Organizing classical FLAC files

[erland]

Erland, I licensed the custom browse plug-in and think I have it working. Only problem is, there are a few phantom composers showing up -- no songs or files attached. They were deleted at some point, but I can't get them out of the browse menu. I did a reboot and rescan. Any suggestions?

Have you done a full rescan ?
If they don't disappear with a full rescan they have to be in some file tag.

[zowie]

Second time was the charm.
Thanks. This is a big UI improvement.

[Daverz]

composer = artist works for me.

artist = composer is EVIL! Well as long as you're only doing it in private and wash your hands afterwards...

Seriously, I hate it when the online databases put the composer in the ARTIST tag.

[Osamede]

In the case of classical its probably a decent kluge to define composer as "Album Artist", and put the actual performer in the "Artist" field.

[JohnB]

My music collection is 90% classical so how I organise my HDD folders, filenames, tags is centred on classical.

As the composer is much more important than artist for classical, I have two main folders "CDs by Composer" and "CDs by Performer" (for performer based collections or boxed sets).

My usual subfolder structure is principally based on the CDs:
- "Composer - Work - Conductor/Main Artist" (e.g. Mahler - Symph No 1 - Haitink)
- > CD1
- > CD2

My album names are of actual compositions, rather than the CD albums, e.g.:
Shostakovich - Symphony No 10 - Petrenko, RLPO

and CDs containing more than one sustantial work I would rip to one folder but retag the Album tags to separate the works. E.g. the Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante and Cello Sonata Han-Na Chang/LSO/Pappano CD I tagged as two separate "albums":

Prokofiev - Cello Sonata - Han-Na Chang, Pappano
Prokofiev - Sinfonia Concertante - Han-Na Chang, LSO, Pappano

This means that when I search albums on Shostakovich I get all Shostakovich works listed and can see the pieces and performers

If there is a collection of smaller pieces on a CD I use a general album name, e.g.

Barbara Bonney - 'Diamonds in the Snow' (Nordic Songs)
Gabrieli - 'A Venetian Coronation 1595' - McCreesh

This system works for me (but the standard recommended setup would not suit me at all).

[JohnB]

PS One of the benefits of Squeezebox/LMS is that you aren't limited to a CD's capacity for opera, ballet, and long works. You can rip, say, all the opera to a single folder (or different folders for each act) and then edit the Album tag to, say, "Wagner - Siegfried - Solti - Act I".

You need to take care over the Track No. tag though. I haven't used dbPoweramp for ages but the EAC ripping software enables you to specify a start track no. which ripping a CD. If you are intending to do as I suggested with operas, ballets, etc, etc it would be a good idea to start CD No 2 with the Track No. following on from the last Track No. of CD No 1, etc. It saves editing the track no. tags afterwards.

[TheLastMan]

Tagging is most important.

I keep it really simple so that it works on SB and iPod. I use Classical sub-genres rather than lump everything under Classical - in my case Opera, Orchestral, Chamber (1 to 10 performers) and Choral covers most things. You have to make consistent, picky, decisions otherwise things can get really mixed up. For instance anything involving a choir (4 or more singers) goes under choral whether or not there is also an orchestra (chamber or full). For instance Carmina Burana goes under choral even though I have a version with a full orchestra and another with just a percussion accompaniment.

Even that can lead to difficulties. For instance I have recordings of some works both as piano solo suites (Chamber) AND full orchestral works (for instance Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition).

I put the composer ("Surname" or "Surname, initial" if there are two with the same surname) in the Artist, Album Artist and Composer fields. I then put the actual performer in the album name. "Beethoven 5th Symphony, Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic".

I use the "work" name in the Album field. That tends to split my CDs, but makes it easier to find works from multi-work / multi-performer compilation CDs. It also means I see all instances of each work, for instance, Beethoven's 5th, side by side with the artist names.

The big problem is Opera, where there might be up to 10 leading performers. In those cases I just put the leading one or two in the Album field and the rest in the notes. Nothing's perfect!

My folder tree is /Genre/Composer/Work/*.flac

I am not worried about the CDs ending up as split. I have the originals in boxes in the loft if I want to re-rip.

This is always a work in progress, I am continually finding glitches in my system and making fine adjustments here and there. I reckon it is about 90% where I want it now.

[JohnB]

Just one point that probably only affects classical music: the length of the path+filename.

Many years ago when I started ripping my CDs to flac I used EAC (which I still use) and ripped them to an external HDD (in fact a WD MyBook). After some time I began to get strange problems when I tried to play certain tracks (they didn't play) and even odder problems when I tried to backup the files to another HDD (some files didn't copy over, etc).

After some head scratching I worked out that the problem was that EAC+flac had written files where the length of the path+filename exceeded the Windows XP limit of 260 characters!!! (This is the limit for the full path, including the drive (e.g. "D:\") and including an invisible <NUL> character at the end.)

With some classical music it is surprisingly easy to approach and exceed the path+filename limit, e.g. the default tracknames (from freedb) of some Bach Cantatas, some opera tracks, etc, etc can be very long. All it needs then is a few levels of sub-folder nesting, with longish folder names, to push the total over the limit. The ripping software *should* prevent this happening but whether it does is open to question.

[Wirrunna]

Just one point that probably only affects classical music: the length of the path+filename.

Many years ago when I started ripping my CDs to flac I used EAC (which I still use) and ripped them to an external HDD (in fact a WD MyBook). After some time I began to get strange problems when I tried to play certain tracks (they didn't play) and even odder problems when I tried to backup the files to another HDD (some files didn't copy over, etc).

After some head scratching I worked out that the problem was that EAC+flac had written files where the length of the path+filename exceeded the Windows XP limit of 260 characters!!! (This is the limit for the full path, including the drive (e.g. "D:\") and including an invisible <NUL> character at the end.)

With some classical music it is surprisingly easy to approach and exceed the path+filename limit, e.g. the default tracknames (from freedb) of some Bach Cantatas, some opera tracks, etc, etc can be very long. All it needs then is a few levels of sub-folder nesting, with longish folder names, to push the total over the limit. The ripping software *should* prevent this happening but whether it does is open to question.

Very valid point.
I also ran into this some time ago and found and used a freeware "Filename Checker" program to fix the filenames so I could copy them from my testbed workstation to my low power music server using SyncBack.
The filename is an identifier, not (necessarily) a descriptor; the tags are the descriptors.

[Mnyb]

Very valid point.
I also ran into this some time ago and found and used a freeware "Filename Checker" program to fix the filenames so I could copy them from my testbed workstation to my low power music server using SyncBack.
The filename is an identifier, not (necessarily) a descriptor; the tags are the descriptors.

+1
Yes use the tags for the real info keep the names reasonable .

Another snag is shortcuts , the filename can get even longer that way if your not carefull .

Btw this is not a problem on Linux or OSX . It is not even a problem off NTFS formatting it is a Win limitation ok so what’s the difference ?

Write to a NTFS drive from Linux or OSX and create perfectly valid files and folders >260 chars and then when using the drive on windows...
Situation is similar regarding "forbidden" characters in names ,the disc formats usually allows more than the OS , so it's perfectly possible to write a file name windows won't accept from another OS (and the other way around ).

when I used windows I avoided the music folder nested in the users structure you waste a lot of chars there I put the music directly on a dedicated drive from it's root.