Avoid tagging issues question

[Decibel2015]

Have read comments in places about how people have had to go to a lot of trouble fixing problems with how their music
is tagged. I want to avoid that. Haven't even burned my first CD yet!

Is tagging handled automatically by this product? If yes, then why do problems arise?

How do you avoid those problems?

What about compatibility with other similar products and players? I.e. if you have a free or paid for product which handles
tagging, will it be a problem if you've also got this product? I mean, is there a tagging standard and so problems arise for
whatever product you use to play music using tags?

On a related topic, what if I want to tweak my tagging/labelling so that the first letter of every word has a cap? What about
things like Various Artists albums or an act's compilation album, or classical music with conductors etc? I.e. is this all handled by
default, or do I have to sweat over the menu options trying to get all this to work okay?

[mville]

Re: Avoid tagging issues question

Is tagging handled automatically by this product? If yes, then why do problems arise?

dBpoweramp does it's best to provide tags from online databases. You can either select the data provided or you can edit/enter your own values.

Tagging is not a perfect science and differs for each end user. I'd advise you to rip 1 CD to see what is going on. Then, be prepared for a lot of confusion (and headaches) as it can be quite difficult at first. However, it's not so daunting as the forums are here if you need help.

How do you avoid those problems?

You can't. There is no software in the world that is going to know you're tagging requirements and how you want to organise your music library.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Avoid tagging issues question

Have read comments in places about how people have had to go to a lot of trouble fixing problems with how their music
is tagged. I want to avoid that. Haven't even burned my first CD yet!

Is tagging handled automatically by this product? If yes, then why do problems arise?

How do you avoid those problems?

See mville, above.

The bottom line is this: All of the metadata needed to identify and navigate a digital music library is not contained on the CDs that you rip, in fact, most of it is not.....so it has to come from somewhere else. There are online databases that which contain massive amounts of metadata, and they are updated constantly as new CDs are released (and old CDs get added for the first time, and corrections are made, etc). These databases, however, are not "definitive" sources in that they contain many errors, omissions, and inconsistencies. It is this physical separation of the audio files (on your CDs) and their metadata....something we try to overcome when we build our digital music libraries....that leaves enormous room for error and frustration.

Add to this the fact that there's no "standard" way that players handle metadata. So we sometimes have to tweak the metadata to make our libraries behave the way we want for the particular players we use.

What about compatibility with other similar products and players? I.e. if you have a free or paid for product which handles
tagging, will it be a problem if you've also got this product? I mean, is there a tagging standard and so problems arise for
whatever product you use to play music using tags?

Each tagging format has a standard structure, so those added or edited in one program should be compatible in all other programs.

On a related topic, what if I want to tweak my tagging/labelling so that the first letter of every word has a cap? What about
things like Various Artists albums or an act's compilation album, or classical music with conductors etc? I.e. is this all handled by
default, or do I have to sweat over the menu options trying to get all this to work okay?

I wouldn't say you have to "sweat" over the menu options, but yes, you do have to learn how to use them. There's no magic "Auto" button that makes all your tags perfect. Not in this program or any other.

In CD Ripper, click on "Review Metadata" before ripping, and you'll see a couple capitalization options there. The default naming string will set ALBUM ARTIST to "Various Artists" whenever the COMPILATION flag is set. (This is one of those things that can be sketchy if you rely on the databases....you should always make sure the COMPILATION flag is set properly before ripping.) Note that a compilation album, for the purposes of tagging your library, is a collection of tracks by different artists, not things like Greatest Hits collections by group or artist. Finally, tagging classical music is much more involved. I would strongly suggest you start with your pop CDs and learn the ins & outs of tagging those before you tackle your classical collection.

[Decibel2015]

Re: Avoid tagging issues question

I'm still to dip my toes in the water of ripping CDs. Just worried that I might rip a stack of CDs then I'll learn that the tagging isn't ideal and it
will require me to rip all those CDs again. That's the impression that I got reading some user comments on some forums.
Is that the case? I.e. if the tagging doesn't work, you have to rip all the CDs that your ripped before?

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Avoid tagging issues question

I'm still to dip my toes in the water of ripping CDs. Just worried that I might rip a stack of CDs then I'll learn that the tagging isn't ideal and it will require me to rip all those CDs again. That's the impression that I got reading some user comments on some forums.
Is that the case? I.e. if the tagging doesn't work, you have to rip all the CDs that your ripped before?

Nope....not at all. Ripping a good lossless audio file is a one-and-done proposition. You can edit the metadata to your heart's content and it will never affect the audio portion of the file. You'll never have to re-rip a lossless file if you have a good rip, but you can always change its metadata (and there are many easy ways to do that).

No need to be timid about getting your toes wet....you really can't mess it up that badly and you'll learn so much just by playing around with the program and getting some hands on experience. Here's what I'd suggest...

Step *1: Choose your audio codec. Presumably, you want lossless. But beyond that, select one that is most compatible with all the playback devices you use now or expect you might in the future. Where that consideration most comes into play is with Apple devices. iDevices and iTunes won't use .FLAC, so that would tend to steer you toward .ALAC if you need compatibility with the Apple universe. Otherwise, .FLAC is an excellent all-around choice. (.FLAC, .ALAC, and all other lossless codecs are otherwise equivalent in terms of audio quality.)

Step *2: Rip some CDs and learn how the PATH and NAMING string options work. You'll want to understand these because they determine where the ripped files go and how your folders will be organized. (Note that you have a lot of leeway on this, because your players don't care at all about how your folders are organized....they use the internal metadata for navigating your files.)

Step *3: Get your player setup to use your newly ripped files and make sure it all works okay. I.e., if you have a networked music system, make sure that your ripped files are going to the right place and that the network player can find them and play them. If you're using portable devices, try that out as well.


Once you've done some CDs and you're actually using your new digital music library, you'll probably start to have specific questions. Maybe about fine-tuning the NAMING string, maybe about how to do compilations, maybe something about making things look or behave a certain way on your player. Whatever your questions, there are a lot of experienced users here who are more than happy to help, so don't hesitate to ask.

So go ahead....dive in!

[mville]

Re: Avoid tagging issues question

I'm still to dip my toes in the water of ripping CDs. Just worried that I might rip a stack of CDs then I'll learn that the tagging isn't ideal and it will require me to rip all those CDs again.

So don't rip a stack of CDs. Rip just a couple of CDs and see if this small library appears as you want in your player. If not you can re-rip those CDs, making the necessary tweaks to the metadata, until it does.

This way you will become familiar with the ripping/tagging process, see whether it provides you with what you need and you haven't spent weeks ripping loads of CDs.