Maintaining a large library of WAV files - artwork, tagging,issues

[Patrick Dixon]

I too would recommend using FLAC and EAC.

FLAC generally gives about a 2:1 compression and since it's completely
lossless it means you're not compromising audio quality. Plus it supports
tags which are reasonably comprehensive. 600 albums on FLAC will rip to
something in the region of 200-250GB, and since you don't want a hard disk
failure to put you back at square one, you'll probably want to run some kind
of RAID scheme with two or more disks. Even if you backed up onto DVD,
you'd be looking at loading something in excess of 40 DVDs to restore your
music files.

I generally use an "artist/album/track#-artist-song" file structure, which
works well with Slimserver and handles various artists disks pretty well.
Classical stuff is always more problematic, since however you tag it, most
of the software is geared towards pop/rock type music searches. For example,
with Silmserver you can search on 'artist' - but you'll have to decide
whether 'artist' means the composer or the performer. I'd use artist for the
composer, and then include the performer in the album title so something
like: "Mozart/Requiem - Vienna State Opera Concert Choir/01-Mozart-Requiem
in D minor" would probably work well. Then at least you can search on
'Mozart' rather than "Vienna State Opera Concert Choir" (which seems more
sensible to me). However, a lot depends on how (and if) the disks are
tagged in the existing databases, and how much time you are prepared to
spend re-tagging them!

HTH, Patrick

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com]On Behalf Of Natan & Nicki
Tiefenbrun
Sent: 29 March 2005 12:59
To: discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com
Subject: [slim] Maintaining a large library of WAV files - artwork,
tagging,issues


Hi



I'm planning to rip some 600 CDs into uncompressed WAV format for use with
Slimerver, Squeezebox, Telcanto, and a high-fidelity music system.



If I rip them manually in iTunes, then at least the Artist, Track, genre
tagging info is stored in the itunes database - which I can point SlimServer
to.



However, I'd like to outsource the ripping to CDLabs, ShrinkDigital or
similar, and they can't return an itunes library to me. My options appear to
be getting the files returned with appropriate naming/directory-structure
convention. Has anybody else tried this, and any tips on how best to deal
with compilations, soundtracks, classical etc? For example, compilations
usually have the CD Artist 'various', but individual tracks to have the
correct artist info.



I played with MusicMatch, adding some tags (2.3 I think) to the WAV files,
but this seemed to confuse Slimserver (I guess WAVs & Tag's don't mix)?



Any thoughts would be appreciated.



One other question - is SlimServer UPnP compliant, or will it be?



Tks

Natan

[leping]

Script to Transfer iTunes CDDB CD tags to WAVE/AIFF/AAC/MP3 Library tracks:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...t=25333&page=2