Streamlining the browsing tree & multiple configs

[DavidHB]

(21-09-2013 10:36)haggis999 Wrote:  You can't really evaluate HTPC solutions or the various options for UPnP/DLNA servers, players and control points without a decent quantity of media to play with.

Absolutely. This thought could be the basis of a think piece one might post in Simon's new Digital Audio forum - working title "Before you spend your money, read this ... "

Quote:In time, you might regret choosing a metadata approach that cuts you off from small screen controllers. I prefer to keep my hardware options open.

It's a considered risk. I hate the usability of small screen devices in any case.

Quote:If I find an oddball presentation of my music caused by incorrect metadata (as I do from time to time) I simply fix the metadata. This normally takes just a few minutes. I would never think of reverting to the file system just because of a metadata error.

Well, I prefer to keep my data access options open ...

Quote:If you set up dBpoweramp CD Ripper correctly then it will create the folder structure automatically. Once this was done, I found that I spent almost no time at all thinking about the physical disk storage aspect. I simply concentrated on getting the metadata right ...

The file system is also metadata ...

I use dBPoweramp much as you do, but I watch where I'm putting things, and set the folder path accordingly. dBPoweramp makes this quick and simple.

Quote:JRMC does far more than MP3Tag and also (inevitably) has a steep learning curve but the forums are very active and helpful. You can use JRMC for almost everything, including ripping, but I prefer dBpoweramp CD Ripper because it is the only ripper I have found to give me the choice of four online metadata databases. For this reason, I enter most of my metadata via dBpoweramp. Subsequent edits have been done in MP3Tag or (more often) in JRMC.

I think you get a 30 day fully functional trial of JRMC. It is now on version 19, so it has been evolving and improving over quite a long time. I was so impressed with its ability to display my CD collection that I paid up long before the 30 days were up. One thing I particularly liked was the very flexible 'panes view', which you can see in the attached screenshot.

JRMC is my tool of choice for rapidly reviewing my collection, making sure that all the metadata does what I expect and fixing any problems. It is also the application in which I sort out my custom Work tag. After saving any tag changes back to the FLAC files, all other media applications (such as MinimServer) reap the benefits.

I will clearly need to look into JMRC at some stage. For now, I haven't found anything I can't do in MP3Tag, though regilar expressions make my head ache ...

That said, I do rather resent applications that use a forum as the replacement for a user manual. To a significant extent, MP3Tag does this as well. By contrast, you have to give Simon full marks for the clarity and accessibility of his MinimServer documentation.

David