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Two things: First, you can (and should) add the ARTIST tag to the list of tracks under where you see Title, Length, rip status, etc. If you right click (on a PC, I'm not sure what you do on a Mac) on that heading field, you'll get a list of all the fields you can display with check boxes. Add the ARTIST field (and any other you want to see by track) and they will now have their own column. You can also drag the columns around if you want to change the order, and shrink or expand the columns as you desire. (for instance, to make more space you could shrink your length column as it is far wider than needed.) If you rip a CD, it should save the new layout so you only have to do this once, unless or until you decide to change the layout again.
But there is a another useful way to enter (or see what is entered) metadata. Click on the red thing that looks like a shipping tag at the top of the page. It will open a new screen which shows what each metadata provider has for that CD and what it has chosen. Play around with that page to understand how it works. At the top are entries for the artist for the first track, the album title, the album artist (with a place to click to apply it to all the tracks), the genre, the year, disk (X) of (Y), the composer of the first track. Below that are two check boxes, one for setting the compilation flag and one to change the track display below to also show the artist and composer for each track. The left hand column has what dBpoweramp currently has chosen as the data. You can type over it to change/correct any of the entries, and if you think it has chosen information from the wrong metadata provider for any entry and you see the entry you want under a provider in red, click on it, you'll see that one now entered for that entry. When done with this page, click on the close (or is it OK?) button at the bottom of the page and you'll see that data updated on the screen. A couple of provisos. This page only inserts one (set of) genre(s) to all the tracks, and the same year. But back on the main entry page, you can give each track its own genre(s) and year.
On the main page (the one you showed in the photo above) if you click on one (or more, control click on a PC) tracks, the data at the top will display and allow you to change just the selected track(s) Very useful for the album with half the tracks by one artist and the other half by another No need to type the artist one by one for each track, select all the tracks that have one of the artists, type the name in the artist box at the top. Then select the other tracks and type that artist name in. You can also enter individual genres, years, etc on any track after selecting it by clicking on it.
When you see <Various Artists> in the top artist box or <Various Genres> in the top genre box, that means that not all the selected tracks have the same data, which is what you want for those compilation albums. Select any track and you'll see that at the top. To select all the tracks again, click on the empty space under the last track.
Note, this selection doesn't control what tracks get ripped, that is set by the checkboxes on the far left of the screen.
One thing to understand about these tags. They are stored in the same file the audio is for each separate track, once per track, not per album. There is no way of storing tags for an album except by including it with the track tags. This means that for instance if you enter a different album name on one track (either on purpose or by mistake), it will be different in the stored track file which in that case may well mess up what folder the track gets stored in, depending on your naming string, On your player, if you sort for a particular album with that mistake, the track will be missing, but if you for instance sort by the artist you'll see that album name as entered. The dBpoweramp ripper makes it hard to make that mistake by only providing one place to enter the album name at the top, which it uses in the tag for each track, but it is easy to mess this up if you correct tags using the tag editor or mp3tag.
I hope this helps, not confuses you. It may help if you play with a "fake" rip. Put in any CD you haven't already ripped. Play around with selecting tracks and entering your own tag metadata, both in the main page you photoed and in the page that comes up by clicking on the shipping tag. Once you understand what ends up getting entered, just close it before actually ripping it, or if you want to rip it and look at the tags as they were entered in mp3tag, then delete the files when you are done.
One of the best ways to learn how software woks is to pound on it, try something and see what happens. Many of the fields on the dBpa pages hav question marks which if you click on them will take you to a help page or brief description of the entry.
But there is a another useful way to enter (or see what is entered) metadata. Click on the red thing that looks like a shipping tag at the top of the page. It will open a new screen which shows what each metadata provider has for that CD and what it has chosen. Play around with that page to understand how it works. At the top are entries for the artist for the first track, the album title, the album artist (with a place to click to apply it to all the tracks), the genre, the year, disk (X) of (Y), the composer of the first track. Below that are two check boxes, one for setting the compilation flag and one to change the track display below to also show the artist and composer for each track. The left hand column has what dBpoweramp currently has chosen as the data. You can type over it to change/correct any of the entries, and if you think it has chosen information from the wrong metadata provider for any entry and you see the entry you want under a provider in red, click on it, you'll see that one now entered for that entry. When done with this page, click on the close (or is it OK?) button at the bottom of the page and you'll see that data updated on the screen. A couple of provisos. This page only inserts one (set of) genre(s) to all the tracks, and the same year. But back on the main entry page, you can give each track its own genre(s) and year.
On the main page (the one you showed in the photo above) if you click on one (or more, control click on a PC) tracks, the data at the top will display and allow you to change just the selected track(s) Very useful for the album with half the tracks by one artist and the other half by another No need to type the artist one by one for each track, select all the tracks that have one of the artists, type the name in the artist box at the top. Then select the other tracks and type that artist name in. You can also enter individual genres, years, etc on any track after selecting it by clicking on it.
When you see <Various Artists> in the top artist box or <Various Genres> in the top genre box, that means that not all the selected tracks have the same data, which is what you want for those compilation albums. Select any track and you'll see that at the top. To select all the tracks again, click on the empty space under the last track.
Note, this selection doesn't control what tracks get ripped, that is set by the checkboxes on the far left of the screen.
One thing to understand about these tags. They are stored in the same file the audio is for each separate track, once per track, not per album. There is no way of storing tags for an album except by including it with the track tags. This means that for instance if you enter a different album name on one track (either on purpose or by mistake), it will be different in the stored track file which in that case may well mess up what folder the track gets stored in, depending on your naming string, On your player, if you sort for a particular album with that mistake, the track will be missing, but if you for instance sort by the artist you'll see that album name as entered. The dBpoweramp ripper makes it hard to make that mistake by only providing one place to enter the album name at the top, which it uses in the tag for each track, but it is easy to mess this up if you correct tags using the tag editor or mp3tag.
I hope this helps, not confuses you. It may help if you play with a "fake" rip. Put in any CD you haven't already ripped. Play around with selecting tracks and entering your own tag metadata, both in the main page you photoed and in the page that comes up by clicking on the shipping tag. Once you understand what ends up getting entered, just close it before actually ripping it, or if you want to rip it and look at the tags as they were entered in mp3tag, then delete the files when you are done.
One of the best ways to learn how software woks is to pound on it, try something and see what happens. Many of the fields on the dBpa pages hav question marks which if you click on them will take you to a help page or brief description of the entry.
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