I started ripping using a CD Ripper tutorial I found on a blog. The naming string works for me, so I didn't need to understand how it works. As a result, string examples in these forums made my eyes glaze over a bit.
That changed when I started to convert my AIFF files to FLAC. My CD Ripper naming string didn't work to my satisfaction in Music Converter, so I had to figure out what I wanted and how I could get there. Armed with the
dBpoweramp Naming page, I repeatedly set up conversion of a few files to see how my changes affected the results. The best thing is that I could see those results without having to initiate an actual conversion, as Music Converter has a button showing the number of files being processed; when clicked it opens a page listing the complete paths for the new files. If something wasn't right (missing spaces, path problems, utter garbage), I tried a fix and looked again. Eventually, I had it sussed and could start converting for real. (After which I had to deal with tags, but that's a different subject.
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The first point here is that you can use Music Converter to learn how to create working naming strings without having to rip CDs, saving yourself a lot of time. Copy a few of your FLAC files to a new folder, highlight and right-click on them, choose Convert To in the pop-up dialog, and start experimenting with naming strings either by pasting in the one you use with CD Ripper or writing from scratch. Try adding elements just to see what they do. Alter or add tags if you need to experiment with them. Use the button I mentioned to check the results of your efforts as you go. As long as you're working on copies of your files, you won't mess up anything you care about--but do ensure that if you perform an actual conversion, you're writing new files to the same folder as the ones you're experimenting on, or a subfolder of it. You don't want files strewn about willy-nilly.
The second point is that if you're like me, you learn by doing, and using Music Converter this way makes that much easier; I like to think if it as a naming string sandbox. While you don't have the same programming experience that schmidj and I do (coincidentally, I also started with Fortran, in 1973), you have to start somewhere. Why not begin with something you're really interested in?