Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

[mogulbasher]

Hi Guys,

I'm new to this so please bare with me.

I'm a mac user (macbook pro), currently starting to rip over 1000 CDs. To date I've used iTunes to rip, storing the .aif files on an external lightening drive, with meta data on internal SSD drive. No issues with this - could always see album art in iTunes and on iTunes remote on my iPad. However, I have had tracks that have not ripped properly hence have now started using dBpoweramp to rip.

Initial trial ok, although took me some time to work out that I had to copy the ripped files over to the "automatically add to iTunes folder" on my external drive. Once I had done that everything seemed to be working as expected, so purchased it.

So today, started ripping in anger. Copied first 10 CD rips into above folder from he temp folder in my documents, and all looked good. Could see all the meta data, album art etc under the various views in iTunes. Powered it all down and back up again, and half the album art missing on iTunes (and on iPad via remove app), although if I open the file and "get info", the album art is there, and sometimes just doing that displays it again in "albums" view, but closing down iTunes and re-opening, it's not there again .... frustrating!

The only thing I did differently this time vs the trial was open up the remote app which actually showed no album art at all first time. I never had that problem when using iTunes to rip.

Anyone any ideas before I rip more?

[garym]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

are you ripping to AIFF or to ALAC or ????. If AIFF are you embedding the artwork in the track files (or having a single "cover.jpg" or "folder.jpg" within the album subdirectory). If the latter (cover or folder.jpg), I'm not sure that will work in itunes. The art needs to be embedded. I'm not familiar with using AIFF files so don't know whether they allow embedded art in tags. When you rip in itunes, the artwork is added to a special database within itunes and not stored with the file. itunes handles are very differently from every other ripper/tagger. That said, if the art is embedded in the file, itunes will read it just fine.

Any reason why you're not using ALAC instead of AIFF? It handles tagging and artwork better I'm told (and both types of files are lossless files).

[linkman]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

The latest few versions of iTunes has been shown to be quite buggy, especially in conjunction with Apple Music/Match/iCloud Music. You may have stumbled upon one of them. If you are signed into iTunes with your Apple ID you can have iTunes add artwork by selecting the albums/songs, then right clicking or control clicking and selecting "get album artwork." Since you are using iTunes as your music player apparently this is a very efficient way to do it because iTunes won't embed the art into each track and will instead only keep one picture for the entire album, saving space on that SSD.

[mogulbasher]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

Thanks Garym - appreciate the points. The problem however, as "disappeared" - may have been finger trouble when I was getting to grips with dBpoweramp but have since ripped another 50+ CDs with no issues. As to the ones I had issues with, I found that simply copy the album art, deleting it and then pasting it back in resolved the issue - guess this sounds more like a flakey bit of iTunes rather than dBpoweramp. Anyway now all good now - let's hope it stays that way.

Re AIFF or ALAC, I've gone for AIFF as it's uncompressed. Yes, I understand the difference and in theory there should be no difference, but as space was not a problem to me I just played safe. I know .wav is not good with metadata so steered away from that, but from what I read AIFF and ALAC are about equal on how they treat metadata. Sound wise, I did not compare ALAC to AIFF, but did try a very unscientific sample of 1 hi-res FLAC file and found it a bit flat compared to equivalence CD rip in AIFF, and that was simply a iTunes rip. So far, I'm delighted with AIFF results so intend to stick with that for the moment. Might do some listening tests later.

Some early observations of dBpoweramp ripping vs iTunes:

Pros - faster (mostly), love the chance to change album art with alternatives offered (although it gets it right most of the time), and of course that assurance of an accurate rip

Cons - have trouble with more CDs (than iTunes), and sometimes have to eject and reload several times to get them read, and ANNOYINGLY dBpoweramp fails to see the CD and hangs FOREVER, forcing me to force a quit and reboot to recover - not good these days.

Improvement - I'm reasonably comfortable working around PCs and file structures, but it still took me several hours to work out how best to file the dBpoweramp rips, and then transfer them to the right place in iTunes. It's very easy when you know how, but would be useful if you put a "dBpoweramp ripping for dummies" section in your documentation. For anyone who is ripping to iTunes for the first time, I have included below because if you use iTunes native ripping it does it all for you. Note that I have "iTunes Media" folder on a separate, external hard drive.

1. On my mac, I created a folder under documents called "dBpoweramp rips"
2. In dBpoweramp main page, bottom left I have set the path to this folder.
- quite simply dBpoweramp then creates a folder in the folder for every rip you do organised by artist and album
- note these will be on your internal harddrive (unless you have specified otherwise)
3. I keep iTunes closed while ripping - don't know if that's necessary, but I do anyway
4. Once I have done a batch of rips, I close dBpoweramp, and using finder open up the dBpoweramp folder when I can see all the rips. I then batch copy them to the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder which is in my iTunes Media folder ON MY EXTERNAL HARDDRIVE. I emphasise this last point as you will also find that file structure replicated on your internal harddrive. Depending on how many rips you are copying this may take a few minutes.
5. Once complete, open up iTunes and it will (or should) automatically add all the files and metadata, and it only take a few seconds. You should be able to see new rips coming over without doing anything.
6. Check all good (I sample a few tracks) and if all ok, then I delete all the files in dBpoweramp folder so it's clean for next rip. If you don't do this you risk duplicating all the previous rips into iTunes - not a major issue but just more work to do in cleaning up iTunes.

Hope this helps any other newbies who need some guidance.

[mville]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

Some early observations of dBpoweramp ripping vs iTunes:

Pros - faster (mostly), love the chance to change album art with alternatives offered (although it gets it right most of the time), and of course that assurance of an accurate rip

Cons - have trouble with more CDs (than iTunes), and sometimes have to eject and reload several times to get them read, and ANNOYINGLY dBpoweramp fails to see the CD and hangs FOREVER, forcing me to force a quit and reboot to recover - not good these days.

The primary objective when ripping CDs with dBpoweramp is to get bit perfect, accurate rips. Comparing dBpoweramp to iTunes when ripping is of little use because iTunes will rip a CD but it won't report any errors. One has no way of knowing if the rip is bit perfect or not. If accurate rips are not your concern, then iTunes is probably fine.

Perhaps Spoon can comment on the mechanical issues you are experiencing with some CDs in dBpoweramp.

[mogulbasher]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

While I agree the primary objective is getting bit perfect rips (hence why I'm persevering with dBpoweramp), there is no reason why doing so should cause other problems. I'd rather have a rip that actually plays with no obvious errors than no rip at all, and currently I'm finding around 1 in 30 CDs will simply not rip with dBpoweramp with multiple tries, multiple secure rips etc, different CD drive etc, but they will rip fine with iTunes and they seem to play fine as well. iTunes ripping is not perfect - I've had more than one track totally unplayable under an iTunes rip that play perfectly under a dBpoweramp rip, and no doubt there are smaller, less audibly obvious errors with iTunes rips, but I'd still rather have a rip to listen to and discard if audibly not acceptable than nothing at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm committed enough to bit perfect rips to be re-ripping my CD collection, but from my experience to date, if dBpoweramp doesn't get it right first time their attempts to correct are rarely successful which is not what they sell.

[garym]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

from my experience to date, if dBpoweramp doesn't get it right first time their attempts to correct are rarely successful which is not what they sell.

Thats not my experience in ripping 5000+ CDs. Follow up attempts almost always solve the problem, particularly if I try using a different drive. CDs that fail on one drive often rip well on another drive, including $5 cheap old drives.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

Hey Gary,

does dBpa try to correct errors at all? To my understanding dBpa tries different ways to read the data, but as long the rip isn't accurate, the drive states an error, or the data isn't consistent at least, dBpa does not try to correct the faulty data.


Dat Ei

[garym]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

Hey Gary,

does dBpa try to correct errors at all? To my understanding dBpa tries different ways to read the data, but as long the rip isn't accurate, the drive states an error, or the data isn't consistent at least, dBpa does not try to correct the faulty data.


Dat Ei

Correct. It doesn't correct errors or do any sort of interpolation to try to hide errors. It only tries to get a bit perfect rip. But some ripping errors are drive dependent. So trying a different drive often produces a good rip when initially I had errors in ripping. And sometimes all it takes is a wiping of the disk with a cloth and retrying.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Inconsistent Album Art in itunes

Hey Gary,

But some ripping errors are drive dependent. So trying a different drive often produces a good rip when initially I had errors in ripping.

agreed! I have one Plextor and one LG drive. Usually I prefer the Plextor, because it is faster (especially if dBpa re-rips frames) and more reliable. But from time to time my Plextor produces read errors for certain CDs, mainly for the last one or two tracks of the album, which do not occur if I read the CD with the LG drive.

And sometimes all it takes is a wiping of the disk with a cloth and retrying.

Or a wet cleaning with a drop of washing-up liquid. Next step would be a mechanical treatment (sanding). If that doesn't help it's best to rebuy the CD or just forget about the CD...


Dat Ei