No Discussions on Ripping/Managing Music Collections?

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Just to mention it. I slightly updated my blog article.

I also got in touch with the guy maintaining the Ubuntu repo of whipper -
my Ubuntu ripping tool of choice. (It's also available on Arch Linux - AUR)

Background: After referencing to my article over here recently, I realized whipper was not yet available on latest Ubuntu 18.04.

Within half a day after talking to him, he (Pavel) updated the repository yesterday to introduce support for latest Ubuntu Bionic Beaver. Great.

I tested it today and can confirm it works. :D

Enjoy.
 
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I've gone down the Raspberry Pi/DAC HAT/MoOde Audio path for my digital player. I got an Allo Boss DAC HAT and decided this was the best sounding digital server/player possible for under $200. Playing CD rips (16bit/44.1kHz FLAC-8), the sound quality often beats what I get from SACDs played in my Pioneer PD-D6-J. Therefore, I am happy with it.

What is a really huge pain is the whole ripping and cataloging process. I typically use Exact Audio Copy on a Win10 PC, with FLAC set as the external compressor. That works well for all but a few scratched discs or shoddy pressings. When EAC can't rip a damaged disc, I'll go to foobar2000 to do the rip. If that doesn't work then I give up on that disc.

As mentioned, classical music is a pain to organize. Since I'm more interested in the 1) composer of the work, 2) title of work, and after that 3) the performers, I'll use mp3tag to change the Artist tag to the composer (Last name, First name), and add the names of the performers to the Album title. It's a time-consuming process. So, for instance, EAC will rip a classical music CD and tag it like this:

Artist: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner (cond.)
Album: Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste - Dance Suite

Since I have multiple recordings/performances of the Concerto for Orchestra, and when I want to listen to that piece I don't necessarily want to listen to the other pieces on that CD, I'll strip out the Concerto for Orchestra tracks and make that into an individual 'album,' with these tags:

Artist: Bartok, Bela
Album: Concerto for Orchestra - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner (cond.)

In the MoOde player Library, I choose the composer's name, then choose the piece I want to hear, taking note of the version I want to hear. When I play that 'album' I'm playing just the piece I want to hear. If I want to hear a whole string of pieces then I'll add them to the play queue as needed, then clear the queue when I want to play something else.

Anybody have a better way?
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I'd agree. Most important to me is that all info is there.
Usually a good quality coverart says it all. ;)

However. I do choose the/my key artist per CD.

Usually it is the Conductor or Solo Artist which goes to the Artist tag.


The Album tag then is "Berlin Symphonic - Beethoven - 9th".
Artist then is "Karajan"

If there's a solo artist - like "Hilary Hahn" she'll get the Artist tag.
Because I bought that album because of her in the first place and not because of the conductor/orchestra/composer.


I do also differentiate by genres. I define my own genre labels in the classical
area:

Classical-Violin
Classical-Cello
Classical-Piano
Classical-Orchestra
Classical-Opera
Classical

To me it is much more convenient to scroll through a huge classical collection by a pre-selected genre.

"Hilary Hahn" obviously goes to Classical-Violin. Her competition violinists who usually play the same stuff join her in that genre.
It then makes it much easier for me to choose a different character/performance of a certain piece.


Obviously everybody addresses the subject differently. It for sure is gonna be
a matter of taste how to approach the subject.


And for sure working with just 3 tags for classical music will always lead to this or that compromise.

Enjoy.
 
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I have a double problem. My main system uses MPD but the kitchen and bedroom use cheap tablets running uPNP. The database is too large for search to work so you need to be able to navigate. Due to a period of not tending my directory structures things are a little out of hand!
 
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Since I have multiple recordings/performances of the Concerto for Orchestra, and when I want to listen to that piece I don't necessarily want to listen to the other pieces on that CD, I'll strip out the Concerto for Orchestra tracks and make that into an individual 'album,' with these tags:
That's an interesting approach. Are you making a virtual album those tags so that the original stays intact? I understand the idea of making a single work into an album.

JRiver has tag columns for composer and conductor, among others. I've tried to come up with a consistent way to tag all this, but have failed to do so thus far.
 
MoOde uses MPD, fwiw.

Right, I make 'virtual albums' to sort my 'classical' music (or 'Western art music' or whatever you prefer to call it). Each major piece becomes its own 'virtual album.'

With all the individual pieces now readily accessible, it's convenient for me to program a 'virtual concert' as I feel like it. I'll take a piece (the first virtual album) and add another piece (another virtual album) to the MPD play queue for the evening. I can mix and match to suit my mood.

Usually I just want to listen to a single piece of music, then decide what to listen to after that one is over. In MoOde > Library, I find the piece I want and touch Clear List/Play. (My selection process goes like, "I feel like hearing Beethoven. Which piece do I want to hear? The Seventh? OK. Should I listen to the Bohm version, or am I more in the mood for Kleiber?") Whatever virtual album was in the temporary playlist is removed, and my newly chosen virtual album/piece takes its place.

I've been spending way too much time editing tags in Mp3tag (Windows). My RPi has two large USB sticks connected, both almost full of tracks. One is 256GB (Jazz, Pop, Folk, World), the other is 128GB (Classical, New Music). It's taken me weeks of work to get that set up. The process goes like this:

1) Rip files from within EAC, editing the tags before ripping to FLAC.
2) Find suitable cover art out on the innerwebs. Edit as necessary.
3) Use Mp3tag to fix the inevitable problems with the tags. Laborious.
4) Store a copy of the resulting ripped CD on hdd. That's the backup.
5) Copy the backup to edit its tags in Mp3tag to make the virtual albums I want. Copy the new virtual albums to the USB stick for my RPi player. Delete the working copy.

Now I have the originally ripped CD stored on hdd as a backup, and the various individual pieces stored as virtual albums on the USB stick.

Everything is so much easier for jazz. I just pick the artist, then the album I want to hear, and play it. Just like pop music.
 
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hmm 10 versions of Beehoven 7 (but that includes the Liszt transcription and a version for wind octet). That's digital. I have also at least 5 LP versions. I probably have too much Beethoven.


I suspect I am now at the point where my digital music collection is too large to ever manually catalogue and correct and I should just buy roon!
 
The biggest organizational pain with organizing digital music files by composer name, conductor name, performer name, etc. is that there are so many various spellings and ways of naming things. You can end up with four or five different spellings of Yevgeny Mravinsky or Dimitry Shostakovich, or even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Yevgeny? Or Evgeny? Or Yevgeni?
Mravinsky? Or Mrawinski? Or Mrawinsky?
Dimitri? Or Dmitri? Or Dimitry?
Shostakovich? Or Shostakovitch? Shostakowitsch?
Rachmaninoff? Or Rachmaninov?
Ludwig van Beethoven? Or Ludwig Van Beethoven? Or just Beethoven?
Bela Bartok? Or Béla Bartók?
Is it Franz Liszt, or Ferenc Liszt?
Frederic Chopin, or Frédéric Chopin?
JS Bach, or J.S. Bach? What if the tags come in Johann Sebastian Bach?

Just my composer list would be unmanageable. How would I remember which version of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste is stored under which version of Bartok (or Bartók)? Or is that Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta?

And the names of pieces! "Symphony" vs. "Symphonie" vs. "Simphonie". "No." vs. "Nr." "Major" vs. "major" vs. "majeur" vs. "dur" vs. "Dur". It's just endless...
 
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The biggest organizational pain with organizing digital music files by composer name, conductor name, performer name, etc. is that there are so many various spellings and ways of naming things. You can end up with four or five different spellings of Yevgeny Mravinsky or Dimitry Shostakovich, or even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Yevgeny? Or Evgeny? Or Yevgeni?
Mravinsky? Or Mrawinski? Or Mrawinsky?
Dimitri? Or Dmitri? Or Dimitry?
Shostakovich? Or Shostakovitch? Shostakowitsch?
Rachmaninoff? Or Rachmaninov?
Ludwig van Beethoven? Or Ludwig Van Beethoven? Or just Beethoven?
Bela Bartok? Or Béla Bartók?
Is it Franz Liszt, or Ferenc Liszt?
Frederic Chopin, or Frédéric Chopin?
JS Bach, or J.S. Bach? What if the tags come in Johann Sebastian Bach?

Just my composer list would be unmanageable. How would I remember which version of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste is stored under which version of Bartok (or Bartók)? Or is that Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta?

And the names of pieces! "Symphony" vs. "Symphonie" vs. "Simphonie". "No." vs. "Nr." "Major" vs. "major" vs. "majeur" vs. "dur" vs. "Dur". It's just endless...

:D Yep. That's the sort of rubbish you'll catch.
As a perfectionist you won't get around touching pretty much every single tag to get that straight. But first you have to write your own styleguide.


However. 99.99% of all people I met just give a s... ...about a structured approach. They can even live with a selection by file 1.flac 2.flac and empty tags....

Enjoy.
 
I've used foobar on PC for some years now. Does most of what I want. Android version isn't too bad either. But no use for playing stuff on main hifi unless I have missed something.

... Are you mixing up the foobar2k for android MUSIC PLAYER, and the foobar2k REMOTE CONTROL apps?
One is for music playback on that device, the other is for remote controlling foobar2k on a PC.

Big foobar fan myself, been going steady since 2003 or 2004. Only have ca 18k FLAC files, work in progress with the ripping thing...
 
Oh, allright.
I was not aware of your application.

Been a while since I last went the linux route, two things brought me back to windows, not happy with the performance of audio and playback programs (fb2k in wine helped a little bit), and there was no proper DAW.
So much fiddling to get things right, but many powerful linux distros are much easier in most daily tasks than windows, more stable, faster.
Maybe I will give it a go in a couple of years again.
 
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yes, will agree on the fiddling. I tried to do it on the cheap at first, which didn't end well with voyagempd which should work out the box (and didn't). I then got an HP microserver when they were on a deal and, bar a bit of fun getting alsa to talk USB it's been rock solid. Possibly the best money I have ever spent on the audio system!
 
For me it's Bartok.

:thumbsup:

Bela's the MAN!

Sorry, back to the thread... With so many must-have performances of the same piece of music/same title, it's not so easy to pick the one you want at any given time. Lots of scrolling through your library. Can be kind of a mood killer...

I rip apart the originally published 'album' into individual pieces, and don't worry about what the record companies intended. When I sit down for a listening session, my main concern is to find a particular composer's particular piece performed by this or that performer or group of performers, and decide which recorded version I want to hear (when necessary), in that order. So for instance:

Composer = Bartok, Bela
Piece = Concerto for Orchestra
Performer (conductor, in this case) = Antal Dorati
Version = 1980s digital version on Philips with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Or:

Composer = Debussy, Claude
Piece = Suite Bergamasque
Performer = Jacques Rouvier
Version = (there's only one version, so not applicable)

It seems the record companies have different priorities, and the ID3 tags reflect this. So the Debussy piece above would look like:

Artist = Jacques Rouvier
Album = Suite Bergamasque (Denon ‎– C37-7734)
Composer = Claude Debussy

Now, if I only wanted to hear Suite Bergamasque, and not Deux Arabesques or the other six pieces on this CD album, I'd have to jump in after track 4 and stop playback, or make a playlist, save it, and select that instead of the album.

Instead, I have everything saved as individual pieces, each piece complete in its own 'virtual album.' I can also make a virtual album of collected short pieces, such as my own "Debussy Piano Pieces", which I'll sequence how I see fit. It's more work that way, but that fits my listening habits better.

I have the original albums (as released by the record companies) ripped and backed up, so I can go back to those if necessary.

Does anyone know of a media player that has a shuffle play function that plays complete albums intact, instead of shuffling individual tracks only?

Or is it necessary to make a playlist that's so long you'll forget what's actually in it, so you can load up that super-playlist and skip ahead to a part you haven't visited for a while, to end up hearing something you weren't expecting to hear?

I suppose Roon does something like that, but now we're getting into a whole new world of expense...
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