“Unknown Artist, Unknown Album”

[diegom]

I seem to have hit the “Unknown Artist, Unknown Album” wall.
Reading the wiki, there are suggestions of using dBpoweramp, also mentioning that it is a better choice for Classical music collections... I'm at a weird crossroads... Should I just rip my collection with dBpoweramp and use VortexBox as the server? Is there a way to incorporate more metadata sources to VortexBox? What have all you experienced users done? What are the recommendations for starting from scratch?

Thank you for all your help!

Diego

[diegom]

Duh! moment... I realized that MY main reason to have looked into VortexBox is the "headless" operation... I can rip while watching TV, eating, doing anything, and not be stuck to a monitor. dBpoweramp cannot do that, that I know of, so now I need a way to give VortexBox more metadata access... Just thinking out loud, suggestions welcome!

D

[Transporter]

Are ALL of your CDs Classical or just a quarter or less? Most Music Databases with "tagging" information are setup to deal with "New" music where there is an Artist or Band Name, Album Title, Song Title in other words easy to build a logical database that is easy to search because for most music because Rap, Rock, Hip-Hop, Pop, Jazz, Country all fall into this naming parameter and nobody really cares or searches on who wrote the song because we are wanting to listen to who is singing (the Artist or Band) said song. Not really so with Classical where we have a Composer, the actual work, Orchestra or Symphony playing the works, the Conductor, or maybe even the featured Instrumentalist can all be main search details. So one either has to think how LMS would handle a specific Work by a Specific Composer or do what I think is easier by forcing Classical Tagging to conform more to a Modern tagging scheme. Using dBpowerAmp to rip ones Classical CDs can make this easier because one can pick how and what goes into each field so that when the CD is ripped, the Classical Music is tagged more toward how Modern Music is tagged and stored in the database. I prefer this method because the database work the same for all tracks and only have to reverse in my mind how Classical Music was tagged by dBpowerAmp with my changes. The other way would be to just auto-rip them by feeding a Vortexbox, then change the tags with MP3tag from a networked laptop which will keep everything headless. For additional insight check the Wiki http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.ph...e_To_Classical or search the Internet about tagging classical music for other ideas and suggestion.

So you can still do what you wanted with the Vortexbox by feeding it ALL your CDs, it would just be more useful in my opinion to use MP3tag on all Classical rips when they are done. The real key with all tagging is being consistent, but this is even MORE important with Classical if one wants it to flow and be easy to find exactly what one is looking for especially if one has multiple same Composer, same Work, same Symphony, but different Conductor or Instrumentalist when looking for a specific track to play. It was just easier for me to use dBpowerAmp because I was using it before the Vortexbox came out and used it on all my Classical CDs.

[diegom]

Thank you Transporter for the detailed answer. I can definitely tag after, given that I can access the /storage on SMB. I did not know that I could tag after ripping... You mean manually, correct?
I know that MusicBrainz Picard can 'listen' and recognize the song. Maybe that's what I should do with the "Unknown".
My collection is about 1/3 Classical. While I have quite a bit of Jazz, I think it would follow the 'modern' tagging; as you explained, we are more interested on the performer than the composer.

Much to learn! Thank you for sharing your experience and advise!

Diego

[Transporter]

Every once in a while I find a completely Unknown Artist/Album/Song Title if I have just been feeding CDs to the Vortexbox or there was a "hidden" track that dBpowerAmp didn't catch if I'm using it to rip (but I think that has only happened twice in 10 years). I have an iPhone so I use the SoundHound App all the time. If listening to XM and I don't know an Artist or I know the Artist but not what the name of the song is and which Album its on so I can buy the correct CD to get that song. So I just play the Unknown track on my Squeezebox Radio and let SoundHound tell me what song it is as well as Artist and Album. Then I can look on Wikipedia to see what song number that song title is on the Album.

Yes that is the beauty and power of MP3tag. It lets you edit, change, and even add tags to Tracks. It is very powerful so watch out when first learning to use it a if you wildcard something and choose something like Artist and you have a bunch of albums and hence songs by that artist, it is possible to change a field(s) on all the Artists songs just not the song or album. But this power come in handy for a group that one tagging source says the Band is Pop of one album, Metal for another album, one completely wrong Punk labeled album, and all the others out of the 14 albums by the Band are labeled Rock, but they should really be label Hard Rock, the genre can be changed to Hard Rock for all of them with one click! So this can be powerful but it can also be a disaster. When in doubt change only the minimum and the smallest group possible especially until you have a very good understanding of how tagging and editing tagging works with MP3tag. I use a large amount of Genres so I can search for groups of a genre I wish to listen to, but in being consistent with all my tagging, all Bands/Artists/Groups only get one main genre and only one secondary genre tag. Eric Clapton fits under Rock, Blues, Blues-Rock, Hard Rock, and Guitar Rock so since he is one of my favorite guitarists, I have him Tagged with Guitar Rock first and Rock second. I use the first Genre tag as how I think of the Artist and the second one for the overall group I would like them to fall into. Have a read about MP3tag.

[garym]

I'll second how useful mp3tag is in fixing/improving tagging. And by the way, I'm a dbpoweramp user. I use it to rip then once I'm happy with files, naming, metadata, etc. (sometimes with the use of mp3tag after the fact), I move them across the network to my Vortexbox, which is just functioning as a Server for my music.