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Author Topic: Best practice for tagging Highres albums  (Read 5679 times)

bert003

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Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« on: September 18, 2015, 06:45:54 am »

I am looking for a way to tag and/or display albums which I have in different resolutions.

When I browse these albums, because they have the same album name each track is shown multiple times for that album.
The easiest way to solve this might be add some info to the album name like '16/44' and '24/96' to create an unique album title. But I rather don't want to do this, because it isn't part of the real album name. For "special editions" I do add such info to the album title but I try to have the album name as clean as possible. But I want to have them displayed as separate albums like 'Toto -2014- Live In Poland (24/96)' where (24/96) isn't part of the Album name .

How do you guys handle this issue?
I could create a custom tagfield in my flac files with bitdepth/samplerate info and probably MC can use this info to create separate albums for albums with different bitdepth's and samplerates.

But I am curious how experienced people do this
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~OHM~

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2015, 09:21:58 am »

this is what i found when searching the forum for you. there are also many other ideas for your question

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99952.0
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bert003

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2015, 10:05:17 am »

Thanks for the idea. I looked at using stacks but it requires manual management of the musicfiles inside MC.
I use 1 application for tagging, Mp3tag, and using stacks would take another program (MC) for music management.

What I like to see is the same album in different resolutions, displayed as 2 albums in MC with setting up things once in MC.

I am trying to display and use a custom tag field I created with Mp3tag in MC without success. Updated the library from tags but no way MC sees the extended tag field
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blgentry

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2015, 10:35:51 am »

I learned a lot from a recent thread about this same subject.  Here's a good place to start in the thread:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99721.msg690729#msg690729

Brian.
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AndyU

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2015, 10:45:52 am »

I would create a library field called say Resolution. Set that to be 16/44, 24/96 for each album.

Then create a library field called say AlbumResolution. Define it as a calculated field: [Album][Resolution]

Then you can take a copy of the Album view, and use this new [AlbumResolution] field instead of [Album].

That'll split the Albums fine, but the thumbnail text will be "Album Name 16/44" so ..
.. change the display text for the thumbnails from [Name] (i.e. Album resolution) to two lines:
[Album]
[Resolution]

This way you haven't changed the album name, two albums of different resolutions will display as such, and you should see the resolution underneath the album name. You'd need to make similar changes to other views that use Album e.g. Artist. You'd probably only need to bother to enter the resolution for non-standard ones.  Nothing stopping you using the "Resolution" field to have other things in it that might individuate the album - "Live in Japan", "RVG edition", "1997 Remaster" - but you'd probably want to think of a different name for it.

On the other hand, you could just call the HiRes album Album (HiRes) and live with it! (though the downside of that is that you'll often only see the bit in brackets if you have a short album name and a big thumbnail) (though you could use a bit of expression wizardry to chop it off the end and display it underneath).
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jbbernar

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2015, 10:50:28 am »

I basically do what you suggest in your first post. I've created a calculated "Audio Quality" field, which I've added to the Albums view, so that the view categorizes by Album, then by Audio Quality.
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blgentry

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2015, 10:54:16 am »

I am trying to display and use a custom tag field I created with Mp3tag in MC without success. Updated the library from tags but no way MC sees the extended tag field

For MC to use a custom field name from a file, you have to create that field name in MC's Library first:

Tools > Options > Library & Folders > Manage library fields

Then add the field, making sure to get the name exactly right, including capitalization.  It should probably be a string type field, which is the default type.  When the field is in the Library, then do "Update Library (from tags)" on some files and see if the field and values transfer over.  I'm sure you know you'll need to open the Tagging Pane in order to see the new field and it's value.

MP3Tag gets a lot of mentions around here, so I'm sure it's powerful and good software.  You should be aware that MC is a pretty fantastic tagger in it's own right.  The fact that it can use Expressions is really the heart of it's power.  Being able to highlight 1000 files, type (or paste) in an expression, and have them all changed at one time, all to different values (based on the expression), is just awesome.

By all means, use the tool you like.  I'm just pointing out the power of MC's tagger, in case you weren't aware.  I was using an external tagger for a couple of months before I figured out how easy MC's tagger is to use.  It wasn't obvious to me at first.

Brian.
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bert003

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2015, 11:04:53 am »

I am getting somewhere!
Created a libraryfield in MC and used that in MC as suggested. Looks nice so far!

Thanks!
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mojave

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2015, 11:27:06 am »

I don't like to use custom tags if what I want can be accomplished with existing tags. Since there are already Sample Rate and Bit Depth tags, I would use those. These are automatically filled in by JRiver. Since sample rates higher than 44.1 kHz are usually 24-bit, then I wouldn't worry about sorting by bit depth, but only by sample rate.

You can customize a view and add further sorting options. I have added Sample Rate to my standard Artist View. Now when I click on an album I am presented with the sample rate I would like to choose. I added Thumbnail Text to show the sample rate.

In a few steps I can browse my entire library and drill down to sample rate for each album.
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mojave

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2015, 11:30:33 am »

You can also modify the Thumbnail Text to show Bit Depth and Sample Rate:
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Hilton

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #10 on: September 18, 2015, 11:54:17 am »

I just did something very similar to tidy up my hires.

It still needs a bit of work, but it's very similar using custom field called encoding with an expression and a custom filter view with a grouping expression and thumbnail text expression.

I need to add some custom expression views to Gizmo settings for JRemote too and theatre view.

I like Mojave particle style navigation too. Might have to consider that, but I also like having direct access the way I have it.  I guess I'd have to try both.

hi-res-sorting2 by Hilton, on Flickr

hi-res-sorting1 by Hilton, on Flickr






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AndyU

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #11 on: September 18, 2015, 12:03:22 pm »

I am getting somewhere!
Created a libraryfield in MC and used that in MC as suggested. Looks nice so far!

Thanks!


Spot on. As others have pointed out, you could have used the built in fields Bit Depth and Sample Rate, or some prettified version of them, but the solution I suggested is a bit more general in that you could use it for anything that might individuate a version/variant of an album - remaster date, source (HD Tracks etc), Japanese Import etc. This would be useful if you consider the album name sacrosanct.
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blgentry

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #12 on: September 18, 2015, 12:39:47 pm »

^ Yes to all of that.  I like Ferday's suggestion (from the linked thread above) of using "album_info" as a field to hold anything you might want to put there.  I put things like "SACD" or "2010 Remaster" in that field.  Then I display albums using album_info as one of the sorting criteria.

That way I can keep Album the same between two (or more) versions of the album, and album_info is used to figure out the details of each album and display it appropriately.

Brian.
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dtc

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #13 on: September 18, 2015, 03:13:55 pm »

I am getting somewhere!
Created a libraryfield in MC and used that in MC as suggested. Looks nice so far!

Thanks!


Looks good. I would drop the 24 bit - pretty much everything that is > 44.1 is 24 bit, except for DSD and the sample rate tells you what you need to know. If 32 bit become popular then you can always change the thumbnail text. I have mostly 44 K sample rates, so, like you, only display the ones that are not 44K.

I also have a custom field (Media Sub Type Audio) with values like MP3, CD, Vinyl, HiRez Download, SACD, DVD-A. Internet Radio and anything else (like DSD) you want to put in there. I did that primarily to separate my HiRez Downloads from my digitized Vinyl from my DVD-A, which can all have the same sample rates. Once again, I only display that field for albums that are not CDs.
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bert003

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Re: Best practice for tagging Highres albums
« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2015, 04:10:49 pm »

After some reading I have created my first expression.
After seeing the math function in Hilton's reply I saw lots of possibilities.

I created an expression which shows the resolution for files other than 16 bit 'standard' resolution. This to have a more clean look and have the high-res albums have more attention.

It looks like this:

  if(isequal([Bit Depth], 16, 0), , [Bit depth]bit-listitem(Math([Sample Rate,0]/1000), 0, .)khz)

which outputs '24bit-88khz' but not '16bit-44.1khz'. For the most clean look I also deleted the '.1' in 88.1KHz because for me that is not important. I know I could even delete the Bit Depth, but for now I have it available.

Thanks for all replies, I learned a lot today!
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