No, I long ago ended up with a pretty flat file system. Originally I had folders by genre then artist and finally album, there are vestiges of this level of organization left over from those days when the players I used cared about such things..
I no longer sort by genre, but still organize by artist so there will be multiple album folders in the artist's dedicated folder, and that is all the organization I need.
Only standard meta-data is used which is added to the files when I rip new material using EAC. I compress to FLAC. Purchased files have album art and all files have the needed meta-data.
Roon takes care of all of this, it just generates an internal database and catalogs and links related material together. I can sort by artist, genre, etc. it rescans the library folders frequently and new albums generally appear very quickly.
@ElArte: You made a good choice with 24/96 FLAC. Good thing is that you can convert to anything new/better/more fancy in the year 2030 if you like. MP3 is a dead end.
It is different with video I notice as 9 out of 10 times it is lossy. Coding formats change and have revisions sometimes not 100% compatible. New coding formats like AV1 and Opus for audio come up etc.
It is different with video I notice as 9 out of 10 times it is lossy. Coding formats change and have revisions sometimes not 100% compatible. New coding formats like AV1 and Opus for audio come up etc.
I use Roon. It costs money, but it’s amazing and I stopped dealing with metadata as it does it all for me.
For road trips I use my Android phone with a 1TB SD card. I have Tidal Hifi and download a lot of stuff, plus I did rip a lot of my CDs (about 500) and I use foobar to play them. The car has Android Auto so that works fine for me, except that getting a phone with an SD card is getting difficult.
For home, I tried playing my CDs on the turntable but they antiskate didn't work... so, they sit behind me... taking up space. Same with the 400 or so DV DVDs. BTW, one of my "projects" is to rip all the DVDs too. (Handbrake) I've done about 100 of them, and stored them in the NAS where I run Plex.... it's nice as latest TVs are "smart TV" and they mount the Intranet Plex servers....
We also have about 100 fvamily videotapes ripped into DVDs, and they await, in a drawer just two feet from my office chair, the day I remember to rip them... but for those I will not get rid of the tapes, nor the DVDs.
The only CDs I get nowadays are the Dead releases.
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Yup. I have all my music ripped as flac and transcode to ogg for my phone and can get all 1500+ albums on it with room to spare. I wrote my own player because I didn't like the others.
Details about your player? OS, dev tools? I assume you created a metadata layer and a GUI and then made exec calls to an existing decoder/driver? Phone? Use the existing USB or bluetooth interface for the car?
Toolset?
Toolset?
If your wife ever complains, tell her you have been considering 'upgrading' your music collection to vinyl records.
After that, no more problem with how many CD's you own.
After that, no more problem with how many CD's you own.
Standard android java coding using the media player API, sqlite (android db), and third part APIs cling, images, an API for extracting metadata (from ffmpg), email.
I started it as a project to let me continue coding after I retired and because I'm fussy about the UI.
All developed using Android Studio which was easy to get to grips with because I'd spent years using Intellij Idea.
I started it as a project to let me continue coding after I retired and because I'm fussy about the UI.
All developed using Android Studio which was easy to get to grips with because I'd spent years using Intellij Idea.
Nice.... I've only programmed the kernel, in C and C++ and bit of Python.
How did you handle bit perfect?
Very similar what I use. It is a directory by artist, then the albums and a playlist for the cd in a different directory. I use the full name of the band/artist so "The Who" not "Who, The". Classical music however is by composer and here I do put the family name first. Performer/orchestra/director/instrument is all in the directory name. Then a playlist for the cd in the main directory.
There are a few more general entries in the system. Like "Classical" when the cd contains music by several composers. Or "Various Artists", "Folk (various)", "Piano (various)" and "Organ (various)" as those otherwise do not fit into the first level artist/band/composer.
I find using genres is just impossible. Some artists have changed over their career so are you going to put them in several genres?
Biggest issue for me was finding a ripper that could handle accented characters. Most don't, they get their knickers in a twist if they encounter é, è, ç, à, ì, (), etc.
Didn't. I wrote a upnp control point and can stream from media server (minimserver) to a upnp renderer (Moode) everything local is in ogg. If the renderer supports bit perfect that's fine, but via the phone and headphones, nope.
Besides, I'm 68, I'm not sure I'd be able to hear an imperfect bit 🙂
I read in Washington Post a year or so ago that Apple Music had a classical treating service, separate from pop music. Reviewer said the cataloging system was great and surpassed by far Spotify, Tidal, etc.
Don't know the Apple Music service, I'm not into their ecosystem. My organ teacher is and even he organised by hand. His system is very "deep" but then it is a teaching resource for him.
When I'm looking for a piece of classical music I'm in first instance looking for the composer, not the performer. And that is what all classifiers I have seen don't get. Probably written by programmers that have no clue about classical music. I might be interested in who is performing a certain piece. But like with organ music I can be sometimes more interested on which instrument it is played on. Information often missing.
When I'm looking for a piece of classical music I'm in first instance looking for the composer, not the performer. And that is what all classifiers I have seen don't get. Probably written by programmers that have no clue about classical music. I might be interested in who is performing a certain piece. But like with organ music I can be sometimes more interested on which instrument it is played on. Information often missing.
You can convert 44.4kHz/16bit CDs to 24bit/96kHz FLAC but the contents remains the same, it's just coded differently. You can't increase resolution or dynamic range once it is set in stone (or bits).
I sense that most of the reasons to keep the CD collection is for emotional reasons.
Which is OK, even without inventing nonsensical tech reasons ;-).
Jan
I sense that most of the reasons to keep the CD collection is for emotional reasons.
Which is OK, even without inventing nonsensical tech reasons ;-).
Jan
And Keith Richards
Green or blue?
Ideally, you'd use apply green for classical and blue for jazz... silver for rock (*) and only do it for 75 seconds, as measured with a Tice Clock.
(*) For that abrasive, splashy, "all over the house" sound.
Sure, first cut is by Composer and then title. But I, for example, have three different versions of Bach Goldberg Variations, three of R Vaughn Williams’ Variations on a Theme be Thomas Tallis, and 4 versions of Beethoven 3 and 5 symphonies. So performer is key info. Anyone deeply into classical music knows this.
I remember being in a meeting with some colleagues, waiting for a manager to show up. In the meantime, I was conversing with a colleague -Bob, who basically listens only to classical music and has a much deeper knowledge than me. We were talking about Beethoven symphonies cycles and pros and cons of various conductors and orchestras and time (Karajan recorded the cycle 3 times!). Another colleague interjected and asked, “Why do you need more than one recording of that?” Bob and I turned to each other; we were speechless with the lack of appreciation. I think I said something like, Well, each performance is different in tempo, emphasis, balance and sound quality.
I gather that, perhaps except for Roon (as an info management service for streaming) and possibly Apple, the digital streaming music industry simply do not know how to cater to serious classical music listeners.
I remember being in a meeting with some colleagues, waiting for a manager to show up. In the meantime, I was conversing with a colleague -Bob, who basically listens only to classical music and has a much deeper knowledge than me. We were talking about Beethoven symphonies cycles and pros and cons of various conductors and orchestras and time (Karajan recorded the cycle 3 times!). Another colleague interjected and asked, “Why do you need more than one recording of that?” Bob and I turned to each other; we were speechless with the lack of appreciation. I think I said something like, Well, each performance is different in tempo, emphasis, balance and sound quality.
I gather that, perhaps except for Roon (as an info management service for streaming) and possibly Apple, the digital streaming music industry simply do not know how to cater to serious classical music listeners.
There is a reason why you might want to upsample the signal.
You might have an encoder that does a better job with its software than a hardware based player, for example.
Sure, you are extrapolating data, but not all extrapolations are the same. Some are better than others.
HOWEVER, for archival purposes, I would never recommend upsampling and then archiving.... I'd always keep the original copy.
Then you got my old coworker who in '05 decided to rip all of his CDs ( hundreds he said ) into VBR MP3 and then sold them off.
No nonsensical tech reasons for me: 24/96 and better streaming which actually USES greater than CD quality digital conversions of source material, will always beat the best CDs.
But SQ is not the reason for sticking with CDs as compared to Tidal and other full Q streaming (Spotify and other services that transmit truncated data presumably are excluded from this discussion).
I also do not believe that supporting musicians is an “emotional” reason any more than convenience is an emotional one.
That's still a huge problem for most players, Roon has made progress in this direction, but still IMO needs further improvement. I still have problems finding stuff that is already in my library, let alone Tidal's modest classical offerings. When they can provide notes for a specific recording there is usually quite a lot of detail provided.