Squeeze family and classical music [Archive] - Squeezebox : Community : Forums

azaz44

2008-11-11, 04:42

Hello everyone

I would like to propose some requests which would make products better for classical music lovers. I own Squeezebox Classic for a long time, and just got the Boom for the bedroom few days ago. Besides small issues I love them. I spent long hours with the "Classic" enjoying and studying the music, and it's just great. I hope this is the right place to post, as I see no place for the Classic here.

Here are some key points of classical music collections. Typically:

- The collections are huge.

- No tags. There's no standarized way of tagging files, no support anywhere in software for all these information (orchestra, conductor, soloists, pianists, composer, work, choir and more), possibly also to much data to enter.

- A lot of subdirectories. There's a lot of recordings and they need to be organized somehow, different composers, then works, interpretations, versions etc etc. It can easily get 10 subfolders deep.

- Complicated structures sometimes. Once it is Beethoven / V Symphony (Bernstein) / files.flac, another time it is Beethoven / Orchestral works / Symphonies / No. 5 / Bernstein + Some Orchestra [Year] / files.flac. You need more subdivisions if you have more recordings.

Now, what I think would make the software better, and what are some problems.

1. It would be great to have some option, to get rid of these menus: Artists, Albums, Years, Genres etc. Menus are well organized, but still it could be easier to find items. Removing any unneeded item is good. The only one I use, when being in "Browse" is actually "Music Folder". Currently the software allows you to customize only Main Menu items.

2. It would be so great, if the "Search" option would be able to search in folder names and file names.

3. Classical music requires active listening. You choose some work, listen to it, than choose another one - sometimes it's 30 minutes long, sometimes 3. So no playlists 3h long. This means constant switching between "Now playing" and "Browse" menus, and here squeeze products could be better. Because:

4. In the "Classic" it is not that bad, because there are "Now playing" and "Browse" buttons at the remote. However, pressing the "Browse" brings you to the root of your collection. And you need to dig into directories again, to find the place you were at 3 minutes ago. Typically you want to be in the same place you were before, because you want to listen to something from "around". And luckily the software remembers at which position you were last time for each folder. But still you have to press "right" button ten times, to go into subfolders, watching the screen carefully, to not go too far. Actially I find myself disabling the option which shows "Now playing" as a screensaver after some inactivity time, and refusing to go to "Now playing" if I know I will listen to some other recording soon. Could the "Browse" button bring you to the folder you were last time, before you went to "Now playing"?

5. In the "Boom"... Here it's a real issue. There's no "Browse" button at the remote, and no corresponding button at the front panel. Choosing new recording means going to main menu and navigating through menus to the collection. It's really complicated and makes you go sleeping instead. Additionally it's not consistent - the remote has a "home" button, so at least you can go to the main menu (or now playing) easily. The front panel doesn't, you go to the main menu with a long press of "back" button. I hope this can be solved somehow. The only option for me seems to be ordering an extra remote, with all the buttons, to use with the Boom. But my Boom is just next to me in the bedroom and I would prefer to use the front panel (which additionally is so nice). I don't know how to solve it. Is the long-press of the knob used somewhere? How about long-press of the knob switching between "Now playing" and "Browse"? (And possibly some other configurable items, other people might prefer radio stations here instead of Browse).

6. Of course it would be great to have some support for tags... But this is complicated and I think classical music lovers all agreed to live with file names. This would mean a lot of customizable menus, because you can search / group files by different things. You can start with composer, than it's work. You can start by a particular pianist and see it's works (grouped by something else later). Or you want to start with your favourite soprano signer - because this is what you want to listen to today. Or you start with some particular orchestra, because you want to compare two first class orchestras. Many options, so a lot of customization needed here. But also a lot of work for us, tagging our files, and outstanding result of grouping your collection by anything you want. Let it be a dream.

Comments and additional suggestions from classical music lovers are welcome. I hope someone from the Slim Squeeze Logitech stuff reads it and can make these great products even better.

Cheers.

netchord

2008-11-11, 07:56

i would just add that i find it inconceivable that there's no option to browse one's collection by composer. most PC software, whether for Mac or Win, whether iTunes, WMP, Winamp, JRiver, etc. has a composer field. many of use come to the Squeeze-iverse after building substantial collections on a PC, and I'd wager there's a very large subset who've been using iTunes to manage their collection (still the simplest media manager IMHO). if the SC can read the iTunes DB, how can it not extract the composer field? there are work-arounds, or plugins that require a considerable amount of skill and time to implement- it needs to be simpler.

second, gapless playback is still a huge problem. i have ~300 complete opera recordings, ripped as Appleloss less files. to play them gaplessly, i'd have to convert them all the AIF, a waste of bandwidth and HD space, or jettison iTunes and move to another player and convert them to flac.

iTunes supports gapless playback with Apple lossless files- why can't SC? i understand it's an issue of transcoding, but why doesn't the Duet (i have a Duet and a Boom) decode APL?

lastly, shuffle play is a feature that is very cool for popular music and jazz, but no utility for classical. if i'm listening to a jazz playlist, but decide to change to something classical, i have to navigate to the settings menu, disable shuffle play, then back to the music libray, genre, and find the tracks i want, a needlessly laborious process. again, itunes has figured this out, and can remember your shuffle settings for individual playlists- why can't SC do this?

Phil Leigh

2008-11-11, 09:27

androidtopp

2008-11-11, 11:29

Apple is a closed, proprietary system with hefty and restrictive licensing fees and other manufacturers are limited in what they can achieve. Many people here have and will continue to avoid Apple for that reason. I won't have any of their products in the house because of this - oh and my Sony Discman sounds better!

Also, their DRM-infected downloads are nothing but a PITA.

Anyway, it's pointless saying "iTunes can do Apple lossless gapless playback, why can't SB?"

Just switch to ANY other format and enjoy.

Just a warning - you're not likely to find much Apple sympathy here - DRM is a four letter word, and Apple's closed ecosystem doesn't seem to generate many fans. Personally, I own an iPod, and I love it, but that's more than I can say for iTunes, iTunes Music Store, or any of the Apple file formats.

All that aside, I agree with you that classical support is lacking, although I'm not sure if this is down to the players, the software, the tagging capabilities, etc. I just omit most of the information that would be nice to have, and focus on composer. Granted, my collection is small enough that I have very few overlapping recordings. If I were to have more collisions where I needed to differentiate between different recordings of the same piece, I would probably be up a similar creek.

netchord

2008-11-11, 15:09

i agree about DRM, and while i have some stuff from the iTMS, is not what's important to me. my library is pretty large, over 12k tracks, most ripped from my own CDs, and most in lossless format. about a third of it is classical, the rest jazz and rock. but gapless playback is important in the rock world too- dark side of the moon, abbey road, etc.

and wouldn't it be nice to sort my collection by Dylan the composer, picking up all the covers i have in my library as well as the origianl dylan cds?

fakarava2

2008-11-11, 22:40

CatBus

2008-11-11, 23:11

Tagging classical music is possible, albeit time-consuming. The best thing about FLAC-style tags is that you can make up custom tags, suited exactly for your browsing/listening style. (e.g. want a special FRIEND tag for when you personally know one of the performers? not a problem! a special WIFEHATESTHIS tag for musical disagreements? sure! okay, these are ridiculous examples, but they show the flexibility) Once your music is tagged it's actually quite nice (combined with the custom scan/custom browse plugins, linked above). I'm not sure if I'm alone, but here's one classical music lover who could not abide browsing file/folder names.

A lot of users have issues with the Boom remote, and luckily the Boom works with any Slim IR remote--just order one and you can get that Browse button.

Various suggestions for improvement to the Browse Music Folder interface would probably be appreciated by SlimDevices though. As far as I know it's the "fallback" browsing interface for when your music isn't tagged, but there may be some other common scenarios where people need it.

maggior

2008-11-12, 11:58

second, gapless playback is still a huge problem. i have ~300 complete opera recordings, ripped as Appleloss less files. to play them gaplessly, i'd have to convert them all the AIF, a waste of bandwidth and HD space, or jettison iTunes and move to another player and convert them to flac.

iTunes supports gapless playback with Apple lossless files- why can't SC? i understand it's an issue of transcoding, but why doesn't the Duet (i have a Duet and a Boom) decode APL?

Gapless is a big thing with me. And yes, it impacts more than just classical/opera fans - any live recording is affected.

I won't reiterate the points already made regarding Apple.

You can use dbPowerAmp to batch convert you Apple lossless files to whatever format you want (FLAC, mp3, etc.) (unless you are a Mac user).

I am an iPod user too. The common denominator I came up with was Lame mp3. It plays fully gapless on both SC (with the latest SC software) and iTunes/iPods. Depending on how you use your iPod (car, earbuds, etc.) you may not even be able to hear a difference between mp3 and lossless files on the iPod. I can't.

With cheap disc space available now, I will be moving to using FLAC for SC server and having a copy of the library in LAME mp3 for my iPod.

What would be ideal is if Apple chose to support FLAC, but that ain't gonna happen in my lifetime :-). (Though with older iPods (5.5G and older), you can use a 3rd party FW called RockBox that supports FLAC.

maggior

2008-11-12, 12:02

netchord

2008-11-12, 15:47

Gapless is a big thing with me. And yes, it impacts more than just classical/opera fans - any live recording is affected.

I won't reiterate the points already made regarding Apple.

You can use dbPowerAmp to batch convert you Apple lossless files to whatever format you want (FLAC, mp3, etc.) (unless you are a Mac user).

I am an iPod user too. The common denominator I came up with was Lame mp3. It plays fully gapless on both SC (with the latest SC software) and iTunes/iPods. Depending on how you use your iPod (car, earbuds, etc.) you may not even be able to hear a difference between mp3 and lossless files on the iPod. I can't.

With cheap disc space available now, I will be moving to using FLAC for SC server and having a copy of the library in LAME mp3 for my iPod.

What would be ideal is if Apple chose to support FLAC, but that ain't gonna happen in my lifetime :-). (Though with older iPods (5.5G and older), you can use a 3rd party FW called RockBox that supports FLAC.

for me, the problem w/ LAME is sound quality- i've got the duet hooked up to a high-end dac/system, so lossless is the only option. i do have an iPod, and if i have to use AIF to get gapless playback, then the iPod fills up pretty quickly.

one of the earlier posts mentioned apple's closed system, but there are other media players that can playback APL files- Play, Cog, and VLC all do on the Mac, and I believe Winamp will on the PC. you just have to have QT installed.

it's not an issue of DRM. afaict, there's no good reason the duet can't support HW APL decode.

Goodsounds

2008-11-12, 16:15

azaz44

2008-11-13, 02:42

I'm happy to hear some issues I raised can be addressed now. I spent some time with Default.map and Custom.map files and didn't get exactly what I wanted, but my Boom goes to "Browse" when I hold the knob for some time. There are more items which are too hard to access (like "Repeat" in Boom - quite useless if it's deep in menus) and it's great to know they can be bound to some button. However I still see this as a valid point to solve. I'm a software developer at work and can play with these things, but normal user should not. Also, I treat these beautiful devices as music hardware, not computers - they should offer more listening than playing with them.

I also spent some short time with tagging. But I don't want to start with something, if I don't know it will work and is standarized in some way. I would prefer to use some common tags and not create my own (my own = not standard, maybe not supported somewhere in future, no translation to native language in software). The software I tested had things like Conductor, Orchestra, Artist(s). But had no choir/chorus, it's director, and this is also important. I'd better have some complete solution, or don't start at all :) But this is not SC issue of course.

I actually got used to splitting all the CDs by composers, works, performers and move them to different directories. But there are plenty of CDs which cannot be splitted that easily. For example, if it is a recital by some pianists - there are some works, sometimes bigger (piano sonata) and you want to have them under given composers work. But you don't want to split a live recording of a recital, which includes more works from more composers.

About the Ipod. Well, I think you guys made wrong decision at the beginning. I made a lot of investigation when buying my mp3 player few years ago, and it was a big no for iPod from the beginning. It's maybe nice, but not for classical music. I ended up with iRiver, but I run it with rockbox software for a long time. And I know Rockbox runs on ipods too. But you need to check the development status. Check here: http://www.rockbox.org/ . Rockbox gives you all possible music formats, gapless playback and all other things you could possibly imagine. And it's free.

Cheers

fakarava2

2008-11-13, 03:14

There is work underway to rework the underlying database schema. It seems to me that issues like this could partly be addressed there. Currently the schema update is targeted for SC 8.0. If you pop into the beta and developers forums, you will see discussions there. You might want to add your 2 cents (or euros, pence, etc.) to the discussion regarding the points you raise here.

I know that, in general, tagging of classical works is a hotly debated topic; this is not a slim devices specific issue. Though the navigation is a different story.

Yes, tagging classical music is a nightmare, but it is feasible, via a personal tagging scheme.
I'm using FLAC format, and tagging with foobar and sometimes MP3tag.
I have added "conductor" and "band" (i.e. the ensemble, from trio to orchestra) tags, and the "artist" is used for the soloist(;s).
There are many other solutions, with other or more tag names.

In a future version of SC, a simple improvement would be the direct access to these "personal" tags.
Meantime, see Erland's plugins.

maggior

2008-11-13, 09:10

I think I understand this concept, but I'm not sure I understand why it is important.

Wouldn't ripping a CD all to one track solve this problem? Maybe I just don't understand the issue, so thanks in advance for any explanation.

Yes, if you ripped the entire CD to one track gaps would not be introduced between the tracks. However, you lose the ability to skip through tracks or view a track title on your display as a song played. Imagine listening to Dark Side of the Moon and not seeing the individual track titles but just seeing "Dark Side of the Moon" on your player's display for 45 min. or so. Additionally, things like MusicIP would not work. Playlists wouldn't be very useful either since each track in your collection is an image of an entire CD; Breathe or Money from Dark Side of the Moon could not be included in a playlist or a mix. If these things don't bother you then that's OK; if they do bother you, they are major issues.

Cue sheets attempted to address this, but they are not widely implemented. I believe SC has issues with them now as well.

Gapless playback has been a hot topic since DAPs (digital audio players) were introduced. If you are a fan of any kind of music that does not have silence in between the tracks (live recordings, opera, some prog rock, electronic, etc.), it is a big issue. IMO, there is nothing more annoying than hearing a click or dropout when listening to something that should be continuous.

The way that I have always viewed it is that the tracks ripped from a CD should play exactly as they did on the original CD - regardless of the format of the encoded files. Sony recognized the importance of this when they introduced the MiniDisc players/recorders way back when. ATRAC (their encoding scheme) has always been gapless.

Here is an interesting article on the topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless

maggior

2008-11-13, 09:18

for me, the problem w/ LAME is sound quality- i've got the duet hooked up to a high-end dac/system, so lossless is the only option. i do have an iPod, and if i have to use AIF to get gapless playback, then the iPod fills up pretty quickly.

one of the earlier posts mentioned apple's closed system, but there are other media players that can playback APL files- Play, Cog, and VLC all do on the Mac, and I believe Winamp will on the PC. you just have to have QT installed.

it's not an issue of DRM. afaict, there's no good reason the duet can't support HW APL decode.

What I was suggesting was using LAME encoded mp3 for your iPod and FLAC for your duet. I currently use LAME mp3 for both, but I'm moving toward having my FLAC library online for my SBs.

The issue with apple's closed system in this case is not DRM, but licensing of the decoder. All of the software that you mention make use of services of QT to decode the files. On the duet, there is no QT. Somehow the decoder for apple lossless would have to be put on the duet. This decoder would have to be licensed from apple. It costs money (which will add to the cost of the duet) and can incur limitations on the product overall. There are licensing fees already that are part of the cost - mp3 is not a free decoder believe it or not.

Apple has their own streaming solution - they certainly aren't going to go out of their way to make it easy or cheap for a competetor's product to do the same thing (i.e. decode apple lossless files).

I hope that clears that up for you.

fakarava2

2008-11-13, 09:34

I also spent some short time with tagging. But I don't want to start with something, if I don't know it will work and is standarized in some way. I would prefer to use some common tags and not create my own (my own = not standard, maybe not supported somewhere in future, no translation to native language in software). The software I tested had things like Conductor, Orchestra, Artist(s). But had no choir/chorus, it's director, and this is also important. I'd better have some complete solution, or don't start at all :) But this is not SC issue of course.

I actually got used to splitting all the CDs by composers, works, performers and move them to different directories. But there are plenty of CDs which cannot be splitted that easily. For example, if it is a recital by some pianists - there are some works, sometimes bigger (piano sonata) and you want to have them under given composers work. But you don't want to split a live recording of a recital, which includes more works from more composers.

About the Ipod. Well, I think you guys made wrong decision at the beginning. I made a lot of investigation when buying my mp3 player few years ago, and it was a big no for iPod from the beginning. It's maybe nice, but not for classical music. I ended up with iRiver, but I run it with rockbox software for a long time. And I know Rockbox runs on ipods too. But you need to check the development status. Check here: http://www.rockbox.org/ . Rockbox gives you all possible music formats, gapless playback and all other things you could possibly imagine. And it's free.

Cheers
You can add standard tags -and your own- and fill them via Foobar or MP3tag.
Finding them in SC need the plugins I have already quoted ...unless they might be chosen in SC8...

About splitting the CDs by composers : I started like you ; but here is where the Album tag can help ; on the other way, if you fill the composer tag with the right values (they may be different inside an album), you can find him ...still with the plugins.

Splitting each movement into one file was found to be more convenient for my use.
The cuesheets aren't always used in SC, although I only use FLAC (As far as I can remember, I had problems with cuesheets, embedded or not, and APE format).

Goodsounds

2008-11-13, 10:52

Yes, if you ripped the entire CD to one track gaps would not be introduced.........

OK, I get it. Thanks for the explanation.

I don't have Dark Side or any Floyd - I actually can't stand that band - but I did check out a few things I have and could see the issue in action. I'm not sure why anyone would get upset about a brief instant between "songs", if that helps navigation, but I guess it ought to be done the way people want to hear it.

maggior

2008-11-13, 12:36

OK, I get it. Thanks for the explanation.

I don't have Dark Side or any Floyd - I actually can't stand that band - but I did check out a few things I have and could see the issue in action. I'm not sure why anyone would get upset about a brief instant between "songs", if that helps navigation, but I guess it ought to be done the way people want to hear it.

Yeah, not everybody is a PF fan, but DSOTM is commonly referred to when talking about gapless playback. Side 2 of Abbey Road by The Beatles is another example.

The Squeezebox is surprisingly good at keeping the gap to a minimum when gapless playback info (i.e. non LAME mp3 files) isn't present. Other players are horrendous - imagine a 1 second gap, though a lot of people probably wouldn't be bothered by that either I suppose.

netchord

2008-11-13, 17:51

What I was suggesting was using LAME encoded mp3 for your iPod and FLAC for your duet. I currently use LAME mp3 for both, but I'm moving toward having my FLAC library online for my SBs.

The issue with apple's closed system in this case is not DRM, but licensing of the decoder. All of the software that you mention make use of services of QT to decode the files. On the duet, there is no QT. Somehow the decoder for apple lossless would have to be put on the duet. This decoder would have to be licensed from apple. It costs money (which will add to the cost of the duet) and can incur limitations on the product overall. There are licensing fees already that are part of the cost - mp3 is not a free decoder believe it or not.

Apple has their own streaming solution - they certainly aren't going to go out of their way to make it easy or cheap for a competetor's product to do the same thing (i.e. decode apple lossless files).

I hope that clears that up for you.

thanks, i do understand that MP3 carries with it a significant license fee, and not just MP3, but other codecs as well, hence the popularity of LAME and FLAC, among others.

i have a classical music background, both as a performer and later in my "day job", and i'm now, broadly speaking, in the metadata business, and have put a lot of thought into issues as tagging classical music, classical playback, classical playlisting, etc. bottom line, if one is an iTunes user, cares about sound quality, and wants to use any sort of squeeze device, AIF is the only format.

unfortunately, it's overkill from a bandwidth and storage standpoint.

arkadi58

2008-11-14, 06:09

With SC 7.2.1, splitting artist tags (with a ; or other separator) and combining multi-disk albums is now finally working and I have now started to rip and tag my large classical CD collection for good. The only feature I am missing is browsing by composer in SC.

I have never had a problem with gaps. This is probably due to the software I use for ripping: Exact Audio Copy, which is very careful about gaps. I rip to FLAC and then do the heavy tagging work with Tag&Rename. Works fine.

Roman

sebp

2008-11-15, 17:15

With SC 7.2.1, splitting artist tags (with a ; or other separator) and combining multi-disk albums is now finally working and I have now started to rip and tag my large classical CD collection for good.
Since you seem to be ripping your CDs to FLAC, you should consider using multiple ARTIST tags rather than one w/ separator.
Non uniqueness of tags in Vorbis comments (that FLAC uses) is a very nice feature, I'm using it with most of my classical/jazz music.

The only feature I am missing is browsing by composer in SC.
See there (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Setup_browse_menu_for_classical_music#Overview), Erland plugins are your friends.

sebp

2008-11-15, 17:30

bottom line, if one is an iTunes user, cares about sound quality, and wants to use any sort of squeeze device, AIF is the only format.
AIFF is as useless as WAV when it comes to tagging outside the iStuff world.

azaz44

2008-11-21, 08:27

Hi again everybody

I wanted to give tagging a try, wanted several times and always got stucked, always just at the beginning. Problems are arising everywhere and I actually didn't even make the first step - tagging some files. It seems to me using tags for classical music is only a dream for now, but maybe I am missing something. I would appreciate comments from people who use tags with some amount of recordings (having more than one recording of a particular work). It seems tagging style is individual thing here, so I wonder how you solve problems in your collections.

I tried to use this guide: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Setup_browse_menu_for_classical_music

I tried two taggers - The Godfather and MP3Tag. I guess there must be something better for classical music, but these two allowed me to enter some tags.

Problems:

1. Sorting of the names. The guide suggests using two tags: ARTIST and ARTISTSORT. Besides entering the same data two times, I cannot imagine how it would work if there are more artists than one. They can be separated by colon or, as suggested in this thread, put in many tags. Also what about conductor, shell I add CONDUCTORSORT? COMPOSERSORT? It seems to me the only option is to simply use names like "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus", "Bach, Christian" etc. and live with that. But what do you use?

2. Artists. The guide tells nothing about multiple artists, but there are often many. It is suggested to use some separator and put many in one field, or to use multiple fields with the same name. But then, shell I put signers, pianists, violinist all to the same place? I guess yes, cause there could be any number of any of them (like six pianists playing "The Ride of Valkyries" transcription - extreme example). Well, I would like to know which artist do what. Is it a bass singer or piano player? In some works it is well known, for example I would not suspect Vladimir Horowitz to play Cello in a Sonata for Piano & Cello. But sometimes it's not that obvious and the names not so well known. If I go through entering all these tags (incredible amount of work), then I want to be able to use them, to check who's playing the violin or who's singing in the soprano, because this is the singer I want to listen to more or find more recordings of. But typically there are four signers, so which one is the soprano? Do you have any solution for this?

3. The guide suggests four divisions:

- Composer -> Work -> Song
- Artist,Conductor,Band -> Composer -> Work -> Song
- Composer -> Artist,Conductor,Band -> Work -> Song
- Genre -> Composer -> Work -> Song

These are good examples of how one can access the collection to find some particular work. But in reality, none of them would actually work well enough for me. If I go through selection, I expect to have some recording of one's work at the end, with all movements inside. So I should have one item with several movements, all from the same CD, one recording. Here, in the first example, multiple recordings of the same work are not differentiated. Actually I don't know what suggested plugin would display in this case (as I wrote I always got stuck right at the beginning, didn't try plugins yet), but I cannot imagine it would make any sense. I have multiple recordings of "Requiem" by Mozart, and there's no way I can select which one I want using this particular menu.

The second one seems to be better. But still there are items which are not differentiated by this. Some conductor can record same work several times. Karajan recorded Beethoven symphonies several times. Zimerman recorded Chopin's piano concertos two times. Such recordings could even appear on one CD, if someone releases such to have a comparison. One could possibly add YEAR somewhere to distinguish. But this is not always available (for example in Chopin's Piano Concertos recorded by Hofman, release by VAI). And sometimes even the year might be the same. Schnabel recorded Beethoven's Piano Sonatas and there are multiple versions of these. They are transfered from old tapes and release by different labels - some use more hiss-removing, some less, some different mastering, some are cheaper some more expensive - you have the choice. But then even year of recording is the same. So we would need to differentiate by LABEL as well? Menus get complicated and still we don't know, if we cover everything. Moreover you have to use these YEAR, LABEL, OTHER in all menu setups / scenarios.

The only solution I could find would be to have some special tag, which would be the same for all files of a particular "work-artist-recording-version-label-whatever" (so the thing we normally want to listen to at one time) and unique for the whole collection. Either some random ID, or some readable, unique description of a "version". So all movements of Requiem recorded by Herreweghe in this particular year, released on this particular CD would have some same, but unique value there. But I haven't heard of anyone using such solution.

I just thought even adding the label does not solve the problem, because noone stops the label to release the recording again, but with better mastering for example. Or in different format (DVDA?). I think you get the point what the problem is.

How do you solve this problem in your collections?

------------

Excuse me such long post, but I really got interested. I would be so happy to find out the tagging for classical music can really work. Just got 19 CDs of Mozart Symphonies by Hogwood and have to separate them into directories one for each symphony, rename the files etc. to be able to listen to them in some normal way. Honestly I hate to do this. Bach Cantats by Suzuki are waiting as well. Tagging would be way better :) Not to mention these CDs which have different works, different composers, but cannot be separated for some reason (like pianist recitals) - these are real problem.
Cheers

fakarava2

2008-11-21, 13:45

sebp

2008-11-21, 16:53

How do you solve this problem in your collections?
Hi azaz44,

I'm in the process of ripping a 100 CD box set of operas to FLAC, and given I already own some versions of these operas, here are the "rules of thumb" I've ended up with.
I think they should work quite well with other (ie not operas) classical works.

Disambiguation

First, as you said, there's some possibility you own several versions of a single work.

For disambiguation, I put a "key" in the ALBUM tag, next to the work name :
ALBUM="<WORK TITLE> [<CONDUCTOR LAST NAME>/<REC. LOCATION>/<REC. YEAR>]"

e.g. :
ALBUM="La Damnation de Faust [Markevitch/Paris/1959]"
ALBUM="Lucia di Lammermoor [Schippers/studio/1970]"

I don't think I will ever own two versions of the same work by the same conductor, in the same city, during the same year.
That's why I chose this "key", but YMMV.

Note that once you're done with ALBUM disambiguation, it's easy to use this tag with the CustomBrowse plugin.
Rather than using the Composer -> Work -> Song, you could then use a (better imho) Composer -> Work -> Album view.

Ripping destination

When a CD has an album artist, I rip it to <music directory>/<ALBUMARTIST>/<ALBUM> (I may just use the regular album name in that case).

e.g. :
<music directory>/Paul Tortelier/Bach - Les 6 suites pour violoncelle
<music directory>/Hilary Hahn/Brahms & Stravinsky - Violin concertos

When a CD is (part of) a single work, and there's no album artist, I rip it to <music directory>/<COMPOSER>/<ALBUM> (my ripping software takes care of replacing some characters like slashes).

e.g. :
<music directory>/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/Le Nozze di Figaro (Les Noces de Figaro)
<music directory>/Gustav Mahler/Symphonie n°2 en ut mineur « Résurrection » [Solti_studio_1966]

And when the album holds several works by several composers, I simply rip it to my "Various Artists" directory.

e.g. :
<music directory>/Various Artists/1812 Overture - Capriccio Italien - Wellington's Victory
<music directory>/Various Artists/Les plus beaux opéras du monde

[b]Advanced tagging

FLAC being used to encode my music, I'm free to use the tags I want.
Even if SqueezeCenter does not natively support most of them at the moment, I'm putting high hopes in the future database schema design to help them being usable.

So, whenever possible, I set these tags :
- ALBUMARTIST : if applicable ("Giuliano Carmignola")
- ALBUM : as seen before
- WORK : name of the work ("Die Zauberflöte (La flûte enchantée)")
- OPUS : opus if applicable ("8", "KV 620")
- MOVEMENT : movement if applicable ("Adagio")
- COMPOSER : regular composer name ("Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart")
- COMPOSERSORT : for sorting composer name ("Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus")*
- CONDUCTOR : regular conductor name if applicable ("Herbert von Karajan")
- CONDUCTORSORT : for sorting conductor name ("Karajan, Herbert von")
- ENSEMBLE : orchestra, use several if required ("London Symphony Orchestra")
- CHOIR : choir if applicable, use several if required ("Chœur Symphonique de Paris")
- CHOIRCHIEF : choir chief if any ("John McCarthy")
- PERFORMER : performers, use as many as needed ("Maria Callas")
- LYRICIST : mainly for operas, use several if required ("Jules Barbier")
- LOCATION : city and location for live recordings ("Milano, Teatro alla Scala")
- DATE : date of recording - not album release ("1954", "1966/03")
- LABEL : recording label ("DECCA")
- GENRE : primary genre ("Classique")
- TYPE : type in genre ("Symphonie", "Opéra", "Concerto")

Most of these tags may be used through CustomScan / CustomBrowse, I think (I'm just too lazy to test them now).

For the "who's playing who/what" question, here's something I'm thinking about (ie not tested yet), since Vorbis comments (seem to) allow free tag names :
- "CASTING <PERFORMER>" : which character is the performer acting - mainly for operas (eg. for my recording of Wagner's Valkyries : "CASTING Jon Vickers"="Siegmund")
- "PLAYING <PERFORMER>" : what's the performer playing ("PLAYING Jon Vickers"="Ténor")

That's all folks.
Hoping this'll help and make some sense (40 CDs remain, it's driving me crazy).

Sébastien

azaz44

2008-11-24, 12:08

Thanks Sebastien, that's a lot of good points, and also new things about the opera, which I didn't realize. I don't listen to operas that much - I tried some recordings and seen some of them, but never felt in love. But then, just yesterday, seen Otello and well... I felt in love with opera for good. So this will change I'm sure. So - what I didn't realize before - there are more signers of the same voice (tenor, alto etc.) and singers have roles. Surely it would be great to know who plays who.

About Disambiguation

I love the idea of the key in the album. I just found some album description in the key is a must. This is because some works are published on different CDs in the same form. For example you can have some piano concerto on one CD grouped together with some other concerto of the same pianist, and then you can have the same version of the same concerto, same mastering, same everything on another CD or set of CDs entitled for example "Favorite piano concertos" (like it is with Philips series), or maybe on some "complete edition" of some composer. Then whatever you use for grouping the tracks - composer, work, year, label, anything - the tracks will still get mixed, because it's the same music there. Only album is different.

But anyway, I think I also need some other "key". This is because of possibility of having the same work appearing two times on one CD. I don't have any better example at hand, but I own this CD: http://www.amazon.com/The-Chopin-Concertos/dp/B000003LID/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1227552126&sr=8-1 . There are two Chopin's piano concertos there, interview with the pianist and additionally excerpt from Allegro from one of the concertos in some other version. Obviously I don't want this excerpt to be added to the full concerto when playing it.

Also, I can imagine other problematic CDs. For example having different versions of some small forms on one CD's, like songs. Or having the same work in normal version and piano transcription on the same CD. (Or the opposite - having original piano version of the Pictures at the Exhibition, and then orchestrated version).

So it seems to me each work must have some key defined, with a clear and unique description of this "version" of the work. And the "album" key has to be there as well (again: same version of the work can appear on different CDs and only "album" is different then). Of course the "work version" is not needed for opera.

I'll give this a try as soon as I find some time and write what results I got. I will leave the problem of "who's playing who and what" for later then.

For now just a quick question: what tagging tool is best to do this? Is foobar, suggested by fakarava2, a way to go? It would be great if it could handle a lot of files and subdirectories at once (I would assign composer:bach to thousands of files in one directory, and have less work later with these files) and it would be great if it would have some database of values entered and suggest them. So if I type some work name once ("Die Zauberflöte"), next time it would suggest it. This way I can avoid having multiple versions of the same name (like Zauberflöte here, Zauberfloete there). And of course it must allow multiple tags and custom tag names.

Cheers

sebp

2008-11-25, 13:19

I'm glad you found something useful in my way of ripping and tagging.

But anyway, I think I also need some other "key". This is because of possibility of having the same work appearing two times on one CD. I don't have any better example at hand, but I own this CD: http://www.amazon.com/The-Chopin-Concertos/dp/B000003LID/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1227552126&sr=8-1 . There are two Chopin's piano concertos there, interview with the pianist and additionally excerpt from Allegro from one of the concertos in some other version. Obviously I don't want this excerpt to be added to the full concerto when playing it.
Well, I simply don't rip comment/interview tracks.
Even if I did, I would use the same strategy than for excerpts (that I don't want to listen to either) : use a TYPE=Comment or a custom tag in the file (say "EXCERPT"="1"), that I would filter out.

Also, I can imagine other problematic CDs. For example having different versions of some small forms on one CD's, like songs. Or having the same work in normal version and piano transcription on the same CD. (Or the opposite - having original piano version of the Pictures at the Exhibition, and then orchestrated version).
Once again, you're free to set any custom tag you want, and filter them out.
What about a "DERIVATIVE" tag ?

So it seems to me each work must have some key defined, with a clear and unique description of this "version" of the work. And the "album" key has to be there as well (again: same version of the work can appear on different CDs and only "album" is different then). Of course the "work version" is not needed for opera.
It's not that easy, even operas can have several versions ! :)
For example, take Boris Godunov : Mussorgski wrote a first version in 1869, and another one in 1872.
FWIW, I would use a custom VERSION tag to keep these apart.

For now just a quick question: what tagging tool is best to do this? Is foobar, suggested by fakarava2, a way to go?
Windows not being my cup of tea, I can't help you here.

It would be great if it could handle a lot of files and subdirectories at once (I would assign composer:bach to thousands of files in one directory, and have less work later with these files)
I think most serious taggers will.

and it would be great if it would have some database of values entered and suggest them. So if I type some work name once ("Die Zauberflöte"), next time it would suggest it. This way I can avoid having multiple versions of the same name (like Zauberflöte here, Zauberfloete there).
Very nice feature I wish my tagger had.

azaz44

2008-11-26, 04:30

Hi again
First some answers, than report from the battlefield.

Well, I simply don't rip comment/interview tracks.
Even if I did, I would use the same strategy than for excerpts (that I don't want to listen to either) : use a TYPE=Comment or a custom tag in the file (say "EXCERPT"="1"), that I would filter out.

Of course I want these things to be included somewhere, not filtered out. Comment / interview is not a problem, but this excerpt is. But I tried with WORKVERSION tag, which is like "Hogwood, 1997" (for Mozart Symphonies I mentioned) and it seems to work well. This is also more descriptive to me than the album name, which includes more information, like composer, so is long to read.

It's not that easy, even operas can have several versions ! :)
For example, take Boris Godunov : Mussorgski wrote a first version in 1869, and another one in 1872.
FWIW, I would use a custom VERSION tag to keep these apart.

Of course there are different versions with opera as well. But I think these would appear always on separate albums (operas are not release together with other works), so your ALBUM tag separates them well (so you can have "(1989 version)" in the album somewhere). Well, unless someone releases an opera recording, and adds - as a bonus track - some different version of one aria, differently composed or performed.

Now about my try

I tried with 19CD box of Mozart symphonies by Hogwood. It seems to be a good start - a lot of music to organize and easy enough - no soloists for now, just works, composer, conductor, orchestra.

Setting up the plugins was not that easy, but they work at the end. I installed CustomScan, CustomBrowse and MultiLibrary and mostly followed the guide from the wiki, for browsing classical music.

I made one menu for custom browse, which is:

COMPOSER - WORK - WORKVERSION - ALBUM

And well, new problems are arising :) Sooner or later I'll need some solutions for the following:

1. With all this WORKVERSION and ALBUM fuss I hoped the plugin will have some option to not show this menu item if there's only one choice available. So I choose composer, work, and then I'm directly at the list of tracks / movements, if there's only one version and one album I own. If there are more, then I have to select it. But I cannot find any option to do this. And the menus will get more deep at the end. Am I missing something?

2. For some composers, I have maybe only three works recorded. For others a massive amount - hundreds of works to scroll through. A way to go would be to add GENRE somewhere (Symphony, String Quartet, Opera). So I choose COMPOSER - GENRE - WORK and so on. But It makes no sense to have GENRE for these composers, which I own three works in total. Is there any way for the menu item to appear only, if the amount of items to be displayed is greater than XX? Like, I put genre there, but it should be displayed only if the number of works is >= 20. If it is less, I get a list of works instead. Any idea?

3. Similar problem. I have 104 symphonies of Haydn coming from one CD box, one conductor and orchestra. Having them in one menu is of course a problem, imagine scrolling to the one with number 50. One solution would be to add some submenu which would divide them to groups of - let's say - 20 items, but again - the menu showing up only if there are too many items. Any idea how to do this?

Another idea - I can use some WORKGROUP tag, so I can put some useful information there (ie. "Paris Symphonies", "London Symphonies", "Early Symphonies 1-10" etc.) and thus get some division which makes more sense, than just splitting for groups of 25 items each. Then I can add WORKGROUP to the menus. But then again - I only want to select it if it is needed. For Beethoven's nine symphonies I don't need this. So I need some solution to p. 1 or p. 2 first. The same problem will show up with Bach Cantatas, there are about 200 of them.

I'd love to get some help about all these problems.

I also met some minor problems which I wonder if you know any solution for, but these are far less important to me. These are:

- the customscan seems to hang slim server completely for the time of scanning,
- I put "Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus" in the composer tag, but I always get "-Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus" in menus everywhere (it adds "-").

Any ideas?

UPDATE: I found why I get "-Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus". It is taken from some other CD, where it is in this form, and SqueezeCenter groups it together with the one without "-". Although in this other CD it is placed as ARTIST, not CONDUCTOR, so I'm not sure why it's used at all, but I know where to look for.

erland

2008-11-26, 23:16

1. With all this WORKVERSION and ALBUM fuss I hoped the plugin will have some option to not show this menu item if there's only one choice available. So I choose composer, work, and then I'm directly at the list of tracks / movements, if there's only one version and one album I own. If there are more, then I have to select it. But I cannot find any option to do this. And the menus will get more deep at the end. Am I missing something?

2. For some composers, I have maybe only three works recorded. For others a massive amount - hundreds of works to scroll through. A way to go would be to add GENRE somewhere (Symphony, String Quartet, Opera). So I choose COMPOSER - GENRE - WORK and so on. But It makes no sense to have GENRE for these composers, which I own three works in total. Is there any way for the menu item to appear only, if the amount of items to be displayed is greater than XX? Like, I put genre there, but it should be displayed only if the number of works is >= 20. If it is less, I get a list of works instead. Any idea?

3. Similar problem. I have 104 symphonies of Haydn coming from one CD box, one conductor and orchestra. Having them in one menu is of course a problem, imagine scrolling to the one with number 50. One solution would be to add some submenu which would divide them to groups of - let's say - 20 items, but again - the menu showing up only if there are too many items. Any idea how to do this?

Most Custom Browse menus have a static menu dept, the only exception is the "Tags" menu (based on the "Dynamic Tags" menu type).

The "Tags" menu will let you browse your library in any order you like but the disadvantage is that you need to select what to browse next at each menu level which still creates a bit deep menu hierarchy.

The "Tags" menu requires you to use both "Custom Tag" and "Mixed Tag" scanning modules.

It's possible to create more dynamic menus also for the rest of the menus, but it requires A LOT of configuration and you will need to manually customize the menu XML configuration. The "Genres/Subgenres" menu type is an example of a more dynamic menu. I wouldn't recommend trying this unless you have worked with XML and SQL before and is ready to learn.

Another idea - I can use some WORKGROUP tag, so I can put some useful information there (ie. "Paris Symphonies", "London Symphonies", "Early Symphonies 1-10" etc.) and thus get some division which makes more sense, than just splitting for groups of 25 items each. Then I can add WORKGROUP to the menus. But then again - I only want to select it if it is needed. For Beethoven's nine symphonies I don't need this. So I need some solution to p. 1 or p. 2 first. The same problem will show up with Bach Cantatas, there are about 200 of them.

The dynamic behavior you are looking for is only somewhat possible through the "Tags" menu or a menu based on the "Dynamic Tags" menu template.

I'd love to get some help about all these problems.

- the customscan seems to hang slim server completely for the time of scanning,

Which scanning modules have you enabled to automatically be executed during automatic rescans in Custom Scan ?
Is it just the Custom Tag and Mixed Tag scanning modules or do you also have Last FM or Amazon scanning modules enabled ?

Last FM/Amazon modules will cause SqueezeCenter hang and at the moment there is no easy way around that.

Custom Tag should not completely hang SqueezeCenter but it will slow down SqueezeCenter a bit. It works the same as scanning did in SlimServer 6.3 and earlier.

Mixed Tag might hang SqueezeCenter but it should be a fairly short time unless you have an extremely large library.

If the Custom Tags scanning module completely hangs SqueezeCenter, it would be interesting to know if it is during the whole scanning process of this module or if it's just in the beginning or just in the end. You can see if the Custom Tags scanning module is currently running by looking in the Custom Scan settings page during scanning.

azaz44

2008-11-27, 11:24

Most Custom Browse menus have a static menu dept, the only exception is the "Tags" menu (based on the "Dynamic Tags" menu type).

The "Tags" menu will let you browse your library in any order you like but the disadvantage is that you need to select what to browse next at each menu level which still creates a bit deep menu hierarchy.

The "Tags" menu requires you to use both "Custom Tag" and "Mixed Tag" scanning modules.

It's possible to create more dynamic menus also for the rest of the menus, but it requires A LOT of configuration and you will need to manually customize the menu XML configuration. The "Genres/Subgenres" menu type is an example of a more dynamic menu. I wouldn't recommend trying this unless you have worked with XML and SQL before and is ready to learn.

Hi Erland and thank you for good starting points. It gets more and more complicated, but I already spent some time playing with and tagging, so let me see how far I can go. I have some knowledge about XML and SQL.

I checked both examples and "Genres/Subgenres" seems to be some help for me. Using similar way I created menu for "Composer -> Genre -> Work -> WorkVersion -> [tracks] in a way the WorkVersion is only shown, if more than one choice is available. I did this by putting two menus as a WorkVersion, one is showing all WORKVERSION items, another one is showing all tracks (like it is in Genres/Subgenres). The first part is only displayed, if there are more than one WORKVERSION, the second part in the opposite case. This is done by adding a check to WHERE clause, which does SELECT subquery to see how many WORKVERSIONs we have. And well, it works great so far. I think I can use this for other problems as well, like the one with genres shown or not, dependant on number of works.

But I wonder if this is a way to go, or is there any other trick? I wonder, because this way everytime I use this trick at some menu level, I get two menu branches which needs to be made separately - this leads to a long and complicated XML file.

Or shell I rather investigate Dynamic Tags (did not check how they are made yet)?

Which scanning modules have you enabled to automatically be executed during automatic rescans in Custom Scan ?
Is it just the Custom Tag and Mixed Tag scanning modules or do you also have Last FM or Amazon scanning modules enabled ?

It seems to be different today, so maybe it was some false alarm. Maybe because my library was never scanned before. I only run CustomScan and MixedScan. The library has about 25000 files. It runs this way:

- running custom scan hangs the server for about 1 minute (no webpage updates, the squeezebox clock and display hangs). Then it works fine, and the scanning is running for some longer time.

- running mixed scan hangs for about one minute, that it works about one minute, than it hangs for about two minutes, then it seems to work again.

I would need to make detailed test if you need this info, because it takes some time. When mixedscan hangs, it is mysqld process taking cpu, not the squeezecenter.

Cheers

erland

2008-11-29, 23:26

But I wonder if this is a way to go, or is there any other trick? I wonder, because this way everytime I use this trick at some menu level, I get two menu branches which needs to be made separately - this leads to a long and complicated XML file.

Yes, that's the problem with dynamic menus and Custom Browse, the XML gets more complicated. To avoid that you will need to handle the logic in perl code instead and generate the XML dynamically, this is what happens with the Dynamic Tags menu.

Or shell I rather investigate Dynamic Tags (did not check how they are made yet)?

I would suggest that you have a look at the Dynamic Tags menu to see if it works good enough since it's a lot easier than creating customized XML menus.

- running custom scan hangs the server for about 1 minute (no webpage updates, the squeezebox clock and display hangs). Then it works fine, and the scanning is running for some longer time.

- running mixed scan hangs for about one minute, that it works about one minute, than it hangs for about two minutes, then it seems to work again.

I would need to make detailed test if you need this info, because it takes some time. When mixedscan hangs, it is mysqld process taking cpu, not the squeezecenter.

Ok, it sounds like the problem might be the synchronization phase that synchronizes the Custom Tag/Mixed Tag data with the standard SqueezeCenter tables.

I'll add it to the list of things to investigate when I get the time, it won't happen in the close future though.

If you like to help, it would help if you could:
1. Turn on debug logging on plugin.customscan in SqueezeCenter Settings/Logging and make sure to also click the checkbox that makes sure the setting survives next SqueezeCenter restart.
2. Restart SqueezeCenter
3. Post the log (found in SqueezeCenter Settings/Logging) here after the server has completely started.
4. Turn off the debug logging you enabled in step 1.

If debug logging is enabled at server startup, you should get a number of messages from Custom Scan that tells you how long time each synchronization step in Custom Scan takes. There is probably one of the synchronization steps that causes the problem. The synchronization operation is performed both during a rescan and directly after a SqueezeCenter startup.

If SqueezeCenter doesn't take long time to start, the problem might be somewhere else. However, the above log is still interesting since it will show some performance statistics from a large library.

azaz44

2008-12-02, 11:10

Yes, that's the problem with dynamic menus and Custom Browse, the XML gets more complicated. To avoid that you will need to handle the logic in perl code instead and generate the XML dynamically, this is what happens with the Dynamic Tags menu.

I would suggest that you have a look at the Dynamic Tags menu to see if it works good enough since it's a lot easier than creating customized XML menus.

It looks more complicated, but I think I'll try. I leave for about two weeks and will not be able to play around with my music server, but maybe I'll make some tests locally with a laptop. Otherwise I will investigate this later. Thanks for help.

If you like to help, it would help if you could:
1. Turn on debug logging on plugin.customscan in SqueezeCenter Settings/Logging and make sure to also click the checkbox that makes sure the setting survives next SqueezeCenter restart.
2. Restart SqueezeCenter
3. Post the log (found in SqueezeCenter Settings/Logging) here after the server has completely started.
4. Turn off the debug logging you enabled in step 1.

If debug logging is enabled at server startup, you should get a number of messages from Custom Scan that tells you how long time each synchronization step in Custom Scan takes. There is probably one of the synchronization steps that causes the problem. The synchronization operation is performed both during a rescan and directly after a SqueezeCenter startup.

If SqueezeCenter doesn't take long time to start, the problem might be somewhere else. However, the above log is still interesting since it will show some performance statistics from a large library.

I've set up the options, stopped the server, cleared log files and started again. Below is what I got. The startup took about one minute, which is longer comparing to what I had before I started to use any tags.

I also got a new problem - sometimes, when I try to play music, everything hangs and I have to wait one minute. This happens even if I don't use custom browse, but navigate through files using Browse -> Music Folder. Typically I go to the first subdir and it hangs. Then mysqld is taking CPU. I think it might not be related to any scanning, because I scheduled scanning to be done at 4 am at night, and this happens during the day sometimes.

Anyway, below is what I got. If you need any other logs, like from scanning, I can provide than in two weeks when I come back.

[08-12-02 18:55:09.2993] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (78) Checking if customscan_track_attributes database table exists
[08-12-02 18:55:10.6568] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (114) Checking MySQL version
[08-12-02 18:55:10.6592] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (122) Got MySQL 5.0.22-community-nt
[08-12-02 18:55:10.6604] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (142) Checking datatype on customscan_track_attributes
[08-12-02 18:55:10.6632] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (174) Checking charsets on tables
[08-12-02 18:55:12.0488] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (188) Got tracks charset = utf8 and collate =
[08-12-02 18:55:12.1129] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::updateCharSet (451) Got customscan_contributor_attributes charset = utf8 and collate =
[08-12-02 18:55:12.1635] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::updateCharSet (451) Got customscan_album_attributes charset = utf8 and collate =
[08-12-02 18:55:12.1697] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::updateCharSet (451) Got customscan_track_attributes charset = utf8 and collate =
[08-12-02 18:55:12.1710] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (208) Checking if indexes is needed for customscan_album_attributes
[08-12-02 18:55:12.1764] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (253) Checking if indexes is needed for customscan_contributor_attributes
[08-12-02 18:55:12.1804] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::initDatabase (297) Checking if indexes is needed for customscan_track_attributes
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2305] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1720) CustomScan: Synchronizing Custom Scan data, please wait...
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2313] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1723) Starting to update musicbrainz id's in custom scan artist data based on names
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2787] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1743) Finished updating musicbrainz id's in custom scan artist data based on names, updated 0 items : It took 0.047073 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2796] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1749) Starting to update custom scan artist data based on musicbrainz ids
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2827] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1768) Finished updating custom scan artist data based on musicbrainz ids, updated 0 items : It took 0.002952 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2836] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1775) Starting to update custom scan artist data based on names
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2890] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1794) Finished updating custom scan artist data based on names, updated 0 items : It took 0.005167 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:13.2899] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1801) Starting to update musicbrainz id's in custom scan album data based on titles
[08-12-02 18:55:13.6445] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1821) Finished updating musicbrainz id's in custom scan album data based on titles, updated 0 items : It took 0.354284 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:13.6454] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1827) Starting to update custom scan album data based on musicbrainz ids
[08-12-02 18:55:13.6599] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1846) Finished updating custom scan album data based on musicbrainz ids, updated 0 items : It took 0.014196 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:13.6611] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1852) Starting to update custom scan album data based on titles
[08-12-02 18:55:13.6673] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1871) Finished updating custom scan album data based on titles, updated 0 items : It took 0.005993 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:13.6682] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1877) Starting to update musicbrainz id's in custom scan track data based on urls
[08-12-02 18:55:14.4823] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1897) Finished updating musicbrainz id's in custom scan track data based on urls, updated 0 items : It took 0.814139 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:14.4827] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1903) Starting to update custom scan track data based on musicbrainz ids
[08-12-02 18:55:36.3737] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1922) Finished updating custom scan track data based on musicbrainz ids, updated 0 items : It took 21.89076 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:36.3747] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1928) Starting to update custom scan track data based on urls
[08-12-02 18:55:57.1740] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1947) Finished updating custom scan track data based on urls, updated 0 items : It took 20.799095 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:57.1749] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1949) CustomScan: Synchronization finished
[08-12-02 18:55:57.1760] Plugins::CustomScan::Plugin::installHook (121) Installing Custom Scan hooks
[08-12-02 18:56:05.0548] Plugins::CustomBrowse::Plugin::postinitPlugin (1103) Failed to load Custom Browse:
Couldn't rename C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SqueezeCenter\Cache\FileCache\CustomBrowse\2. 5\Files\e\a\a\ExSVeGwmqh to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SqueezeCenter\Cache\FileCache\CustomBrowse\2. 5\Files\e\a\a\eaa6aac96c64a5ab4eafa37518f11aafbec5 936b: Permission denied at /<C:\PROGRA~1\SQUEEZ~1\server\SQUEEZ~1.EXE>Cache/FileBackend.pm line 580.

Cheers and thanks for the plugins, as I now found you developed them :)

erland

2008-12-02, 12:19

Anyway, below is what I got. If you need any other logs, like from scanning, I can provide than in two weeks when I come back.

Thanks, the following rows in the log results in a 40 second hang, this also happens during scanning so I suspect it is causing the problems you see. It takes longer if the database tables contains more information. These operations also happens during scanning with any Custom Scan modules.

[08-12-02 18:55:14.4827] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1903) Starting to update custom scan track data based on musicbrainz ids
[08-12-02 18:55:36.3737] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1922) Finished updating custom scan track data based on musicbrainz ids, updated 0 items : It took 21.89076 seconds
[08-12-02 18:55:36.3747] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1928) Starting to update custom scan track data based on urls
[08-12-02 18:55:57.1740] Plugins::CustomScan::Scanner::refreshData (1947) Finished updating custom scan track data based on urls, updated 0 items : It took 20.799095 seconds

azaz44

2009-10-22, 02:22

Classical music lovers, let me refresh this thread.

----------------

First of all, the tagging system - I gave up with this. The plugins from Erland are great, but there are too many problems for classical music to overcome and I also met some performance problems (freezing) which led me to disabling the whole scanning and use folder/file selection. And honestly, thinking deeper about the thing, I think tags are not the way to go and I will always hit some limits. I had some ideas how the perfect system could look like, but only in dream phase, didn't develop anything :)

Also, I think ordering lots of classical music the way you want cannot be entirely automatic. What if you want to have all Mozart works ordered by genre (syphonies, string quartets, operas etc), but prefer to have all Bach works ordered by life period (Weimar, Leipzig etc.)? What works for one composer, will not work for another one, depending on period, amout of recordings you have, composer specifics... Can't even think about a system which can provide such functionality automatically, basing on some tags. I think some semi-automatic thing would be a way to go. Of course my expectations could be very high, but I think that's how it is if the music collection is very big (that's why you need organizing, right?). And especially if you think about this incredible effort you need to make to tag the whole collection properly - I would like to get something great out of it.

But anyway this doesn't work, so some manual way of ordering your music files must be good as well.

----------------

Shortly what I do now: as described in this thread, what I typically do is I split CDs to folders with 'work' names (like Symphony 1), than put tracks in proper folders etc. I make folder structure independent of what is on the CDs. This lets me have all Mozart symphonies ordered as I want (Symphony 1, Symphony 2 etc) instead of tha way they are recorded (CD1 9 tracks, CD2 10 tracks etc). Disadvantages: (1) lot of work to do; (2) only one way of folder structure allowed (cannot put same files to another folder with, let's say, 'greatest symphonies of the classical era' (3) I break original CD structure, possibly loosing track of what I ripped and what is what in future; (4) some CDs cannot be split easily, ie.: a piano recital contains works of different composers - so tracks should go to different folders, but you still want to listen to the whole recital sometimes; (5) I split the CD, but where to keep all the other files, like the scanned booklets which I hope the future 201X Controller will be able to display? (6) etc etc.. I think there are more problems.

Now, I found the way to make it better is by using Windows Explorer Shortcuts. I can put the ripped CD anywhere, deep inside some directory and not change it in any way. Now I can create folder structures somewhere else, anyway I like, and put shortcuts to the tracks in these folders. And these are the folders I would use to select the music.

For example I put all the CDs from one box, with Haydn's String Quartets somewhere, where I'm not going to access it typically (although I could). Then I create real folders I'm going to use, to select the music. One would be in Classical Music/Composers/Haydn/String Quartets/Band Name)/No. 1 in G etc. And I put shortcuts to proper files in these directories. Then I can create another one: Classical Music/Genres/String Quartets/Haydn/ and put shortcuts to the same files there.

The SC works well this way, I think. The only problem I found is it always displays original file name when you select it, not the shortcut file name. So you cannot have different track names in "Classical Music/Composers" than in "Classical Music/String Quartets". Maybe I can live with this.

I tested it on just one CD. Works well. My question is if anyone else has any experience with this? Do you use it?

I would like to know possible problems, limitations and potential consequences before I start reorganizing my entire collection of music.

Cheers and thanks for reading such long post to the end :)

fakarava2

2009-10-22, 03:42

I have stopped playing with Erland's plugins ; classical is too difficult to tag.
I often use the "Lazy search" plugin instead.

My musical collection is divided among 3 HDs, and tagging is done with Foobar (and sometimes MP3tag).
I do not change or use the filenames.
I fill the "composer", "band", and "conductor" tags.
The "artist" tag is used for the soloist(s), or the conductor if it is a symphonic work.

As the SC cannot use the "composer" tag, I have renamed all my albums in %composer% - %album% - %artist%

The real problem, IMHO, is that the Squeezecenter uses a too restricted number of tags.
My dream is a Foobar-like controller...

Teus de Jong

2009-10-22, 04:54

...
As the SC cannot use the "composer" tag, I have renamed all my albums in %composer% - %album% - %artist%
...

SC can -- sort of -- use the composer tag. If you set as preference that composer should be treated as artist, all composers are in the list of artists. So if you have Beethoven's sonatas played by Gilels, you will find them at Beethoven as well as at Gilels.

I think everyone organizes his classical music differently. I have posted a long message about how I work, but I just can't find it right now. But I find azaz44's way much too convoluted. I think working with tags is nicer and works better.

Besides that, I'm using muso (www.klarita.net; Windows only), which slowly develops a nice way to display classical material with tags on screen.

Teus

azaz44

2009-10-22, 05:37

SC can -- sort of -- use the composer tag. If you set as preference that composer should be treated as artist, all composers are in the list of artists. So if you have Beethoven's sonatas played by Gilels, you will find them at Beethoven as well as at Gilels.

I think everyone organizes his classical music differently. I have posted a long message about how I work, but I just can't find it right now. But I find azaz44's way much too convoluted. I think working with tags is nicer and works better.

I would be happy to work with tags, I just find it not solving the problems if the collection is big and has so many information, like classical music. Plus I would expect a lot of possibilities, like finding works by this and that, that's why I would put all this information there. But even easier tasks are a problem for me.

I think if you tell me what solution you use, I'll tell what problem I would get with this solution and my recordings immediately.

Besides that, I'm using muso (www.klarita.net; Windows only), which slowly develops a nice way to display classical material with tags on screen.

Thanks for the info. I'll check it out although it looks like the main idea already focuses on popular music.

Cheers

volpone

2009-10-22, 05:46

SC can -- sort of -- use the composer tag. If you set as preference that composer should be treated as artist, all composers are in the list of artists...
Yes, composers seems a crucial access tag and it's not easy to browse by composers when mixed with performers, orchestras and conductors !!!
I know classical music is not a major musical genre for SB targeted audience, but however, seems very amazing to me that composer menu (with composersort support) is not a SqueezeBox standard feature.

Does this "basic feature" still not available with 7.4 ?

NB: Erland's excellents custom plugins are very powerfull but needs some time and skills to setup. I presume a lot of Squeezebox users (Logitech clients) are not able to manage these plugins.

erland

2009-10-22, 09:21

It would be possible to make some plugins specifically for classical music if we could just decide:
- What tags to use
- What browse menus we want

Custom Scan/Custom Browse is getting too complex to setup and too resource intensive because they use a generic approach that and leave the configuration to the user. If we could decide on what we want it would be possible to do something that's very easy to setup and less resource intensive.

The performance during the scanning won't be possible to improve a lot unless https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6023 is implemented.

However, the browsing speed could be improved a lot if we could decide on exactly which browsing menus we like.

I can see two possible solutions regarding browsing:
- We decide on a fixed structure based on a fixed set of tags
- We decide on a completely dynamic structure similar to the "Tags" menu provided with Custom Browse after you have scanned your music with the "Mixed Tag" scanning module in Custom Scan plugin.

volpone

2009-10-22, 09:43

It would be possible to make some plugins specifically for classical music if we could just decide:
- What tags to use
- What browse menus we want.
Sure, but i presume the "decision" will not be easy !
IMHO the basic and pragmatic is: COMPOSERSORT > WORK|ALBUM > ARTIST > SONG even if i'm using a much more complex schema.

Custom Scan/Custom Browse is getting too complex to setup and too resource intensive because they use a generic approach that and leave the configuration to the user. If we could decide on what we want it would be possible to do something that's very easy to setup and less resource intensive.
I totally agree.
Sort of "light and easy version for everybody", not exclusive from the much more powerfull and complex actual Custom Scan and Browse approach (for involved "experts").

Teus de Jong

2009-10-22, 13:08

...
Thanks for the info. I'll check it out although it looks like the main idea already focuses on popular music.

It has evolved. There is a special classical music setting where composers are the central organizational units. Above that, classical genres can be defined. Take a look at it.

Teus

azaz44

2009-10-23, 02:40

It would be possible to make some plugins specifically for classical music if we could just decide:
- What tags to use
- What browse menus we want

I'm afraid this deciding is not so easy. That's really a lot of information - conductors, orchestras, choirs, soloists with all their instruments (piano, violin, soprano voice or alto etc.) and possible roles (in opera). Structuring this well is already a big task, and some things are complicated to store in TAGs (like soloists, which have instrument and role). Then you have this strange problem all the time - each file has a tag, but as soon as you use tags, the files are not related to each other anymore. You have to connect tracks from the same work again, with some sort of TAG matching. And if you make small mistake, the system will play tracks from completely different folders as one work, because composer, work, orchestra and the solois were the same, while it's a different recording made in a different year, but the year was just not filled in the tag. Obviousely different year means different interpretation in classical and cannot be mixed.

But it would be great if someone starts with anything, maybe slowly it would develop somewere :)

Anyway - back to my initial question. Anyone using these Explorer Shortcuts?

HalleysComet

2009-10-23, 08:46

I would love to be able to access my classical music collection in a more detailed fashion too. Right now I have composers and artists as multiple artists, so I can find composer's work & artists work. It's barely adequate with dozens of performances of the same work by different orchestras and conductors. I also use detailed genre categories that help me separate symphonies from sonatas, etc.

At the least, I'd like to be able to have:

1) composer view: look at works by specific composers
2) conductor view: examine all the recordings for a specific conductor
3) ensemble view: see the recordings for a specific orchestra or ensemble
4) work view: be able to easily compare performances of the same work by different orchestras or conductors

I could give up detail and search capability for movements, instruments, soloists, recording labels, choirs, opus, etc. if I could just have these five tags at the top of the menu structure!

Just my $.02. I'm currently fussing with Erland's plug-ins, but have not yet got them working right for me. I am not a programmer, just a music-lover!

fakarava2

2009-10-23, 08:59

I agree with you.
MUSO (www.klarita.net) seems interesting, but the tagging facility is too poor (and it does not work with winamp on my desktop setup).

musictappy

2009-10-23, 13:40

I agree, classical music is indeed full of tagging issues. My classical collection is relatively modest, but even for a medium size collection things would be improved greatly if Squeezecenter (and the controller) allowed you to browse by Composer (definitely using composersort) and preferably also conductor.

Currently I am able to do this on my iPod, and it is so much easier than lumping the composers in with the artists. Adding a Composer section with composersort tag is at the top of my wishlist for my squeezebox!

Pat

fakarava2

2009-10-23, 14:17

Yes, of course.
And why not soloist, band, conductor, engineer, too ?
Or add any new tag you can invent, and add fine icons, like in MUSO.

I cheated by adding the composer in front of the album title, then followed by the main artist (very easy to do in bulk with Foobar).
So, my albums have this pattern, e.g. :
Martinu - Symphonies N°1 & 5 - Thomson B.
Schubert - D840 - Uchida M.
Vivaldi - Concerti con molti istromenti - Sardelli F-M.

A search in the album field is then easy
And very amusing with the "Lazy Search" Plugin.

volpone

2009-10-23, 14:18

... Adding a Composer section with composersort tag is at the top of my wishlist for my squeezebox !
I totally agree. Seems very strange and amazing that this "basic feature" still missing ...

Chrobrego

2009-10-24, 00:32

fakarava2

2009-10-24, 00:44

...So these softwares should be configurable according to any listener needs.

azaz44

2009-10-24, 02:34

azaz44

2009-10-24, 02:47

It has evolved. There is a special classical music setting where composers are the central organizational units. Above that, classical genres can be defined. Take a look at it.

I tested 'muso' yesterday. It looks great and seems to be great help, although it needs to develop further. What I'd like to see in it is some way of having central server (maybe it could be served on a web server at the machine, where the SC runs), or at least a possibility to put its database on some network path. So if I configure everything on one laptop (mine), add a lot of covers etc. it would also run from another (my gfs for example).

Also classical functionality needs extending, but it's looking great so far. I like a database of composer names defined to make common naming and spelling, I think it should be the same with all the works...

The reason for which I'm rather not going to use it is: I don't want to use the laptop to select the music. I find some time to listen to the music, the laptop is not used anymore, although it's often just half meter away and turned on. Concentrating on the music, away from email, web, and all these things which get you out of music. And I want to select it with SBC remote or some clever controller, which I don't own yet. I think for people which listen to the music using the PC at the same time it is great.

I can imagine same application hosted on a web server (or simply having some www access), then some clever device with a web browser used as the controller, and the look which is small screen friendly...

Teus de Jong

2009-10-24, 03:39

azaz44,

I agree with most of what you say. Some remarks:
1. A method of duplicating the database and settings to other computers is in the works I've heard. But it will always be Windows only.
2. It's still in beta and has evolved in a great way (the whole new classical section was developed only in the last months).
3. Nevertheless, like you, I mostly want just to listen without any computer. But for that I can live with my setup putting composers in the artists list and picking the music I want to hear with my controller.

Let's not forget that besides special tagging needs, classical music listening also means a different listening mode:
1. What's the use of random playlists or MusicIP or anything like that for classical music? Who wants to hear, let's say, the first part of a string quartet from Beethoven followed by a part of a cantata from Bach followed by a part of a piano sonata from whatever. (BTW, you could make very funny lists that way.)
2. Classical music works tend to be longer. My evening is very much filled up with the second symphony of Mahler (not to mention my nerves are wrecked -- in a good way -- at that point).

Teus

Chrobrego

2009-10-24, 04:26

So what will SC show if you have two different interpretations and you start with ARTIST(Composer)->Album(Work)? Both recordings have both of these set to the same value.

I ended up also with several interpretations of the same work, but finally only one is enough for me in most of the time. So I have a prefered interpretation that I tag with this schema. The other interpretations I add a prefix (ZZ-) to the Album (Work) so that secondary interpretations are to be found at the end of the list. I admit this is not an elegant way of tagging but it has the advantage that when I want to listen a set of flute sonatas for instance, I am not obliged to listen the variants of each sonata before listening to the next one. I just select the collection (=genre) and start playing. It works fine!

That's where more problems start...
Classifying intepretes is a secondary problem in my opinion, it is not completely necessary

But all these discussions make me want to try some tagging again :)

Using this methodology has the advantage to comply with standard and does neet to tweek you music player!

jimbo45

2009-10-24, 15:33

Since you seem to be ripping your CDs to FLAC, you should consider using multiple ARTIST tags rather than one w/ separator.
Non uniqueness of tags in Vorbis comments (that FLAC uses) is a very nice feature, I'm using it with most of my classical/jazz music.

See there (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Setup_browse_menu_for_classical_music#Overview), Erland plugins are your friends.

Hi there
The EASIEST way to rip CD's to FLAC is to use something like WINAMP as it will connect in any case to the Gracenote DB and you'll get all your tracks decently labelled with the correct tags etc.

Squeeze center will play these just fine.

I don't know about things like Itunes as I never use them.

Incidentally what I do for recording from the radio etc is to record in WAV and then edit to convert to FLAC. No problem converting from one lossless format to another. I've plenty of disk space so using WAV for the initial recording is fine.

(Using the Nero Mega plugin you can create your own Audio CD's from your flac tracks as well - so long as you don't exceed the 650 - 700 MB limit on an audio CD. I use this slightly roundabout way as I still like MINIDISCS and I run Simple Burner which copies the audio CD to a MD. Hi-MD can copy around 7 CD's to a Minidisc which is enough for me for a few days listening -- much much better quality than achievable with highly compressed MP3's - and is gapless too.

Cheers
jimbo

erland

2009-10-25, 22:45

I'm afraid this deciding is not so easy. That's really a lot of information - conductors, orchestras, choirs, soloists with all their instruments (piano, violin, soprano voice or alto etc.) and possible roles (in opera). Structuring this well is already a big task, and some things are complicated to store in TAGs (like soloists, which have instrument and role). Then you have this strange problem all the time - each file has a tag, but as soon as you use tags, the files are not related to each other anymore. You have to connect tracks from the same work again, with some sort of TAG matching. And if you make small mistake, the system will play tracks from completely different folders as one work, because composer, work, orchestra and the solois were the same, while it's a different recording made in a different year, but the year was just not filled in the tag. Obviousely different year means different interpretation in classical and cannot be mixed.

But it would be great if someone starts with anything, maybe slowly it would develop somewere :)

If we look at the standard Squeezebox Server scanning code, it already handles these tags:
- COMPOSER
- CONDUCTOR
- BAND (which should be possible to use for Orchestra)
- ARTIST (which should be possible to use for solists)
- ALBUM (which should be possible to use for work)
- GENRE (which should be possible to use to indicate which music that's classical and also which type/genre of classical music it is)
- TITLE (which is suitable to use for movement)

It would also be possible to use ALBUMARTIST in combination with ARTIST to specify main artist/solist(ALBUMARTIST) and other contributors(ARTIST).

By using standard tags it gets easier because then we don't have to modify the scanning process which isn't suitable for third party additions at the moment.

Is the above tag usage above suitable to base browse menus on ?
I assume we want to separate classical music from other kind of music so the browse menus only show classical music ?

What browse menus would you like to have based on these tags ?

I'm not sure there is a good way to handle instruments in tagging because they needs to be tied to a specific artist, at least unless we only handle instrument for solists and assume there is only one solist on a specific movement. Is instruments important information to make this usable ?

fakarava2

2009-10-26, 01:58

If we look at the standard Squeezebox Server scanning code, it already handles these tags:
- COMPOSER
- CONDUCTOR
- BAND (which should be possible to use for Orchestra)
- ARTIST (which should be possible to use for solists)
- ALBUM (which should be possible to use for work)
- GENRE (which should be possible to use to indicate which music that's classical and also which type/genre of classical music it is)
- TITLE (which is suitable to use for movement)

It would also be possible to use ALBUMARTIST in combination with ARTIST to specify main artist/solist(ALBUMARTIST) and other contributors(ARTIST).

By using standard tags it gets easier because then we don't have to modify the scanning process which isn't suitable for third party additions at the moment.

Is the above tag usage above suitable to base browse menus on ?
I assume we want to separate classical music from other kind of music so the browse menus only show classical music ?

What browse menus would you like to have based on these tags ?

I'm not sure there is a good way to handle instruments in tagging because they needs to be tied to a specific artist, at least unless we only handle instrument for solists and assume there is only one solist on a specific movement. Is instruments important information to make this usable ?

A classical music listener could even need more tags :
CHOIR (for operas, oratorios, masses ...etc)
BAND should be BAND/ENSEMBLE (chamber music)
OPUS
LIVE Y/N
Years : composed (edited), recorded ...
Source (DDD-ADD-AAD, master, tape, vinyl, radio...)
...and so on.
(I have 500 GO of classical FLAC files, and previously built a Filemaker database of 3000 physical recordings (*), which are not ripped yet ; BTW I'd like to convert this database "tags" in true tags.

I would suggest that everyone asks for his personal needs, after reading an official and compatable tag list (reference URL ?). My english is not good enough to organize a poll.

(*) Could have been better, of course, because at that time I was not aware of any tagging method:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/F5LCI/discotheque/a_toi_gilbert.jpg

azaz44

2009-10-26, 07:56

Erland,

I don't want to complicate things, maybe other poeple would find some simple system fine. Consider this when reading my answer. Having said that, I can start complicating :)

If we look at the standard Squeezebox Server scanning code, it already handles these tags:
- COMPOSER
- CONDUCTOR
- BAND (which should be possible to use for Orchestra)
- ARTIST (which should be possible to use for solists)
- ALBUM (which should be possible to use for work)
- GENRE (which should be possible to use to indicate which music that's classical and also which type/genre of classical music it is)
- TITLE (which is suitable to use for movement)

It would also be possible to use ALBUMARTIST in combination with ARTIST to specify main artist/solist(ALBUMARTIST) and other contributors(ARTIST).

By using standard tags it gets easier because then we don't have to modify the scanning process which isn't suitable for third party additions at the moment.

Is the above tag usage above suitable to base browse menus on ?
I assume we want to separate classical music from other kind of music so the browse menus only show classical music ?

Basically every information available would be useful, because big collection of classical music means a lot of files and a lot of different versions for the same work, but also a lot of works to choose from (even if you have one version) - some composers probably made thousands of them. All to find given music.

This means it would be great to also have information which is work specific, not recording specific: year composed, period (renaissance, baroque), catalogue numbers (opus, BWV for Bach, KV for Mozart etc.), instruments used etc.

What browse menus would you like to have based on these tags ?

Best would be some dynamic menus. So you sort Bach works by this and Mozart works by this. This is because you own a lot of recordings of one composer and only few of another one. Additionally some criteria might split all works of one composer to a lot of smaller packages, but for other composers it wouldn't help at all. For example ordering works by genre would make a lot of sense for Mozart, because it would split them to operas, symphonies, concertos, string quartets etc. For Chopin it wouldn't help much, because 95% of his works are small piano-slo works and they would get same genre.

I'm not sure there is a good way to handle instruments in tagging because they needs to be tied to a specific artist, at least unless we only handle instrument for solists and assume there is only one solist on a specific movement. Is instruments important information to make this usable ?

You need an instrument and a role. A role is important in opera, but I think might be useful for classical music as well. If you have a double violin concerto, you have two violinists and then it would be great to know which one plays the first violin.

Maybe some kind of parenthesis?
SOLOIST: Some Singer [alto, Tristan]
SOLOIST: Emil Gilels [piano]
SOLOIST: Jascha Heifetz [violin, 1st violin]

But I don't know if such information is searchable and usable...

----------------------

Actually I've spent quite some time over the weekend thinking about it and doing something. These are the ideas I came to.

First of all, I think tagging of files really cannot work here. How can you control that you always put the composer name, work name, solosits etc. the same way in all the files? With a lot of files, and information repeated everywhere (same artists in different recordings) you will always have a lot of mistakes.

Secondly, a lot of information is not specific to any recording, but to work or composer. It's a pain to try to keep it in tags. For example: I'd like to fill-in 'year-composed' for each Mozart symphony. Good for searching, good to know, easy to find. But if I store it in tags, and I have 3 boxes with all Mozart symphonies (around 50 of them) plus individual CDs with only some of the symphonies, I need to put this year to each of them? What if I need to change it or what if I get another great box?

It's obvious to me we need some external database. The database stores information about composers, works, movements, artists, instruments etc. I started planning one - there are some quirks to overcome and it gets complicated sometimes if you want to be really open for any work/recording possible, but this can work. The database would have exactly one entry for Mozart's symphony no. 40, with composer data, catalogue number, movements list. And exactly one Mozart (well, except of his father), with names defined, years he lived, maybe even a short bio which could displayed on the Squeezebox screen.

Then we need a tool to edit this database, and to attach existing music files to the database. Once we have some work defined, we can say this-and-this file is this-and-this movement. Thus we define recordings (CDs) in the database, connecting them to the works and it's movements. This tool would be used instead of tagging utility.

There are several ways how the file can be connected to the database, each with pros and cons, but I'll not go technical now.

[EDIT: With connecting a file to the database I mean putting some information how to fine a file. Not storing a file in the DB]

Then we need some plugin for SC. The plugin is able to read the database and display a dynamic menu. A dynamic menu means it displays some sort of grouping, ie. genre - so it shows Symphony, Concerto, Cantata etc. You can choose one - then you go to the next level. Or you can change the grouping to something else (ie. period: baroque, romanticism). When you go to the next level, you have the same thing - either another criteria to choose, or no grouping, which means all matching works are displayed. All criterias are persistent. This means if you once went throught Composers:Mozart -> Genre: Symphonies -> Year:??? [you selected grouping by year], then next time you go there, the symphonies are still ordered by Year. Although in the meantime you were in "Chopin" and were displaying works organised by something else. This, plus some easy way to switch groupings (some context menu?) would work well.

Additional options needed for the plugin would be to switch between two modes: navigating to select "work" (for me used 99% of a time), and navigating to select "CD" (used for CDs which you would listen as a whole, ie. recital of some pianist with different works).

Additional (great) option would be of course search function.

Additional option would be extended info at "now playing", when you press right arrow. To get all the information displayed, display composers bio scrolling on the screen, maybe work description - actually anything could have some description. Or maybe this should be available in the "browse" menu as well? If you switch to grouping by "artist" at the very top level, you're still selecting a recording, but you actually get a complete list of all artists which you have in your recordings. Maybe some way to display more information about the artist already there would be good too.

These are possible groupings, which I found useful:
- by Composer (Mozart)
- by Composer Nationality (German, Italian)
- by Composer Period (great for some composers, for which we can split works according to some period in their life)
- by Genre (Symphony, Concerto, Cantata)
- by Work Cycle (Piano Concerto, Nocturne, Symphony)
- by Period (Renaissance, Baroque)
- by Year (with some groupings here)
- by Artist (pianists, conductors etc.)
- by Instrument (violin, piano)

Maybe there would be more. Most can be used in any order. Some will loose sense in some situations of course (ie. if composer is selected, composer nationality should not be available anymore).

What do you think about it?

I tried building some database structure in Access for now, and I made some tries with SC plugins. But I'm just starting with Perl, and also finding information about plugins API is not so easy to me. So I displayed something, but I'm unable to connect the database at the moment, and I didn't find any easy way to make some context menu. This is, I think, needed to make some fast and easy way of switching between different groupings, while browsing the collection (I tried to make some context menu bound to right_arrow.hold). But I'm sure such functionality is possible. I preferred external database, but for now just considered using mysql of the slimserver (probably easier to access). Unfortunately I don't have time for this during the week, and free weekends are not so common, so I can end up with something useful next winter...

Cheers.

erland

2009-10-26, 09:55

A classical music listener could even need more tags :
CHOIR (for operas, oratorios, masses ...etc)
BAND should be BAND/ENSEMBLE (chamber music)
OPUS
LIVE Y/N
Years : composed (edited), recorded ...
Source (DDD-ADD-AAD, master, tape, vinyl, radio...)
...and so on.
(I have 500 GO of classical FLAC files, and previously built a Filemaker database of 3000 physical recordings (*), which are not ripped yet ; BTW I'd like to convert this database "tags" in true tags.

The problem with adding more tags is that it requires a plugin that also does scanning. Unfortunately the support for making third party scanners is very bad, so it will end up in performance issues like those seen with the Custom Scan plugin.

erland

2009-10-26, 10:19

I don't want to complicate things, maybe other poeple would find some simple system fine

I think any third party solution should be focused on solving a temporary problem. There are plans for changing the Squeezebox Server database schema for support for more flexible browsing/scanning in 8.x, so investing a lot of time in an advanced solution based on tags is probably a bad idea at the moment.

First of all, I think tagging of files really cannot work here. How can you control that you always put the composer name, work name, solosits etc. the same way in all the files? With a lot of files, and information repeated everywhere (same artists in different recordings) you will always have a lot of mistakes.

The problem with an external database is that you will need to be able to reconnect it with the Squeezebox Server database after you have moved or renamed your files. As an example, people tend to move their music from C: to D: when they buy a new harddrive, you can't lose all information in the database when you do this.

Musicbrainz Id's will work pretty good for pop/rock music but if I've understood it correctly they aren't suitable for classical music ?

It might be possible to decide that the last part of the file path isn't allowed to change, in this case you can at least handle a changed drive letter.

I tried building some database structure in Access for now, and I made some tries with SC plugins. But I'm just starting with Perl, and also finding information about plugins API is not so easy to me. So I displayed something, but I'm unable to connect the database at the moment, and I didn't find any easy way to make some context menu.

I think we need get the information into the native Squeezebox Server database. The reason is that it will make the SC plugin part a lot easier.

A separate management application as you suggests might be a good idea, it can even have its own database and just synchronize/import its contents into the Squeezebox Server database.
I wonder if muso could work as this management application ?
Does anyone know if it stores its information in tags or in its own database ?

Chrobrego

2009-10-26, 12:58

A separate management application as you suggests might be a good idea, it can even have its own database and just synchronize/import its contents into the Squeezebox Server database.
I wonder if muso could work as this management application ?
Does anyone know if it stores its information in tags or in its own database ?

Ideally this database should be included in freedb or cddb services so that we retrieve the right tags when ripping our CDs.
Anyway I do not believe to a standalone database for this purpose; this should be instead an internet-based service that could be contributed by the users.

azaz44

2009-10-26, 15:32

I think any third party solution should be focused on solving a temporary problem. There are plans for changing the Squeezebox Server database schema for support for more flexible browsing/scanning in 8.x, so investing a lot of time in an advanced solution based on tags is probably a bad idea at the moment.

Actually I don't believe in any so flexible solution from a major vendor. The amount of people which need this is really low (I think people which own only few classical CDs and it's some side music for them are not really interested, too much data to enter, not really needed), and the complexity of the problem too high. Some open standard on the other hand could be helpful.

The problem with an external database is that you will need to be able to reconnect it with the Squeezebox Server database after you have moved or renamed your files. As an example, people tend to move their music from C: to D: when they buy a new harddrive, you can't lose all information in the database when you do this.

I think there are some solutions possible. One, which I though about is to simply calculate some hash of the file contents and use it in the database as file ID. So given hash would be assigned as given track/movement. A hash can also be stored in the file, once calculated, to speed up things - ie. in the tag, in NTFS alternate stream (only Windows). Then scanning the collection would mean building the hashes for the files which don't have them yet and updating information about the file path in the database.

Musicbrainz Id's will work pretty good for pop/rock music but if I've understood it correctly they aren't suitable for classical music ?

It might be possible to decide that the last part of the file path isn't allowed to change, in this case you can at least handle a changed drive letter.

I don't know musicbrainz, will check it.

I think we need get the information into the native Squeezebox Server database. The reason is that it will make the SC plugin part a lot easier.

A separate management application as you suggests might be a good idea, it can even have its own database and just synchronize/import its contents into the Squeezebox Server database.

That's what I thought as well, but a separate database has advantages. Basically, this way you get a very interesting database, which doesn't have to be SC specific anymore.

I wonder if muso could work as this management application ?
Does anyone know if it stores its information in tags or in its own database ?

That would be great of course, but I don't think muso does such things. But it's support for classical develops I heard. For now it doesn't define works, you can define composers so you get them displayed and set always the same way. I think it will mostly inherit limitations which come from starting with having information with tags.

As far as I know it uses some database on its own, but the information comes from the tags. I didn't modify files, so I don't know if the information goes back to tags.

azaz44

2009-10-26, 15:42

Ideally this database should be included in freedb or cddb services so that we retrieve the right tags when ripping our CDs.
Anyway I do not believe to a standalone database for this purpose; this should be instead an internet-based service that could be contributed by the users.

Obviously some internet service would be great, it could be a great resource for all classical music, recordings, composers and works information etc. Even a shop could be there, you could browse the whole DB with SC (not only recordings you own) and see what you can buy this way.

And if locally, some application to manage the database, which would be muso-like friendly, allowing you to browse your music and play it, not only organize it for the sake of being properly displayed in SC, would be great too.

But at the moment none of these exists (at least I don't know about any), and some small database, editing tool and SC plugin are something that sounds possible to have :) At least I would be happy to sit for hours and reorganize the entire collection, filling all this info, even if the tools would not be so nice :) I think this anyway would be faster and more comfortable than renaming files and organizing them in folders just to get the works displayed somewhat properly. And far more posibilities...

azaz44

2009-10-27, 01:31

Obviously some internet service would be great, it could be a great resource for all classical music, recordings, composers and works information etc. Even a shop could be there, you could browse the whole DB with SC (not only recordings you own) and see what you can buy this way.

Ok, the shop was not a good idea :)

But I'm just wondering how classical.com support in SC works? I didn't test, because I think it requires now 7.4 and I don't want to update yet. But maybe knowing how you select music there would be of some help. Is there anything interesting in how music is organized? Anyone using it?

fakarava2

2009-10-27, 01:59

Ok, the shop was not a good idea :)

But I'm just wondering how classical.com support in SC works? I didn't test, because I think it requires now 7.4 and I don't want to update yet. But maybe knowing how you select music there would be of some help. Is there anything interesting in how music is organized? Anyone using it?

As far as I can see, the use of tags in classical music is not uniform.
I think that a consensus is the first thing to get, before going further.

azaz44

2009-10-28, 04:29

HalleysComet

2009-10-29, 13:10

There are standard tags that we cannot avoid in general.
So I do following mapping:

Artist = Composer
Genre = Sub-Genre or Collection of works, eg Concertos for piano
Album = Work (Catalog Number Work Name)
Track = Movement (eg Menuetto, Allegro moderato)
Date = Date of composition (not date of recording)

With this convention I can manage with SqueezeCenter Out of The Box. The only browsing that I miss is:
Artist -> Genre -> Album (since there are so many works by Artist)
I have failed to configure Custom Browse for just this simple browsing maybe because I am using ReadyNas?... while I can get it very easily with Foobar.

While the tag structure is composer & Work Oriented, The folder structure is disk and interpretation oriented:
Editor -> Disc Name
This allows me to also browse my collection as if I wanted to choose a physical CD in my library. Many times a CD contains a very consistent program with several composers which merits to be listened as a whole. In that case I just browse by folder.

I plan to use more tags to describe the interpretations (Band, Conductor, Performer, etc), and to have more browsing capabilities. But at least now I manage the base.

I like this approach, but as with all things classical, it won't suit people with different priorities. For instance, I have a bunch of versions of major composers' piano sonatas, concertos, suites played by different keyboard virtuoso's. So it's more important for me to find Van Cliburn, or Vladamir Horowitz or Alfred Brendel's version of Beethoven's piano concerto #2. So I end up using multiple artists in the artist tag, which will include the composer, the featured artist, the conductor and the ensemble. this gives me 4 times as many listings in the artists menu, but it is easier to find a performer this way.

Another poster mentioned consistent naming, which helps too. I also use the composer's last name as the first part of the Album field, e.g. Bach: Suites for Orchestra #3 & #4. This helps me when I've searched on a perfomer in the artist menu. If I want to compare two versions of the Bach conducted by different people, I can find them fairly easily using the Album menu.

I wish I had thought of using Album=Work as you suggest. With over 1,000 classical CD's, I do struggle with finding minor works that are tagged onto larger performances. Search then becomes my friend!

But I wish someone had a nice consistent set of tags that we all could use & share to save all the manual recoding.

fakarava2

2009-10-29, 14:13

I agree with you.
Yes, it is rather convenient to add the composer's name at the beginning of the album tag ; but that could change if SC recognizes the composer tag (in fact, I won't change anything, as this addition is so easy with Foobar).

Apart from using a home tuned version of Foobar which suits your needs (as I did), but is not manageable via the SB and TP remote controls, I suggest we should ask for some more tags to be useable in the next version of the SC:
- Composer
- Band
- Conductor
(at least, but it would be a good starting point)

About the consistent naming of the tracks, well, it is another problem : it is already difficult to do here:
e.g..: what do you prefer ?
- N°, No, Nr, N, ... ?
- Symphonie, or Symphony ?
- Concerto, or Cto ?
- Sonate, or Son. ?
- Composer : name, or surname (idem for artist, conductor) ?
- Band : Symphony orcestra, or symph. orch., or S.O., or SO ?
- ad libitum ;-)

HalleysComet

2009-10-29, 17:02

I've been working on an Access database for all my vinyl. They are a much larger problem for me, since I have over 2,500 Classical LP's compared to maybe only 1,000 classical CD's.

I have discovered that there are several database programs available that claim to work with classical organizational variables. These may be a useful starting point for thinking about some simple universal tags that we classical music lovers would like to see in SqueezeServer.

For example, have a look at:
* Catraxx (uses Discogs as a lookup)
* Music Library from Wen Software
* Music Catalog library from KIX software (uses MusicBrainz & CDDB)
* Wax 1.0 from Open Vinyl
* Music Label 2010 16.0.1
* Helium Music Manager

Some of these are oriented more towards collectors or libraries, but they each have advantages/disadvantages in their organizational structures. I'm not sure there is a winner. Lately I've been playing around with Helium's custom fields capability and its advanced tagging functions and finding a lot to like, but also some bugs that will crash the program or corrupt the database.

Anyway, besides organizing my vinyl, my thought was to have a parallel structure for my digital music so that I eventually could merge the two databases. For the first time I would be able to see all of the versions of a work that I own, in whatever form. But to do this, I'd like to have the same types/names of fields in SqueezeServer as I use in Access.

My vote for simple tags (in addition to the currently available SqueezeServer tags) would be:
* COMPOSER (so I can reserve ARTIST for featured artist/soloist)
* ENSEMBLE/GROUP/BAND
* CONDUCTOR/
* WORK (which would let me reserve ALBUM for the physical CD-content and have multiple works per CD)
* GENRE/SUBGENRE (very helpful for sorting by type)

Of course, I'd like more. LABEL is a good one, given multiple versions of the same works. LYRICIST is another one for opera lovers (not me). RECORDED date would be very helpful for many of my historic recordings, and so forth. But with the above 5 simple universal tags, I think a large proportion of classical music lovers could make SqueezeServer work for them.

Just my $.02

andyg

2009-10-29, 17:15

I'd say the best bet for working on this would be with the folks at
MusicBrainz. They are working on these exact issues and how to adapt
the MB database to fit a classical structure. With a de-facto
standard from MB and auto-tagging via Picard it would make adding SBS
support much easier.

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Classical_Music_FAQ

fakarava2

2009-10-30, 00:33

Anyway, besides organizing my vinyl, my thought was to have a parallel structure for my digital music so that I eventually could merge the two databases. For the first time I would be able to see all of the versions of a work that I own, in whatever form. But to do this, I'd like to have the same types/names of fields in SqueezeServer as I use in Access.

My vote for simple tags (in addition to the currently available SqueezeServer tags) would be:
* COMPOSER (so I can reserve ARTIST for featured artist/soloist)
* ENSEMBLE/GROUP/BAND
* CONDUCTOR/
* WORK (which would let me reserve ALBUM for the physical CD-content and have multiple works per CD)
* GENRE/SUBGENRE (very helpful for sorting by type)

Of course, I'd like more. LABEL is a good one, given multiple versions of the same works. LYRICIST is another one for opera lovers (not me). RECORDED date would be very helpful for many of my historic recordings, and so forth. But with the above 5 simple universal tags, I think a large proportion of classical music lovers could make SqueezeServer work for them.

Just my $.02
Thanks for the vote,
I have the same problem with my database (FileMaker).
IMHO,the fields should first be renamed according to the official ID3 scheme :
http://www.id3.org/Home
...it is rather complex, but all the tags you want (and more) are already there.
Good luck !

azaz44

2009-11-03, 10:14

A side question. How do you organize classical music into genres (and possibly subgenres)?

I'm trying to build some good list of genres and subgenres (if needed), which would work well for all composers and periods, all kind of music (still only classical), but would be usable at the same time, possibly for selecting music in SC. This means a list of genres cannot be 100 positions long, because it's not possible to use anymore...

I checked how they do this on classical.com, but they seem ta have data mixed from different sources (file tags? or publishers) and in most cases the data makes no sense. Mixes of genres, musical forms, all in several different languages, I would say unusable...

Anyone organizing classical music?

Looking through internet I found interesting division to the main genres at www.naxos.com, and very similar used by www.classicasonline.com (I think the sites are related, because the latter lists a lot of records by Naxos). By "interesting" I mean the only one I found, which at least makes some sense. They divide music to:
- Ballet
- Chamber (music for 2-9 instruments)
- Choral - Sacred
- Choral - Secular
- Concertos
- Instrumental (music for ONE instrument)
- Musicals
- Opera, Operetta
- Orchestral (music for more than 10 instruments)
- Vocal
- and few others, less important (film, tv, spoken etc.)

The weak point for me is: a lot of music fall into more categories, and this is what they do - they assign more than one category to any CD. For example, most concertos would be described as both "concerto" and "orchestral". This means if we want a concerto, we go to "concertos" and have all symphonies, overtures, symphonic poems out of the list. But if we want a symphony, we got to "orchestral" and have all the concertos still in. Similarly, Bach's sacred cantatas would appear in "Choral - sacred" and in "Vocal" as well.

This is some weakness if one wants to filter works be genre. While there are always some works which belong to more than one category or seem to belong to none, it would be great to have some clean division, which would actually separate majority of works to some well defined groups. Any idea?

PS. This division raises an interesting question of how to classify a piano tune for four hands, but one instrument, and how to classify one for two pianos. Chamber music?