Tagging information using Mp3tag

[Ikabob]

I don't know much about Vortexbox, but what are you trying to do - rip and encode only FLAC, or both FLAC and MP3?

Do you have the expected FLAC files in /music/flac?

If you're not also doing MP3, don't worry about the MP3 settings.

I am trying to start tagging. It seems like it should be simpler. I really don't know where to start with just a simple tag job. I've got a lot of support. But I'm still not catching on real quick. I'm going to rest on it...thanks. I am also wondering whether the sound quality of the VBA for LMS music services (Skyfm;Rhapsody) is exactly what I was hearing prior to VBA. Can a different sound card be placed in the VBA for music stations on LMS? Goodnight for now.

[aubuti]

I am trying to start tagging. It seems like it should be simpler. I really don't know where to start with just a simple tag job. I've got a lot of support. But I'm still not catching on real quick. I'm going to rest on it...thanks. I am also wondering whether the sound quality of the VBA for LMS music services (Skyfm;Rhapsody) is exactly what I was hearing prior to VBA. Can a different sound card be placed in the VBA for music stations on LMS? Goodnight for now.

The sound card in the VBA will only matter when you are using the VB Player. That is, when you hook up speakers to the VBA's audio outputs and listen to them. Music sent from the VBA to your Squeezeboxes doesn't go anywhere near the VBA's soundcard.

I get the feeling that you're making the VBA thing harder than it needs to be. Remember, the VBA is a computer, just like the one you were using before to run SBS and LMS. It just has a different interface, meant to make ripping CDs and running LMS easier.

As for where to start with a simple tag job, start with the basics. Decide what tags you need. The usual essential (ie, simple) ones are ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE, TRACK. If you like seeing artists listed as Lastname, Firstname then you'll also want to have ARTISTSORT. A couple other common ones are YEAR and GENRE. Then pick an album, any album, and load it up in mp3tag. See if those tags are filled in, and if they're not, then fill them in. If they are filled in but they have errors, then correct errors. Also use Alt-T to show the "extended tags" to see if there are crummy tags in there -- if so, delete or correct the data in those tags. Then save your work and move on to the next album. But always, always, always save your work!

Hope this helps.

[Ikabob]

"As for where to start with a simple tag job, start with the basics. Decide what tags you need. The usual essential (ie, simple) ones are ARTIST, ALBUM, TITLE, TRACK. If you like seeing artists listed as Lastname, Firstname then you'll also want to have ARTISTSORT. A couple other common ones are YEAR and GENRE. Then pick an album, any album, and load it up in mp3tag. See if those tags are filled in, and if they're not, then fill them in. If they are filled in but they have errors, then correct errors. Also use Alt-T to show the "extended tags" to see if there are crummy tags in there -- if so, delete or correct the data in those tags. Then save your work and move on to the next album. But always, always, always save your work!"

By "filled in" , filled in where? And then what are the <keep>,<blank> options all about? It would be nice if mp3tag had a tutorial.

[aubuti]

By "filled in" , filled in where? And then what are the <keep>,<blank> options all about? It would be nice if mp3tag had a tutorial.

You can fill them in in various places, including:

1) the spreadsheet-style grid that takes up most of the screen. This is most useful for editing track-specific tags, such as track TITLE or TRACK number.
2) the extended tabs dialog you get when pressing Alt-T. This is especially helpful when editing tags for a group of tracks, such as adding an ALBUM, ARTIST, YEAR, or GENRE tag to all tracks in the same album (hint: select all the tracks you want to edit before pressing Alt-T)
3) the left side panel, which is also good for editing groups of tracks at the same time.

As for tutorials, the mp3tag support pages that garym linked to have a good FAQ that is "tutorial" in flavor: http://forums.mp3tag.de/index.php?showforum=12

[garym]

"Hmmm,. something is wrong here. VBA out of the box with default settings is ripping to FLAC files and only mirrors mp3 files to a separate subdirectory. Are you sure you are looking in

//files/music/flac

and not

//files/music/mp3"


Yes, I am looking at //files/music/flac . There is very little in the mp3 folder. What is the mp3 music for anyhow? I read about it somewhere. What I was confused on was the FLAC Mirror menu (BELOW). But I guess it's configured properly. I wasn't sure what checkboxes needed to be checked. I Xed what I selected. Also, should the mp3 quality be set at 320kbits/s? What's the pros/cons of each choice?
Also, the only reason I asked about ID3v1 or ID3v2 was because I read about them was unsure what they were. I have not seen any anywhere yet.



FLAC Mirror
Start mp3 mirroring Start ALAC mirroring Stop mirroring View full log Clear log Delete all mp3
Configure FLAC to mp3 mirroring
mp3 Quality:320
X Enable automatic mp3 mirroring
X Enable mp3 embedded cover art

Configure FLAC to ALAC (Apple lossless) mirroring
Enable automatic ALAC mirroring

why do you even want the mp3 files? If you are just ripping to listen to your music on your SB stuff at home, you don't even need them (all you want is the FLAC files and I'd turn OFF the mp3 mirroring). If you do want a SEPARATE directory of mp3 files (for example, for using on your ipods, etc. for portable use, you really don't need 320 (highest quality). This is overkill for portable use. I'd use the default (standard, 190vbr).

And if you're doing lots of tag editing because the initial FLAC ripping is not giving you the tag info you want (which is highly likely if you have lots of classical music), then you'll end up having to edit TWO sets of tags (the FLAC and the mp3 files). So if you are in this position, you may want to rip to FLAC, do NOT mirror on VBA, then use something like dbpoweramp or foobar2000 to take your FLAC files (after the tags and art is perfect) and then create a mirror image of your FLAC files as mp3 files (probably lame mp3 VBR -V2, which is the standard 190 equivalent). This is what I do (rip to FLAC, get things the way I want, THEN make an mp3 directory of files for use with my ipod/iphone).

[aubuti]

why do you even want the mp3 files? If you are just ripping to listen to your music on your SB stuff at home, you don't even need them (all you want is the FLAC files and I'd turn OFF the mp3 mirroring). If you do want a SEPARATE directory of mp3 files (for example, for using on your ipods, etc. for portable use, you really don't need 320 (highest quality). This is overkill for portable use. I'd use the default (standard, 190vbr).

And if you're doing lots of tag editing because the initial FLAC ripping is not giving you the tag info you want (which is highly likely if you have lots of classical music), then you'll end up having to edit TWO sets of tags (the FLAC and the mp3 files). So if you are in this position, you may want to rip to FLAC, do NOT mirror on VBA, then use something like dbpoweramp or foobar2000 to take your FLAC files (after the tags and art is perfect) and then create a mirror image of your FLAC files as mp3 files (probably lame mp3 VBR -V2, which is the standard 190 equivalent). This is what I do (rip to FLAC, get things the way I want, THEN make an mp3 directory of files for use with my ipod/iphone).

+1 and +1

The MP3 are mostly for portable devices, where smaller file size is more important than perfect sound quality, or the device doesn't support FLAC (cough, iPod). If you don't know what they're for, then you probably don't need them.

But if you do need the MP3s, I absolutely agree with garym's comments about ripping to FLAC only, then fixing the tags, and then transcoding to MP3. There's no point in editing the tags twice. Also, if you're doing a lot of ripping at one time, making the MP3 copies at rip time slows down the ripping process somewhat, because it takes a little more time to do two encodings for each disc. It isn't that much extra time per disc, but over a lot of discs it can add up.

[Ikabob]

Those are all things that I was not sure of. I do not need mp3s now that I know what they are for. Thank you!

[aubuti]

Now that we've simplified things a little by ignoring MP3s (and remember to change that setting in VB!), I'll throw another curveball at you.

The ripping program that comes with Vortexbox should be doing at least basic tagging for your new CD rips. Are you tagging in mp3tag because VB isn't doing any tagging, or because the tags it is inserting have errors? If the former, then you probably don't have something configured properly in VB. If the latter, then maybe the automated ripping & tagging solution that VB provides isn't suitable for your music (understandable if it's a lot of classical).

If VB is giving you bad tags, then you may be better off using a ripping program that gives you more control over the tagging at rip time, so you have less tag editing to do afterwards. Imo dBpoweramp is the best of these, at least on Windows. Then when you're done ripping, copy the files over to the VBA.

[garym]

Now that we've simplified things a little by ignoring MP3s (and remember to change that setting in VB!), I'll throw another curveball at you.

The ripping program that comes with Vortexbox should be doing at least basic tagging for your new CD rips. Are you tagging in mp3tag because VB isn't doing any tagging, or because the tags it is inserting have errors? If the former, then you probably don't have something configured properly in VB. If the latter, then maybe the automated ripping & tagging solution that VB provides isn't suitable for your music (understandable if it's a lot of classical).

If VB is giving you bad tags, then you may be better off using a ripping program that gives you more control over the tagging at rip time, so you have less tag editing to do afterwards. Imo dBpoweramp is the best of these, at least on Windows. Then when you're done ripping, copy the files over to the VBA.

I agree 100% on the dbpa recommendation. Great ripper with excellent metadata sources. On the other hand, I recall you have maybe 300 CDs to rip? Is this correct? Do you expect to add a lot more (100 a year, 5 a year? etc.). As much as I love dbpa for ripping, with only 300 CDs and no expectation of adding a lot every year, you may be just fine with VBA rips, then clean up of some tags with mp3tag.

Then again, I really like the accuraterip function available in dbpa (and EAC). This is another check on "bit perfect" rips, can speed things up in the ripping process, etc. Bottom line, no right answer here.

[Ikabob]

Now that we've simplified things a little by ignoring MP3s (and remember to change that setting in VB!), I'll throw another curveball at you.

The ripping program that comes with Vortexbox should be doing at least basic tagging for your new CD rips. Are you tagging in mp3tag because VB isn't doing any tagging, or because the tags it is inserting have errors? If the former, then you probably don't have something configured properly in VB. If the latter, then maybe the automated ripping & tagging solution that VB provides isn't suitable for your music (understandable if it's a lot of classical).

If VB is giving you bad tags, then you may be better off using a ripping program that gives you more control over the tagging at rip time, so you have less tag editing to do afterwards. Imo dBpoweramp is the best of these, at least on Windows. Then when you're done ripping, copy the files over to the VBA.

Yes, the VBA does tag and I can live with them for the most part. Some albums do not have tags, so those are the ones I'll work on. There are a few inaccurate tags. And yes, I only have about 300 CDs and I don't think I'll be getting any more soon. So' I'll stick with mp3tag at this time. I think I may use the VBA solely for CDs and use the pc for LMS services. Thanks.