Organizing your music collection

Keith_W said:

If I search for "Bach", in my music collection, it will turn up thousands of tracks - literally.

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Some media players indeed return tracks when searching for a composer.
Useless indeed.
If the media player returns Albums or Compositions, the results are usable
Most of the time a search for a composer will do in my case.
If I have a lot of compositions (entire Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert) composer + performer does the job for me.

Keith_W said:

BTW, searching for composer is useless for me. If I search for "Bach", in my music collection, it will turn up thousands of tracks - literally.

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Not in roon. As I showed it only shows the albums if you are in Composer view:



Even if you had dozens of albums, the touch interface allows very fast navigation. With a flick of finger you can scroll through them and hit the album when you see it. Same is true of using the mouse although a bit less convenient.

If I want something specific, e.g. the above mentioned "Spring Sonata" by Beethoven, then I have to remember if the one I want was called "Frühling-Sonate" (with or without the umlaut, since Roon doesn't recognize umlaut), or "Spring Sonata", or "Printemps Sonate".

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True. Again, my solution is to let more show up and I can quickly scan and find what I want.

Much easier if I decide where it should be filed when I add the album, and just chuck it there. Like my CD collection. I buy a CD, then I decide where I am going to file it.

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This is the effort I am saving. Try to buy download versions of the same music and you will find a disaster as far as naming. It is a lot easier to throw them there and let Roon organize it.

Can Roon replicate the directory structure that I showed, a few posts back?

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No. It is fundamentally different in the way it puts album art forward as your point of navigation much like every smartphone and tablet does. It wants you to focus on content.

I do understand better why you wish the folder structure but until I become more literate about classical music, I am going to stick with Roon .

amirm said:

Let me start from the top. I don't understand half the stuff you are asking.

Seriously the key thing here is that Roon does NOT rip. You do your ripping elsewhere and choose whatever metadata source you want to stuff tags in the files. You put that in a shared library and Roon then analyzes the title. Either it knows about it or not. If it knows about it, it will shower you with far more metadata/reviews than any ripping database provides. In some cases it recognizes the title but does not have a ton more info. What it does have is high resolution album art that it can use for very nice screen savers and browsing. At the extreme, it doesn't know the title so what is in the file when you ripped rules.

Now in the cases that it does recognize the title, on a field by field basis, you can tell it to use its metadata or what is in the file. You can also add any information you want and choose that instead of what is in the file or Roon. For a lot of rare recordings, I provide my own images or the talent for example.

In other words, you have to review what goes in and clean up like you would with any other method. And the starting point for Roon is whatever you use today to rip.

What I love about Roon is unification. I bought downloads from a dozen sources each with radically different file structure, naming, etc. Room completely takes care of showing me the same view for all. I just create directories and dump the files in there.

And yes, you can tell Roon to merge albums and it provides a pretty fancy UI for doing this. You can also search for multiple versions of your recording and it will then analyze and tell you how close its metadata is as compared to what the file says.

For me, it is a lot faster to have a bunch of choices show up and I hit one and play than spending ours making sure only one hit comes up. The UI is fast and responsive with touch input.

On tags, it is incredibly flexible. As I said, you can have your own "Jazz" tag that is different than its internal "Jazz" tag. So you can make your own composer tag to mean whatever commonality you want it to mean.

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Conceptually, we are all attempting to do more or less the same thing in classical via different tools, GUIs, database structures, etc. The real key to it is accuracy and consistency of the metadata itself. That is where the real problem lies. So, while metadata formats, Windows folder heirarchies, etc. can all work in some fashion, some with more ease and flexibility than others, it all comes down to manually editing the data yourself to get past the cacophany of inconsistent data values provided by classical disc authors themselves within even the standardized formats. That problem is not going to disappear any time soon.

If Roon, for example, has developed or compiled its own carefully scrubbed data to overcome this, great. But, I do not think it has from what I read elsewhere. That might not be a big deal in a small classical library, but as the library size increases, it becomes a big problem. As I said earlier, I also do not trust Roon to manage my own data edits in a way that I can be sure I can transport my edited data to some other tool someday if I wish. The internal architecture of Roon is still too mysterious, as far as I can tell. You might be locked in, if you wish to preserve your data edits.

Yes, Roon handles many different media file types, each with their own internal tagging formats. But, it is quite critical to me to handle many hi rez audio and video formats beyond Roon's current abilities, like multichannel, DSD/DSF, and Blu-Ray audio/video. That's why I am a JRiver user. It has the widest support for different media types currently available. The GUI might not be as nice and easy-to-learn as Roon, but it offers a host of very powerful additional features Roon lacks, and it retains general compatibility with industry standard metadata formats. MusiChi might be better, easier for consistent classical tagging than Jriver, but, again, its media file format support is too limiting for me.

I realize most people have different, less demanding requirements than I, especially for non-classical libraries. So, Roon might be a good answer for many. But, others are somewhat frustrated with it for classical library management.

So summarizing, the metadata in a file can never be correct so you resort to using file structure to represent what is missing there?

Keith_W said:

I am a classical music listener, so I do not listen to "tracks". I listen to albums ONLY. All I ask is for my playback software to respect the album structure, which I have organized into a directories and subdirectories on a spare HDD. It drives me nuts when playback software tries to be clever and impose its own structure on top of my carefully constructed directories. That's how I want it to be organized, and I won't have it any other way! The software I use is foobar.

I haven't tried Roon ... i'll do it soon.

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You are free to use whatever methods you want. However, I do wonder about the statement "I listen to albums only". It is quite common to have more than one work on a CD. They may be performed by the same artists or not, they may be similar forms or not (concerto and sonata for example), they may be by the same composer or not. I rarely listen to the entire contents of a CD. I want to hear a performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and not whatever else was packaged with it. A CD with the Mendelssohn Italian Symphony and the Schubert Unfinished Symphony is my poster child for this sort ofmixed content.

About carefully constructed directories. If you use a CD ripping program like EAC, dBpoweramp or JRiver, you control where the music files are placed and how they are named. The program retrieves tag information from one or more online databases. That information will be stored in the files files and used to construct folder and file names (using templates). It is a good idea to review the information and make an changes needed to fit the way you choose to label Composer, Artist (Performer), Album (Work) and Track name (Movement) before the program starts ripping the CD. That way both the folder and file names and the tags in the files are as you want them and they are consistent.

Finding short works is much easier using tags. Albeniz Tango Op. 165 in D is lovely piece of music that is often one of many works on a collection or bon-bons CD. I have performances with piano. guitar and violin and piano. I can't remember the name of the albums they occur in. My JRiver software remembers perfectly. Finding all the occurrences of the Albeniz Tango takes a few clicks with the program showing me what is present at each step. Here I clicked on "Albeniz" in the Composer pane, scrolled down and clicked on "Tango Op. 165..." in the Work Name pane, picked a performance and played it.

amirm said:

So summarizing, the metadata in a file can never be correct so you resort to using file structure to represent what is missing there?

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If by "file structure" you mean something like Keith_W's hierarchical Windows file folder structure, then, absolutely, NO, that is not what I meant, nor do I think that is what I said. I am strongly in favor of a multi-dimensional database architecture using tag fields, not a static Windows folder hierarchy. Those tag fields must be manually editable to correct or override the data inconsistencies that exist from label to label and from disc to disc in the marketplace. Unlike Keith's structure, my preferred approach with JRiver, like Roon, supports multiple views without copies of the same large media files into a redundant, hierarchical file folder structure.

After editing when I am looking at all composers in my library, I should see one and only one Bach, Johann Sebastian or only one Shostakovich, Dmitri. Within those, I should see only one, repeat only one, Mass in B-Minor under Bach or only one Symphony No. 15 under Shostakovich. Within those drill downs, I will see all the different albums by various artists containing those specific works by those composers. Net result, I pick a track, and it plays from there to finish from whichever track I choose. If I just want to skip the Kyrie to hear just the magnificent Gloria movement of the Mass, I touch it on my iPad and it plays. That is all essentially what I do now after my own manual scrubbing of the data. No typing, just browsing, all with just touch screen from my iPad. Ok, Roon can do that, too.

As you said, Roon can likely do all that easily, but it is entirely subject to how clean the data is. There are numerous variations on the spelling of Bach, Johann Sebastian as we have already seen on raw media from the disc authors, including some naughty typos. Also, some albums identify the Mass in B-Minor or (auf Deutsch) as the Messe in H-Moll. Same work, different languages. I need to edit that in the library, so that they both appear as one. Having done thousands of classical albums, there are far worse examples than this. I can tell you it is all over the place as done by various authors of metadata on different classical labels. Grrr! Vincent, who obviously has great tagging experience, will tell you the same thing.

My edited tagging results, once stored in my library, must be straightforwardly able to be backed up via disc copy, and they should be maintained in the same industry standard tag format used by all media of the same type, inside the media file itself. Then, I can shift gears someday and move to the next generation's great thing in library maintenance, if I wish, as long as it supports industry standard tag formats. All my manual tag editing and cleaning efforts will be preserved that way. I would never consider a tool that does not guarantee this.

Amir, like you, no doubt, I am reasonably well versed in database technology from long experience. My views reflect that long experience. Roon is very cool, and I hope it rules the world someday. But, it is not for me at the current time. Too many unanswered questions and limitations. Maybe someday.

Keith, your approach is more simple and comprehendable, but it is single-, not multidimensional. And, unlike me with my tag edits, you need to retype everything into every folder name in your hierarchy. You would never be able to migrate all your cataloging efforts embodied in the folder names into some other tool. If you are happy, great. But, by posting here, it seems you are not, and you are beginning to see some of the limitations of your approach. You are at the limits of what can be done your way. The only next step would be via tagging into a multidimensional database. As I have recommended, I do not think Roon is the answer at this time.

jasn said:

I personally use a CUE splitter program called Medieval Cue Splitter, but it is for PC only. I found one for MAC called Cue Splitter for MAC, but have no experience with it.

Good luck, that's a lot 'o FLAC files to split...

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Danger, Will Robinson! I used to use Medieval Cue Splitter, until I read that it has a known bug that can occasionally mangle a resulting FLAC of one of the tracks. After running my entire collection through AudioTester64, and finding a number of SYNC_ERROR and other such problems, I'm inclined to believe the reports. If Medieval Cue Splitter is indeed the culprit, it doesn't happen very often...but, if it happens to a rip of a crucial disc that you have since misplaced/misfiled, you're pretty much stuck. According to the person who first reported this bug, the only splitter that seems to work 100% reliably is CUEtools -- which, while having a bit more of a learning curve, is also free.

James David Walley said:

Danger, Will Robinson! I used to use Medieval Cue Splitter, until I read that it has a known bug that can occasionally mangle a resulting FLAC of one of the tracks. After running my entire collection through AudioTester64, and finding a number of SYNC_ERROR and other such problems, I'm inclined to believe the reports. If Medieval Cue Splitter is indeed the culprit, it doesn't happen very often...but, if it happens to a rip of a crucial disc that you have since misplaced/misfiled, you're pretty much stuck. According to the person who first reported this bug, the only splitter that seems to work 100% reliably is CUEtools -- which, while having a bit more of a learning curve, is also free.

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Wow, thanks for the heads up James. My experiences with MCS has been pretty good, so far. It may have chewed up a track or two but I can't be sure. It is a very easy program to run, however. I really like the looks of Audio Tester 64 too, but I am running my library on ALAC (still a fan of iTunes Smart Playlists), which apparently is not handled by AT64.

I wonder if you need a separate tool.
A lot of media players can read single file + cue sheet.
They also can convert
If I have a FLAC + cue I tell my media player to convert it to FLAC and it will create a separate file for each track.

One more vote for ROON...

Works well...

One more vote for Roon. It's awesome.

Have you tried XLD to split audio on Mac? Here get it: http://x-lossless-decoder.en.softonic.com/mac

XLD, short form for X Lossless Decoder, is a popular free tool for Mac OS X that is able to decode/convert/play various ‘lossless’ audio files including OGG, FLAC, Monkey’s Audio .APE, Wavpack (.wv), TTA, Apple Lossless ALAC, TAK, Shorten (.shn), AIFF, WAV, etc. The supported audio files can be split into some tracks with cue sheet when decoding.

If you don't want to keep the files in FLAC, another methond you need is a powerful CUE Splitter without decoding.

It will let you split files as well as keep the source file formats. It also supports splitting files while convert the file to many other popular formats.

Just as your requirement.