Advice on import of large music collection

[DavidHB]

(26-02-2015 00:09)simoncn Wrote:  This is not a digital signature in the normally accepted usage of this term. It seems more like a hash of the track length information.

Indeed. I had hoped that, by putting 'signature' in quotes, I had indicated that I was using the term loosely. The term 'fingerprint' in the CDDB article is perhaps better, though it carries an implication of uniqueness, which in the present context would be somewhat misleading.

(26-02-2015 00:09)simoncn Wrote:  The information about MusicBrainz and acoustic fingerprinting is interesting. Something like this would be needed to identify individual tracks rather than complete albums, as the track length would clearly be insufficient.

Yes; that's why I suggested that the OP should experiment with Picard, though I was and am not hopeful that the experiment would be successful. However, it would be good to be proved wrong on this.

More generally, I think that Roy Boy has raised a useful question. There must be a fair number of digital music libraries out there which have been gathered from different sources, and which need significant tagging work for MinimServer to access them properly. My general point is that there are probably no easy shortcuts in such a situation, but a systematic workflow using capable software such as MP3Tag or Metadatics will get the job done more quickly and easily than users might fear at the outset.

David