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DavidHB · (This post was last modified: 14-04-2014 13:47 by DavidHB.)

I strongly support the points made by Simon in his last post.

If anyone knows why early tagging schemes and digital music applications failed to provide a proper means of browsing classical music by composer (which, I believe, is the way most people do it), I should be grateful to know the history. What is clear is that, for all the reasons given by Simon, the kludge of trying to use a Pop-style browsing sequence for classical music by putting composer data in the Artist or AlbumArtist tags doesn't really work. While, as previously discussed in this thread, there is room for different ways of doing things, it is difficult to find a good reason for putting composer data anywhere other than in the Composer tag.

I'd also strongly support the use of the Genre tag advocated by Simon. If you are going to use it in this way, it is probably best to use only a small number of high level genre values (Classical, Pop, Jazz, Folk etc.), and not to sub-divide the Classical genre. MinimServer will work with multiple Genre values, but I find that that complicates browsing and isn't really helpful for me.

David

gnomus · (This post was last modified: 14-04-2014 15:22 by gnomus.)

(14-04-2014 13:46)DavidHB Wrote: I strongly support the points made by Simon in his last post.
...
I'd also strongly support the use of the Genre tag advocated by Simon. If you are going to use it in this way, it is probably best to use only a small number of high level genre values (Classical, Pop, Jazz, Folk etc.), and not to sub-divide the Classical genre. MinimServer will work with multiple Genre values, but I find that that complicates browsing and isn't really helpful for me.

David

OK, I think I am beginning to see a way forward - although I am probably going to have to re-tag all of my non-classical, because they are all over the place "genre"-wise.

I still have one question though. For my classical music, what should I put in the AlbumArtist tag? I believe that if I leave it blank, then dbPoweramp will put the Album into a "Various Artists" subdirectory. By putting the composer name in AlbumArtist, I was forcing dbPoweramp to stick all of my Beethoven in a Beethoven directory, thus making it easy to find when I had to look for it to fix some tagging error.

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!

DavidHB · 14-04-2014, 16:22

(14-04-2014 15:20)gnomus Wrote: OK, I think I am beginning to see a way forward - although I am probably going to have to re-tag all of my non-classical, because they are all over the place "genre"-wise.

Probably, the key thing is to ensure that all your classical tracks are tagged as 'Classical'. The only problem with all the other albums being "all over the place" is that you may then have a longer list of Genres to select from in the control point than you might find convenient.

Actually, MP3Tag makes it very straightforward to apply a single tag value to dozens or even hundreds of selected files at one go. If you are using MP3Tag and would like help, please ask again about this.

Quote:I still have one question though. For my classical music, what should I put in the AlbumArtist tag? I believe that if I leave it blank, then dbPoweramp will put the Album into a "Various Artists" subdirectory. By putting the composer name in AlbumArtist, I was forcing dbPoweramp to stick all of my Beethoven in a Beethoven directory, thus making it easy to find when I had to look for it to fix some tagging error.

I can only say what I do (and there are, as ever, alternatives). I set the dBpoweramp Path to the Composer folder (which in your example would be "Music\Classical\Beethoven" in my case). Naming is then set to "[album]\[track] [title]". I do not use either Artist or AlbumArtist in the path or the naming scheme, but all my classical albums are 'filed' by composer name, except for Recitals and Compilations, for which there are separate folders.

Of course, each track is tagged with the appropriate composer name (in both Composer and ComposerSort tags); there are cases, as for example with 'filler' tracks, where the odd piece is tagged with the correct composer name, but is not contained in that composer's folder. This is somewhat analogous to way the physical filing of CDs on shelves may work; a CD in which the main work is a Beethoven symphony will be filed under Beethoven, and that is where the Mozart overture on the same CD will of necessity also be. As noted by Dieter Stockert a few posts back, it is possible to split tracks from a single CD into two or more albums to overcome problems of this kind, but I do not find that this is worth the effort for the odd filler track. In any case, a tag-based index solves the problem completely, and will list the Mozart overture correctly under Mozart.

David

gnomus · 14-04-2014, 17:04

(14-04-2014 16:22)DavidHB Wrote: ...
Actually, MP3Tag makes it very straightforward to apply a single tag value to dozens or even hundreds of selected files at one go. If you are using MP3Tag and would like help, please ask again about this.

Yes I have discovered that - and have just retagged all my Beach Boys (some 800 plus tracks) as Rock/Pop in a matter of minutes.

(14-04-2014 16:22)DavidHB Wrote: ...
I can only say what I do (and there are, as ever, alternatives). I set the dBpoweramp Path to the Composer folder (which in your example would be "Music\Classical\Beethoven" in my case). Naming is then set to "[album]\[track] [title]". I do not use either Artist or AlbumArtist in the path or the naming scheme, but all my classical albums are 'filed' by composer name, except for Recitals and Compilations, for which there are separate folders.
...

That would work, but I then I would need to remember to keep changing the path when I rip a non-classical CD. I don't want my Beach Boys going into a subdirectory called "Asher, Tony".

Personally, I like having the Artist field filled in with the various singers etcetera. This will allow me to find all the "albums" on which, for example, John Tomlinson appears. That could be rather jolly!

simoncn · 14-04-2014, 17:13

(14-04-2014 17:04)gnomus Wrote: Personally, I like having the Artist field filled in with the various singers etcetera. This will allow me to find all the "albums" on which, for example, John Tomlinson appears. That could be rather jolly!

I do this as well. MinimServer is designed to support this style of tagging by listing these artists separately when that makes sense (e.g., the All Artists index) and combining them when that makes sense (e.g., the Artist value sent to the control point).

DavidHB · 14-04-2014, 17:34

(14-04-2014 17:04)gnomus Wrote: I ... have just retagged all my Beach Boys (some 800 plus tracks) as Rock/Pop in a matter of minutes.

That's exactly in line with my experience. MP3Tag is a great program.

Quote:That would work, but I then I would need to remember to keep changing the path when I rip a non-classical CD. I don't want my Beach Boys going into a subdirectory called "Asher, Tony".

Fair point. I make that kind of mistake often enough to know that it's fixed almost instantly with drag and drop. I could use field names in the path specification, but that adds complications of its own. In fact, the folder name will be typically just the surname ("Beethoven"), whereas the tag will be "Ludwig van Beethoven", so it's easier to enter the name as plain text. If the folder doesn't exist, dBpoweramp will at least create it.

Wherever possible I try to rip CDs in composer-related batches; that way one path entry may serve for a whole ripping session.

Quote:Personally, I like having the Artist field filled in with the various singers etcetera. This will allow me to find all the "albums" on which, for example, John Tomlinson appears. That could be rather jolly!

... and is entirely possible with the combination of MinimServer and Bubble DS/UPnP. There is a discussion to be had as to whether it is best to have all the artists on a track listed in the one artist tag or to have multiple artist tags with one for each artist. I'm undecided on the issue myself. But both approaches will, I think, work with UPnP Search.

David

Alpina_Lux · 14-04-2014, 17:42

(14-04-2014 17:34)DavidHB Wrote: ... and is entirely possible with the combination of MinimServer and Bubble DS/UPnP. There is a discussion to be had as to whether it is best to have all the artists on a track listed in the one artist tag or to have multiple artist tags with one for each artist. I'm undecided on the issue myself. But both approaches will, I think, work with UPnP Search.

David

I have heard several times that the combination between MinimServer and BubbleUPnP works very well. Although I initially wanted to use my iPad as a control point (simply because I have it and know how to use it, and the Synology apps work well on it), I would be happy to switch to an Android device if it works even better. Would you mind describing a bit your experience with this combination and browsing through your classical collection? Any input in this to bring my decision process a bit further would be most appreciated.

P.S. Sorry if this is OT - maybe I should raise this point in a different sub-forum?

simoncn · 14-04-2014, 17:47

(14-04-2014 17:42)Alpina_Lux Wrote: P.S. Sorry if this is OT - maybe I should raise this point in a different sub-forum?

I think it's fine to carry on this discussion here.

gnomus · 14-04-2014, 18:42

(14-04-2014 17:42)Alpina_Lux Wrote: ... I have heard several times that the combination between MinimServer and BubbleUPnP works very well. ... Would you mind describing a bit your experience with this combination and browsing through your classical collection?

Well, I'm very new to this but, for what it's worth, the MinimServer/Bubble combination seems very solid. I like that I can tap on the "Classical" genre and then be presented with a screen giving me the full choice of "Composer", "Conductor", "Orchestra", "Artists", and so forth. Using the Sonos App, tapping Classical just gives me an Artist list (probably another reason that I was putting the composer in the albumartist field).