Questions On Directory Structure

[JulianL]

Wow! I'm impressed. I don't have a Squeezebox yet but I'm up and running with SlimServer 6.1 and SoftSqueeze all on my local machine and I've ripped 7 albums (using EAC with on-the-fly FLAC conversion). Everything works perfectly. I have a questions though (I did a bit of searching and read the FAQ, sorry if I missed the answers). (Below I use the terms directory and folder interchangeably.)

I have about 800 CDs. So far I have just put my ripped CDs into my music directory, each in a sub-directory called "<Artist> - <Album>". I don't want to stick to this because I don't want 800 subdirectories in my music folder. Can I create additional levels of nesting and will the scan just descend down until it finds all the FLAC tracks? What I plan to do is create top-level folders within the music directory called "Rock_Pop-A", "Rock_Pop-B", "Rock_Pop-C", etc and then under "Rock_Pop-A" I would have individual directories for each artist with names beginning with A and under each artist directory I would have the individual album folders. Will this work OK?

Sadly I can't really use a real Squeezbox for a month or so because I think the easiest way to get it running will be to upgrade my whole PC which I plan to do anyhow next month. About 4 years ago I decided to really lock down my Win2k installation for security reasons so I went through and unbound all the local networking, disabled every remote service apart from what was needed to talk to the cable modem, and just generally dismantled the entire network stack except for what I needed! I am now finding it impossible to get the system back on a local network so I think I'll just wait for my new PC and a clean XP Pro installation. Until then I can happily keep myself busy pre-ripping my collection to a new LaCie external 500GB USB hard drive I bought specially for the purpose.

- Julian

[Patrick Dixon]

Yes, you can do that, although it seems unecessary since you can browse by Artist [A-Z] within slimserver anyway. Just use 'Browse Artists' and then select the start letter from the numeric/alpha keys. Some people use a genre/artist/album/tracks directory structure, which you may also want to consider.

With 800 CDs, you'd only have 800 sub-directories if they were all by unique artists BTW!

[mherger]

> my music folder. Can I create additional levels of nesting and will the
> scan just descend down until it finds all the FLAC tracks? What I plan

Yes, of course. I use eg. Artist/Album/No-Title.mp3 as a hierarchy.

Have fun ripping :-)

--

Michael

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[JulianL]

Thanks for the replies. I have played with the browsing options so I'm comfortable with that. My reason for wanting nested folders is nothing to do with me thinking it affects the user interface in any way, it's just that I prefer to run a "tidy" computer, and for me that means not having folders on the hard drive that have hundreds of sub directories in them. Just a personal eccentricity I guess.

- Julian

[ceejay]

There was a long discussion and poll on this topic elsewhere... http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=32726

Ceejay

[JJZolx]

I use Artist\Album\TrackNumber Title.ext as well. I also separate discs on a multidisc set into individual directories. For example:

\Music\Santana\Moonflower\Disc 1\07 Bahia.flac

The only level where the directory can get large is the artist level. I might someday segment that as you suggest, alphabetically.

\Music\A-C\[artist]\[album]\[tracknumber] [tracktitle].flac
\Music\D-H\[artist]\...
\Music\I-M\[artist]\...
etc.

I'd never use genres in the directory structure, with the possible exception of Classical. Just too inconsistent among a given artist (some very often have definite Jazz albums and then some Rock albums, maybe even Bluegrass) and it's way too difficult to label so much music. I don't use the genres that I tag music with very much for this reason.

[Robin Bowes]

JJZolx wrote:
> I use Artist\Album\TrackNumber Title.ext as well. I also separate discs
> on a multidisc set into individual directories. For example:
>
> \Music\Santana\Moonflower\Disc 1\07 Bahia.flac
>
> The only level where the directory can get large is the artist level.
> I might someday segment that as you suggest, alphabetically.
>
> \Music\A-C\[artist]\[album]\[tracknumber] [tracktitle].flac
> \Music\D-H\[artist]\...
> \Music\I-M\[artist]\...
> etc.
>
> I'd never use genres in the directory structure, with the possible
> exception of Classical. Just too inconsistent among a given artist
> (some very often have definite Jazz albums and then some Rock albums,
> maybe even Bluegrass) and it's way too difficult to label so much
> music. I don't use the genres that I tag music with very much for this
> reason.

I keep my lossles and lossy files separate. I also keep Classical and
Non-Classical separate, and Artists and Various Artists CDs separate
(mainly because I tag them differently).

Finally, one thing I find useful is to put the album year in the folder
name so the albums appear in chronological order in "Browse Music Folder".

e.g.

lossless/Non-classical/Artists/Coldplay/(2003) Parachutes
lossless/Non-classical/Artists/Coldplay/(2005) X&Y

etc.

R.

[snarlydwarf]

I do things like:

/Artist/Artist - Album/Track Name.mp3

Thats for "most" things... some stuff is also a bit deeper:

/Jazz, /Brazil, /Comedy and /Classical I think are there to drop more stuff out of the main directory.

Your actual organization will vary which is okay: it's also very easy to change things around by just moving directories arounnd if you find one directory gets a bit crowded.

In short, "whatever works for you" is good.

[JulianL]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I worked through all this, including that huge thread that Ceejay pointed me to. Here's what I ended up going with:

FLAC\Artist_<A to Z>\<Artist>\<Album>\<Track No.> - <Track Name>

By creating A through Z directories to split up the artists I avoid hundreds of folders in the top level FLAC directory.

I went for "Artist_A" instead of just "A" because 90% of my stuff is rock/pop/blues/jazz which I lump together (but do set the Genre tag) so I will have a 27th folder under FLAC called "Classical". By having "Artist_A" through "Artist_Z" I make sure that the "Classical" directory will show as the final folder. I know all this only matters when looking at it on the computer (I don't envisage using browse music folders via the Squeezebox at all) but I like to run a tidy computer.

For the <Artist> directory names I have standardised on "<Last Name>, <First Name>" format and for groups called "The <Band Name>" I just call the directory "<Band Name>".

I haven't really worked out how I'll structure the levels below my FLAC\Classical directory but I won't rip my classical stuff until I've finished doing all the rest of my stuff so on current estimates that won't be for another 3 or 4 weeks.

If anyone has any specific suggestions for organizing my FLAC\Classical then I would be delighted to hear.

- Julian

[ceejay]

If anyone has any specific suggestions for organizing my FLAC\Classical then I would be delighted to hear.

Filing (and tagging) classical music is a fascinating topic, it has been discussed both here and at hydrogenaudio.

Personally I use

...\flac\classical\composer\cd-title\track.flac

I use the artist tag for the composer, and the album tag for the name of the piece (eg Beethoven Symphony no 5). The most important thing (which I think I learned on this forum) is to remember to break the link between "album" and "cd" ... a CD may well contain more than one piece, each of which should be tagged as a unique "album". For the file system, though, I find it handy to keep the pieces together in one directory (= the CD).

Ceejay.