"Music Collection" managing program?

[laacjones]

I just joined this forum.

I'm studying how to best rip and catalog all of my CDs (mostly classical) to my computer for easy searching and then subsequent streaming to various settop devices.

I'm thinking of purchasing dBpoweramp Reference for the ripping part, but I'm confused about what to do for the cataloging. There are many cataloging programs out there, but I can't find any that claim to read PerfectMeta data. Am I focusing too much on the "PerfectMeta" name (which describes the voting between databases) and in fact many cataloging programs will read the metadata produced by dBpoweramp?

My hope is that one can just rip CDs to subfolders below the "My Music" folder (or elsewhere) in no particular order, and then tell a cataloging program to find all the ripped CDs in these folders, along with the metadata that's there. Correct? Any recommendations on cataloging programs that work well with dBpoweramp?

Thanks in advance.

[Teknojnky]

Re: "Music Collection" managing program?

My hope is that one can just rip CDs to subfolders below the "My Music" folder (or elsewhere) in no particular order, and then tell a cataloging program to find all the ripped CDs in these folders, along with the metadata that's there. Correct?

Yes exactly.

Any recommendations on cataloging programs that work well with dBpoweramp?

I use
ripper -- dbpoweramp ripper r13 reference
tagging -- musicbrainz picard (or 'perfectmeta' data, costs extra after the first year)
library management/cataloging/playback -- mediamonkey gold

other popular music library cataloging/management programs include foobar2000, itunes, windows media player, and many others.

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari..._media_players

[laacjones]

Re: "Music Collection" managing program?

Thanks for your reply, Teknojnky.

I had not seen Media Monkey before. I'll check it out. They mention on their Web site some of the unique needs of classical music, which is one thing I'm looking for.

It's amazing how many CD/DVD cataloging programs there are. One would think you can't go wrong, but then...

[drjenkins]

Re: "Music Collection" managing program?

For ripping and initial tagging I use dBpoweramp (of course).

For enhanced tagging and library management I use Helium Music Manager.

-drjenkins

[laacjones]

Re: "Music Collection" managing program?

I hadn't ever seen Helium either! Thanks. I'll check it out also.