Squeeze family and classical music

[Goodsounds]

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.

[azaz44]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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