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[bjgibbs]

Since upgrading from v. 8, I haven't been able to get MC9 to tag properly.  

I rip and convert to .ape with EAC.  I make a folder named after the album artist, then put another folder for the name of the album in the album artist folder.  All of the tracks are put in the artist folder.  For some reason, I can't get MC9 to recognize that the folder is named [ALBUM ARTIST]\[ALBUM].  It just picks up [ALBUM] twice.

Any ideas?

[Cmagic]

Hi,

Fore regular Artist/Albums CDs (the vast majority) you should not use the [Album Artist] field, just use the standard [Artist] field.

The [Album Artist] field is useful when you have an album with various artists and you want to keep the original artist for each track in the [Artist] field.

The semantic is :
[Artist] -> That's the artist actually performing the track. It's basically a 'per track' field.
[Album Artist] -> It's to group a collection of tracks possibly performed by different artist under a common 'Album Artist' name. It's a 'per group of tracks' field.

Let me give you an example :

Album : 'Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde'
Type : All tracks performed by 'the zimm'
Directory : Music\Bob Dylan\Blonde on Blonde
[Artist] field : 'Bob Dylan' for all tracks
[Album] field : 'Blonde on Blonde' for all tracks
[Album Artist] : (not set) for all tracks

Album : 'The 30th Anniversary collection celebration
Type : This is a tribute concert to Bob Dylan. Each track is performed by different artists
Directory : Music\Bob Dylan\The 30th Anniversary...
[Artist] field : Track performer artist for each track
[Album] field : 'The 30th...' for all tracks
[Album Artist] field : 'Bob Dylan' for all tracks

This way the tribute album to bob dylan will appear as a Dylan album in the library (Album ARtist(auto) view scheme) but each track will keep its own artist (who actually sings a particular song). For this one it's quite logical that the 'Album Artist' be set to Dylan as it is the common artistic denominator of all tracks.

For a compilation album where you have a collection of songs from various artists with no specific 'Album Artist' relations it would be :

Album : Greatest Reaggae Hits of all time
Type : This is a compilation. Each track is performed by different artists
Directory : Music\Various Artists\Greatest Regg...
[Artist] field : Track performer artist for each track
[Album] field : 'Greatest Reaggae...'
[Album Artist] field : 'Various Artists' for all tracks

In a 'Album Artist(auto)/Album view scheme, this album will appear under 'Various Artists'.

Note that you're free to fill the [ALbum Artist] field with something like 'Rasta Men' or 'Reggae Stars' to further organize your various artists tracks.

Therefore when importing properties from filenames, as I understand from your post, you should just use [ARTIST]\[ALBUM]. Since the [ARTIST] tag will be stored without a problem inside the APE by EAC. I'm not sure that you can set the [ALBUM ARTIST] Tag in the same way.

Well, I hope my explanation was not to complicated and that it helps you.

Have a nice day,

Christian

[bjgibbs]

Christian,

Thanks for the detailed reply.  However, my needs are a bit different from the situations you described.  About 250 of the CD's I'm inputting are DJ sets/compilations.  I want to file them under the name of the DJ as [ALBUM ARTIST], rather than various artists and maintain the individual artists for each track.  I could do this easily in MJ8, but [ALBUM ARTIST] no longer seems to be an option in MJ9.

Will I lose a lot of quality by ripping CD's as WAV's in MC9, then normalizing and compressing with Monkey's Audio Extra High quality instead of using EAC to rip and compress?  Using MC9 for everything is definitely much easier!

[Cmagic]

Hi,

Maybe I did not get your point precisely.
You can enter the DJ'name in the [Album Artist] field and leave each artist name with the tracks.

You can then have something like the following in an Album Artist(auto)/Album view scheme :
DJ Abdel
  [A l'ancienne]
     Kool and the gang
     George Duke
etc...

If you really want your files stored in a structure like DJ Abdel/A l'ancienne/Artist - Trackname.mp3
you can alway 'Rename file from properties' and specify [ALBUM ARTIST]\\ALBUM\ as the directory template.

Will I lose a lot of quality by ripping CD's as WAV's in MC9, then normalizing and compressing with Monkey's Audio Extra High quality instead of using EAC to rip and compress?  Using MC9 for everything is definitely much easier!

Well I don't think you will if you use the secure digital ripping mode in MC9.

Hope this helps,

C.

[Matt]

[Artist] will actually use album artist for directory rules if you have it filled in.  It tries to be smart like MJ 8 without bogging people down in the details.  It'll also automatically detect mix albums and use 'Assorted' for the directory, so you may not have to do anything.

Hope that helps.

[bjgibbs]

We must all be missing each others' meanings here, so, let me try again.

I have EAC-ripped and compressed .ape files in folders:
[ALBUM ARTIST]\[ALBUM]

EAC automatically names each file as follows:
[TRACK #] - [NAME] - [ARTIST] - [YEAR]

I'm trying to set-up MC9's options so that each time I import .ape files I've ripped in EAC, MC9 tags the files properly.  In MC9 Tools->Options->Files & Naming(?), I can't get the folder path bar to accept [ALBUM ARTIST]\[ALBUM] - it seems to only see the ALBUM part.  As a result, none of the imported files list the Album Artist.  The pulldown menu for folder naming conventions doesn't show [ALBUM ARTIST] as an option anymore, either (it did in MJ8).

Finally, [YEAR] in the filename seems to have the same problem. MC9 doesn't recognize it as an additional field, but keeps it attached to the [ARTIST] field.  So, after importing, I get "Beastie Boys - 1989" in the [ARTIST] field, and nothing in the [YEAR] field.

I think I'm just going to rip in MC9.  It'd be great if EAC were somehow integrated into MC9 so you could choose to rip with EAC, just like you can choose from a number of different third party compression utilities.  But, until that time comes....

Thanks again for your ideas.

[Matt]

MC9 Tools->Options->Files & Naming(?), I can't get the folder path bar to accept [ALBUM ARTIST]\[ALBUM]

That's for ripping, not importing.

After an import, use "Fill Properties From Filename" to do what you want.

MC's secure ripping is as or more secure than EAC.  It's all I use for my APE collection.