Ripping a CD collection, I've read elsewhere, is something you'll do twice. The second time is to avoid all the mistakes made the first time.
I'm about to start the second go but can't help thinking there's a better way. Particularly - as I imagine anyone here has done/think of doing - as this is a non-trivial amount of classical music, some reissue boxes/deluxe editions and a heap of other potential problems I'm trying not to think about.
All the advice, hints and tips I've encountered so far suggests one think: it's a lot of work. And more so if you start with a sense of pedantry. I'm working on classical music genres that make sense to me, and a scheme for album artist for basic detail and work, etc. But: it's going to be a lot of work, and various tool aside, not much different to how this might have been tackled a few years ago. I've a few common issues:
- multiple recordings of the same classical music work. Including more than one recording by the same orchestra and conductor. So date of recording with feature somewhere.
- some classical stuff that fits the work approach cleanly (e.g. symphonies) and some that doesn't sets of themed/non-themed CDs.
- reissues pop/rock CDs. e.g. the Creedence Clearwater Revival reissues I have have some extra studio tracks, and some additional live recordings. Across the CDs the live recordings form a chunk of the same concert.
- boxes! E.g. some Simple Minds SDEs. The extras include b-sides, lives stuff, unreleased bits, remixes, etc. but these are grouped differently across the boxes.
- CD singles. So more non-album stuff. Given I think popular music stopped around 1998 I've a number of multiple format singles and I prefix to group content by type (live, remixes, generic b-sides) rather have each CD single as its own album.
There's nothing impossible here. I could rip CDs to work, rips things multiple times to get different views of the same albums and/or use playlists to solve problems. But all solutions (unless I'm missing something - and very happy to be shown to be an idiot) involve me doing lots of work.
This where I think there must be an easier way. I'd like to rip a CD with only basic meta-data. E.g. Artist/Album/Album Version or a CD of composer/work/performance details. Then I'd like to be able to do a scan from this and have the scanning do the fiddly bits for me. This - magically (I need to work through the detail here) - then collates what I want with the advantage that if I change my mind I just rescan with a different magic set-up and not re-rip. This would be particularly useful for classical if wanting to change movement ids from roman numeral to numbers, or add/remove piece nicknames, etc. to the library. With the Creedence example I can browse the to album (a default view) without bonus tracks, the bonus tracks collated under one or more virtual albums and the CD as it would be physically.
The creates a database of meta-data that has classical CDs in the their original form and by work. The front-end (i.e. LMS) then has some mode view to make this all spouse friendly - i.e. a sensible default to find most stuff and a slightly nerdier view that allows me to distinguish between my original copy of U2's Joshua Tree and the re-issue (and the new re-issue when my bank account is dented in June).
Custom scan/library/tags in 7.9 and other bits and pieces seem to get someway there but is there some easy way to do this that I'm missing. I want to separate the actual meta-data I see in LMS (or similar) and the meta-meta-data attached to the files, which is less important. (Being a database nerd I can go in more detail here but having a classical piece's key or conductor on each movement, rather than the work breaks a normal form.)
Is this an impractical pipe-dream? Apologies if I've not been clear - any misunderstanding is my fault, not the reader's.
I'm about to start the second go but can't help thinking there's a better way. Particularly - as I imagine anyone here has done/think of doing - as this is a non-trivial amount of classical music, some reissue boxes/deluxe editions and a heap of other potential problems I'm trying not to think about.
All the advice, hints and tips I've encountered so far suggests one think: it's a lot of work. And more so if you start with a sense of pedantry. I'm working on classical music genres that make sense to me, and a scheme for album artist for basic detail and work, etc. But: it's going to be a lot of work, and various tool aside, not much different to how this might have been tackled a few years ago. I've a few common issues:
- multiple recordings of the same classical music work. Including more than one recording by the same orchestra and conductor. So date of recording with feature somewhere.
- some classical stuff that fits the work approach cleanly (e.g. symphonies) and some that doesn't sets of themed/non-themed CDs.
- reissues pop/rock CDs. e.g. the Creedence Clearwater Revival reissues I have have some extra studio tracks, and some additional live recordings. Across the CDs the live recordings form a chunk of the same concert.
- boxes! E.g. some Simple Minds SDEs. The extras include b-sides, lives stuff, unreleased bits, remixes, etc. but these are grouped differently across the boxes.
- CD singles. So more non-album stuff. Given I think popular music stopped around 1998 I've a number of multiple format singles and I prefix to group content by type (live, remixes, generic b-sides) rather have each CD single as its own album.
There's nothing impossible here. I could rip CDs to work, rips things multiple times to get different views of the same albums and/or use playlists to solve problems. But all solutions (unless I'm missing something - and very happy to be shown to be an idiot) involve me doing lots of work.
This where I think there must be an easier way. I'd like to rip a CD with only basic meta-data. E.g. Artist/Album/Album Version or a CD of composer/work/performance details. Then I'd like to be able to do a scan from this and have the scanning do the fiddly bits for me. This - magically (I need to work through the detail here) - then collates what I want with the advantage that if I change my mind I just rescan with a different magic set-up and not re-rip. This would be particularly useful for classical if wanting to change movement ids from roman numeral to numbers, or add/remove piece nicknames, etc. to the library. With the Creedence example I can browse the to album (a default view) without bonus tracks, the bonus tracks collated under one or more virtual albums and the CD as it would be physically.
The creates a database of meta-data that has classical CDs in the their original form and by work. The front-end (i.e. LMS) then has some mode view to make this all spouse friendly - i.e. a sensible default to find most stuff and a slightly nerdier view that allows me to distinguish between my original copy of U2's Joshua Tree and the re-issue (and the new re-issue when my bank account is dented in June).
Custom scan/library/tags in 7.9 and other bits and pieces seem to get someway there but is there some easy way to do this that I'm missing. I want to separate the actual meta-data I see in LMS (or similar) and the meta-meta-data attached to the files, which is less important. (Being a database nerd I can go in more detail here but having a classical piece's key or conductor on each movement, rather than the work breaks a normal form.)
Is this an impractical pipe-dream? Apologies if I've not been clear - any misunderstanding is my fault, not the reader's.
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