More > JRiver Media Center 18 for Windows
Album friendly Media Library setup thoughts (long)
kstuart:
First, the Artist thing is just a personal preference, since nothing fits perfectly at the moment.
IF [Album Artist] and [Album Artist (auto)] were also "List" datatypes, then I would use Album Artist for the album, and Artist would then be free to specify individual track variations.
But after long consideration, I ended up feeling that the "List" datatype was critical for my use (see discussion in this thread), so I needed to use Artist (and I could put "featuring special guest Joe Blow" into the track title, if I felt it was important).
Since it is imperfect, then personal preference is certainly important (and the customization ability of MC18 allows each person to do whatever they like).
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In regards to Bonus disks, that falls into the category of "deciding each case individually".
One could have "Complete Fillmore West" and "Complete Fillmore West Bonus Disk" as two different albums, OR one could just act as if the bonus disk was the last disk of a multiple disk set. It depends on whether I would ever want to play the Bonus Disk separately "because it is a bonus disk". If not, then I would do the latter - and just putting "Bonus Disk" into the Description would insure that information is shown in Playing Now.
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Regarding "songs" or "pieces" which are broken up into multiple tracks without individual song titles, I don't see that often, and when it occurs, the online databases usually just will add (Part 1 of 10)... (Part 10 of 10) to the ends of the track titles.
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Lastly, any discussion of tags makes clear that words don't work very well to describe music - as is clearly seen when trying to assign a "genre" to fringe and oddball music. So, "total accuracy" is not an attainable goal. For example, I recently failed to find a release date for a relatively well known album in the early 60's by a top artist (nothing in the original liner notes or on the cover or any other online info). Yesterday, I noticed on the back of a CD, a statement reading "the original recording engineer is unknown" - for another major album from that time period.
So, better to use the database to help you find music to play, rather than trying to making a reference work...
kstuart:
Interesting... when you change MC18's Field Properties for an SACD ISO, and then do "Update Tags from Library", it reports success, something like "7 tags written (0 failures)".
But the date on the ISO file does not change, and when you open it with foobar, the tags have not changed.
Is there a "sidecar" file being written with the tags somewhere ?
MrG:
I still have a problem with "Album" tag and the "album" concept regarding multiple album versions/releases.
No problem with data presentation in views. I can organize things my way.
The problem is the virtual concept of "album" became real when various analysis take place. Dynamic Range is not yet implemented but it may be (MC19?) introduced soon. We have there Album DR and Track DR. The same for Album Gain. Similar thing for spectrum analysis.
I can imagine the analysis will be done after all my files got imported to the library (say, DR introduced in MC19). The analysis routine must know what an "album" is. I guess it will take into consideration an "Album" and "Album Artist (auto)" tags and maybe some other variables (bitdepth, channels, DSD/PCM, etc.) and this may work in most cases. The one case it won't is my MFSL vs. Jpn 1st CD release. Both CD and both similar. Will both be analysed as one album?
I guess there is no option to show MC18 what makes an album? Like "Album Grouping Level" where I can drag "Album", "Album Artist (auto)" and my own "Album Version" tags? All further data analysis based on this setting?
6233638:
From having just imported a 2CD set that I ripped as "Album (CD1)" and "Album (CD2)" by mistake (forgot to check the tags) so that each disc ended up in its own directory, and then fixing the tags inside MC18 (removing "CD1" and "CD2" so they were grouped as one album) it looks like Analyze Audio actually only writes track gain, and album gain is calculated based on what tracks are considered to be an "album".
If they are not inside the same directory - even if they have the same [Album] tags - MC18 does not consider them to be an album as far as ReplayGain is concerned. Discs 1 & 2 had different Album Gains until I ran "Rename, Move, & Copy Files..." to put them into a single directory - at which point the Album Gain updated across all the tracks.
So as long as you don't have multiple versions of an album inside the same folder, it should not be a problem. I've started using "delimit([Year], /], /[) - [Album]" rather than just "[Album]" for my folder structure recently, which should mean this never happens.
While calculating album gain like this seems a smart way to handle things, it could potentially cause problems in the future if you wanted to move away from MC18. It doesn't write this information into the files at all, so you would have to analyze your entire library again if you wanted album gain outside of MC18.
It doesn't remove album gain information that's already there - it simply ignores it - but I had stopped dBpoweramp from adding ReplayGain information when ripping CDs because MC18 will not automatically analyze the audio for any tracks you import that already have ReplayGain information, even if they are lacking BPM & Intensity information. (which Analyze Audio also calculates)
Though this is more of a theoretical problem right now - I don't see myself moving away from MC18 any time soon. It's just that I prefer things to be as "platform agnostic" as possible.
jaxtherogue:
--- Quote from: kstuart on February 21, 2013, 11:08:56 am ---Classical
The online databases are notoriously poor for classical music, although they do have some entries, so be prepared to do a lot of the tagging yourself.
Composer - This is the most important Field that is needed for Classical Music, and less so for other music. Yes, it is possible (and perhaps helpful) to have "Bob Dylan" as the Composer for Jimi Hendrix's performance of "All Along the Watchtower" - but it is not crucial.
But it's crucial for Classical. So, to start with, I add "Composer" Field as an early column in Playing Now. In cases where a pop song is a cover, you will see information there, otherwise blank space, but MC18 does not have dynamic Playing Now columns.
So, to minimize the lost space (and to give more space for other classical fields), I use Last Name Only for Composer. So, "Mozart" rather than "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart". Whereas we can see dozens of people with the same last name in Jazz or other popular music, we don't see that in Classical. (In those cases where the Composer has a descendent, I just add the initials to the end, eg "Bach,JC".)
Date - For the date, I use the same pattern as for other music - I use the date that would be most helpful for sorting in "Year - Album" in the Date field, and I put the other date(s) in Description, along with the same Release information.
The Date that is most helpful for me in choosing Classical Music to play is the Date of Composition. That way, it sorts with earlier Mozart first, followed by later Mozart.
Work - Here is the one exception to the "album based" focus of this article. Classical albums often have several works in one album - or in multiple disk sets. The flexible View-based software of MC18 allows the Classical fan to see which performances he owns of a particular work - such as Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.
Amazingly, while MC18 supports "Conductor", "Orchestra" and "Soloists" fields (and use those if they are useful to you), there is no "Work" field, so you are going to have to create your own Custom Field. For instruction on that, see:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/File_Properties_%28tags%29#Custom_Fields
Artist - I just use the primary artist who is responsible for the performance, usually the Conductor for something like a Symphony, often the soloist for a Concerto, etc. Since Artist is a list field, you can put both the soloist and the Conductor if you like. You can then also use the Conductor and Orchestra and Soloists fields if you are going to sort by those. (If you do, modify these instructions for both tagging and Views to suit.)
You can then make a Classical View as follows:
Take Panes, and make a Rule "Genre is any " and then select all your Classical Genres. Then change the 3 panes to "Composer", "Work" and "Artist". When you save, tell it to not overwrite the default Panes, and it will make a Panes Copy which you can rename "Classical".
--- End quote ---
I'm motivated to put a Work field to use. As many works are spread across multiple tracks have you ever found a way to have a view that shows multi-track single works as a single entity, i.e. the 5 tracks for each of the 5 movements of Beethoven String Quartet #13 in B Flat, Op.130 displaying as a single work rather than 5 tracks? Seem like that's not how MC works, but I have been surprised before so I thought it worth asking.
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