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Alpina_Lux · 14-04-2014, 15:48

(13-04-2014 15:52)gnomus Wrote: As someone who is new to ripping/streaming, I hesitate to post. I am ripping my “contemporary” CDs first, whilst I think about how best to do the classical. I have a large number of classical CDs, and a substantial number of these are operas. I will often have a number of different versions of the same piece, including multiple versions of some operas with different conductors, or even the same conductor but from a different year.

The problems I anticipate are as follows:

1) I will make tagging mistakes. Therefore, it is important that I can find the files easily after ripping. It will be easier, therefore, if all of my Beethoven (to take one example) is in one subdirectory on the NAS.
2) When I browse my library on my tablet, I want to see all copies of the Beethoven Violin Concerto next to one another in the list. However, I don’t want to see all 5 versions of the 1st movement, followed by the 5 versions of the second movement and so on.
3) I want my Beethoven Piano Concertos to show me all the versions I have of Concerto 1, then Concerto 2, and so forth. Similarly for the sonatas.
4) When it comes to opera, I will have Act 1 and Act 2 in different folders even if on the same CD. Conversely, I will combine all tracks for an Act into one folder (even if split across 2 CDs).
5) Wagner’s Ring consists of 4 operas which are not in alphabetical order. I want each version of the Ring to appear together on the library list.
6) I want to be as future-proof and as idiot-proof as possible. I only want to have to do this once, and I don’t know what technology/software/hardware will be around in a few years’ time. (I think that means keeping things as simple as possible.)

I am myself in a very similar position. I have also just started to get acquainted with a NAS (Synology which by the way was unexpectedly easy to deal with) and the world of streaming music, tagging and the problems that it involves.

I also share the goals that you described hereabove. Similar to you, I also have multiple versions of the same work, often even with the same artist(s).

I also agree with what others have said so far concerning a specific composer tag - I would absolutely recommend to complete this as consistently as possible. I also understand that it should be possible to group several tracks together as a single work (in my opinion absolutely necessary for multiple-movements works such as symphonies or operas), although I do not know whether an additional "work" tag is necessary for such.

I believe that the most efficient way to go about it is to find a very easy-to-use and well thought out tagging program. Last week-end I started to rip a few of my CDs (about a 100 to start with) in order to see how one of the most popular rippers (DBPowerAmp) goes about filling the tags with information from publicly available databases. The result was rather sobering: Even if most of the CDs were recognised (an exception being for example the latest Cyprien Katsaris recording with his old Rach3 from the Queen Elisabeth Competition, but well), the tagging was more or less all over the place. No consistent use of artist or album artist, typically the composer tag was not used at all etc.

Conclusion (so far): Even after ripping and a first tagging process that comes with it automatically (together with, in my case, a conversion to FLAC), it will always be necessary to go through the collection again to improve the metadata.

So far, probably nothing new to those of you who have much more experience with this than I do. Now comes for me however the more interesting question: How (ie with which program) to improve the metadata so that (i) it is consistent and (ii) not very time consuming. I don't really care if I need to pay for a good program to help me with that, as time is what I am invariably short of. There are I believe a few taggers out there (MP3tag comes to mind) that should be able to be helpful with this, as I think you can also set them up to do batch-tagging (i.e. tag lots of files at the same time). They are however not conceived to deal with classical music. Which is where (I hope) comes MusiCHI into play. If it works as advertised, it should enable me to improve the metadata rather easily, or at least with less effort than if I had to do every file one by one (which I won't be able to do anyway). Once I have the time (moving house now, so not the best moment...), I will try it out with the CDs I have ripped so far and report how it works.

Secondly, I wanted to see how the intricacies of ripping go together with the usual file system on the computer. Even if I don't think that the file system is very useful for browsing a large CD collection, I fully agree with David that if the file system is well organised it is far easier to find a specific recording where the metadata is not up to par, in order to improve on it. I also agree with him that the way that I personally browse my collection is largely album-based, i.e. I do not see a particular point in grouping together single works as an "album" as this is not how my listening-brain works. I tried to rip a few CDs with that principle and it annoyed me rather than added value to the process (e.g. a recital with several composers created 8 different folders instead of one). So far, I have organised the file / folder system on my computer as follows:

If "C:/music/classical" is my root directory for all my classical music, I then make the following distinctions on the next level:

composers (e.g. Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin etc.)
recitals (with sub-directories per artist = C:/music/classical/recitals/Freire/Live in Miami 1984 for Nelson Freire's live recital at Miami from 1984)
collections / compilations (again with sub-directories per artist = C:/music/classical/collections + compilations/Horowitz/Original Jacket Collection for the whole Horowitz Original Jackets Collection with one sub-folder per CD)
concertos (where I put albums with several concertos from different composers, e.g. the Romantic Piano Concertos series from Hyperion)

I will probably have to add to this, but it appears to be a start from which I can refine things further; and I know where I can find what, and there is some logic behind it all. Whether it will also work with a few thousand CDs remains to be seen though...

Apologies for the rather lengthy post, it was meant to be shorter!