the music player or MMC? In MMC, I can choose "play album" under "selected tracks" or by right-clicking a track, but this seems rather cumbersome. It appears I could create a playlist of each album, but 1200+ playlists seems rather unwieldy. Is there a way to have the music player randomly play by entire album?
4) Is there an easier way to clear queued music besides right-clicking through the player pane in MMC?
5) I intend to record my LP's (already done) and rip my CD's to my main computer and then move the whole collection to another computer. Besides another copy of the dBpowerAmp products and moving the actual music files and the MMC database files, is there anything else I need to move? Is cdplayer.ini needed?
6) What is the more common artist naming convention in freedb: first name last name, or last name, first name? I created most of my records using last name, first name as one would find albums sorted in a store but have found both formats in freedb. I suspect I will have to do a lot of editing.
My apologies for being verbose! I do appreciate any suggestions from dbpoweramp experts.
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