Tagging/naming schemes

[Ken Hokugo]

Hi,

I am a classical fan and I agree that classical music are truly underserved
in this area. I can't give you any meaningful advice here, but let me share
mine. I was EAC user, but since I decided to take SB route, I converted to
iTunes for this regard because iTunes can extract more CD info from internet
than EAC can. Of 300 CDs I have ripped so far, only one or two were not
available from internet database.

Nonetheless, most of the times, I have to modify the tags. As you pointed
out, most frequent "mistake" is Artist=Composer. Next is Artist=sub info of
track (e.g. "I. Allegro moderato").
I really wish taggin were as easy as Pop or Rock CDs.

Talking about classical tagging, further OT but related, is SB bug.
Whenever there is "." or "," in the track name, SB cannot display after
that. For example, if the track name is "Concerto, I. Allegro", then the
display shows just "Concerto". I don't know if this is fixable, or I should
change the track name so that it does not include "," or ".". Anyone?

Ken


From: <robin-lists (AT) robinbowes (DOT) com>
Reply-To: Slim Devices Discussion <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
To: "'Slim Devices Discussion'" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
Subject: [slim] Tagging/naming schemes
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 13:12:00 +0100

Hi,

Slightly off-topic this, but what the heck...

What tagging/naming schemes are you folk using? And how have you got
slimserver configured to display the information? I'm particularly
interested in how you are dealing with classical music.

I rip my CDs using EAC and initially have the follwing naming scheme:

%c ~ %y (%n) %a ~ %i ~ %t ~ %d

This was inspired by some work a friend has done
(http://www.lameb.fsnet.co.uk/) and decodes to:

CD Title ~ Release year (track no.) ~ CD or track artist ~ ID3 music
type
~ Track Title ~ cd artist

For example:

Permission To Land ~ 2003 (04) The Darkness ~ Popular ~ I Believe In A Thing
Called Love ~ The Darkness.flac

EAC also calls FLAC to compress the ripped wavs. I use the following FLAC
command line:

--compression-level-8 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T
"date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s -T Comment="%e" -T
Encoder="Exact Audio Copy (Secure Mode) / FLAC 1.10"

This works fine for "normal" pop/rock albums. I've not thought about how it
will handle Various Artist albums - perhaps I ought to rip one to see??!!

It doesn't handle Classical albums at all well and I have to do a lot of
manual editing. In fact, I haven't really come up with a naming/tagging
scheme that will work satisfactorily yet.

Any classical tagging/naming scheme should have the following qualities:

- Artist should be the performer not the composer
- I need to distinguish between several different performances of the same
work by the same artist (e.g. several performances of Schubert's Wanderer
fantasy by Richter)
- the track/work/composer/performer(s) should all display "nicely" on the
SB display, i.e. slimserver should be able to decode the necessary
information from the file name / tags and produce sensible output.

Any suggestions?

R.
--
http://robinbowes.com

[Mike Kozlowski]

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Ken Hokugo wrote:

> Nonetheless, most of the times, I have to modify the tags. As you pointed
> out, most frequent "mistake" is Artist=Composer.

How is that a mistake? Yes, I know it's not what the spec says, but since
Artist drives lots of stuff, and since Composer is much more interesting
than Performer, it makes sense to stuff Composer in Artist.

Also, if you're going to be driving the Squeezebox UI off the artist, it
makes sense to put the artist in "Last, First" format -- if I'm looking
for Bach, I want to go to B, not J.

> Talking about classical tagging, further OT but related, is SB bug. Whenever
> there is "." or "," in the track name, SB cannot display after that. For
> example, if the track name is "Concerto, I. Allegro", then the display shows
> just "Concerto". I don't know if this is fixable, or I should change the
> track name so that it does not include "," or ".". Anyone?

I haven't noticed this (and I would have). I'm using WMA, though.

--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/