How to best tag (flac) multi-cd sets?

I have moved away from maintaining the multiple disc structure in my file tagging. I simply tag all titles as one album. If there are 15 titles on disc 1 and another 16 titles on disc 2, they get tagged as 1 through 31 without any mention of discs.

My motivation for this procedure was that I also copy music to a USB stick to be used in the car. Well, that stupid little player in the car just wouldn't recognize my disc tags ...

idem here PinkHamster; I just deny the multi-disk album tagging and treat everything as one album

This is what I started to do yesterday.  It fails to satisfy the part of me that wants my music library to mirror the cd's . . . but given the limited options, I think that this is better than each individual cd appearing separately in a 2-cd set.  The Wall on 2 cd's can now appear as one in my nServe library.

But the really big sets -- 6+ cd's . . . or where each cd is a different live performance . . . those I still will keep separate as it makes no sense to run the tracks together.  (I think!)

Bart, to ease your mind, just remember why there are multiple-CDs at all - because of the technical limitation of the CD. If the CD could carry more data, there wouldn't be any CD sets.

As for multiple performances and really large collections, I prefer a different approach. Here I actually split the whole thing up into several albums. Just to give an example: I am just now listening to a three disc album by I Muvrini (Platinum Collection). Each disc is dedicated to its own topic, but still it sells as one album. I have made three albums out of it: Platinum Collection - Classiques, Platinum Collection - Polyphonies and Platinum Collection - Rencontres.

This even makes more sense than 'disc 1 ....' 

Hi Bart -

Same here as with the others who responded.  Using MediaMonkey, I am manually numbering the tracks from 1 to N, but at least then I have one choice in nStream for each multi-CD set I buy. I do also maintain the CD number field though, so if the need arises, I can easily see where the physical cut-overs from one disc to the next are. It would be nice if MM had an option at rip time to say that I am inserting CD 1 of X, and please number all tracks consecutively.  Maybe there is, and I just don't know about it.  But I hesitate to select any global, go manage stuff automatically for me, type of option. My fear is of MM pulling an iTunes on me, and reorganizing my stuff beyond all recognition!

The only exception I make to the one name per box rule is when the artist has gone out of their way to give each CD in the box a unique name (and not just "CD #2").  The last Steven Wilson CD, "Grace For Drowning", is a good example.

And finally, as a veteran (or would that be survivor?) of 70+ Grateful Dead concerts, I think I can say with some authority that their multi-CD boxes really should be treated as one, long strange gapless CD trip!    

Hook

Hook I'm right up there with you -- 16 years of Grateful Dead shows for me, with an average of say 3-4 per year.  I took a long break after Jerry's death, but slowly got back to where I could listen again.  I've been binging on the Dead lately, and thus dealing with how to (re)tag the tracks.

Running the track numbers as 1 - n and having any title (or for such live shows, one show) appear as s single cd definitely appears the way to go.  I'm preserving the cd 'x of n' tags; maybe some day they will do something.  One trick I see for the live shows is to insert (Second Set) at the start of the track name for the first song of the second set.  But of course we know that there were certain songs that were typically second set starters; Scarlet Begonias or China Cat, for example.  And for a while in the late 80's or early 90's, if a second set started with Playin' in the Band, it was a bad sign.  But they got themselves out of that funk.

So I'm fixin' up all my flacs, and when I get my uServe back from the spa (getting it upgraded to the current 2tb format) I hope I can fix up my rips just as easily.

In the end, I simply decided to add CD1, CD2 etc to the album title tag. Therre's no perfect way until all servers and streamers present and recognise all tags in the same way - if that ever happens. Until then, it's a compromise whichever way you do it. I guess you find the way which presents the least irritation or difficulty for your way of thinking.

I say just deal with seeing more in the album list and tag them all separately.  No difference than the CD shelf. Also, you may just want to throw on Disc 2 of Tommy, or Disc 14 of the Complete Winterland shows.  To number those 1-143 would be stranger than simply having a lot of Album entries.

Definitely there are compromises.  The way I listen, I'm unlikely to start Tommy in the middle, unless I have one particular song stuck in my head and want to hear it.  The Dead shows -- I tend to listen to an entire show, or an entire set.  There, one show per title probably works for me, whereas running every track in the huge collection consecutively definitely would make NO sense to me you are right!

I'm thinking back to my days decades ago with vinyl.  There were certain multi-record releases that I often started in the middle. 

Do you have a choice in the matter if you rip CDs with an HDX?

If you rip a 2 CD album in the HDX, it will automatically create two album folders and name them XXX [CD 1] and XXX [CD 2].  Desktop Client allows you to change the album name, and laso the individual track names, but I don't believe it allows you to transfer the tracks from CD 2 to CD 1 to create a single album folder.  The only way you could do that would be to create a playlist, or to copy all the tracks to a consolidated album folder in a separate music share and then delete it from the music store.

It seems to me that in building a music library on hard disc there is absolutely no need at all to maintain any structure which reflects that of the CD's that the music was ripped from. It should treated as a database of music rather than of CD's. The CD is no longer relevant - it ws simply a physical carrrier with capacity limitations which has now been dispensed with. In effect the whole database becomes like a giant compilation album. Granted there are instances where all the tracks on a CD would want to be kept together and seperate from everything else, (film soundtracks or live concerts for example), but there is no reason at all to attempt to maintain the CD structure of a multi-CD box set.  

Peter 

Peter [pjl2] raises an interesting point. For classical music, more often than not, there will be several tracks that constitute the sections, or movements, of a piece of music. Naturally these should be kept together. But there is no reason to keep the whole CD intact unless it is entirely of one piece of music. 

I have several large box sets of CDs transferred to iTunes, and in the majority of cases I have altered the album names, so that the pieces of music are kept, but the whole CDs are divided up, so that a CD with say three Mozart Piano Concertos on it becomes three albums, titled as the individual Concertos. On very large sets this actually makes more sense as the 27 Piano Concertos of Mozart that I have Carmen Piazzini playing now appear in catalogue order, rather than order as on the CDs, where the selection for CD is down to time duration rather than any specific musical sense!

An example of the reverse being the case is say Mozart's Opera Don Giovanni, which has Two Acts, over three CDs. Again I have created two albums - Don Giovanni, Act One, and Don Giovanni Act Two. Thus I can easily programme to listen to Act One and then a stop [as would be usual in the theatre] or one can make it play the whole opera without a pause, by simply inserting Don Giovanni into the search engine without reference to Act One or Two. 

Initially this does require painstaking work to get right, but once done, it does not need to be done again. Recently I saw reference somewhere on the Forum as to why would it be necessary to do Hard Disk backing up of rips if the CDs were retained. A back-up will preserve this work. Also, CDs are not entirely free from the risk of degradation of the lacquer and playing surface in some cases, so that while a certain CD may no longer be serviceable, the rips still are in good condition. For nearly seven thousand track in my iTunes folder, I have made more than 30,000 alterations to titling [or tagging] to make the search engine a very sharp tool in selecting the music to listen to. I have zero interest either in artwork, or keeping the original CD framework. 

And random listening would be better managed listening to the radio!

I realise that the tread is about tagging FLAC, but tagging AIFF and ALAC [or even MP3] is just as relevant for many.

ATB from George

Peter I agree to some extent; however, I do find that individual cd releases often have a character to them whereby one (or at least me) wants to hear them as intended by the artist.  Us old guys 'n gals still listen to some extent to entire cd's / albums.  "Kids today" are listening almost entirely to single tracks purchased one at a time from the iTunes store and played in random order on their phones.

By all means, do maintain your album structure. But a disc is not an album. It is a physical container, the restrictions of which we 'streamers' don't need to put up with.

Bart,

This is where it all starts to get a bit deep and philosophical!

I have never really been the type that listens to an album from start to finish (unlike my wife, who almost always does!). In any listening session I mostly select tracks that I want to listen to from different CD's. Now your point about listening to entire albums as intended by the artist is an interesting one. In the case of rock/pop albums at least the choice of tracks included is often driven by commercial considerations imposed by record companies, rather than by the artistic considerations of the artists themselves. Also it is not unusual by any means for an album of new material to include tracks that were actually written many years previously but remained hitherto unreleased. What I'm getting at is that the whole idea of an "album" is really an artificial marketing concept that has little or no relationship to actual music. Like the artwork on albums. Often this will have been designed by people in a graphic design company, people that may never even have heard the music on the album!  

We have come to accept the "album" structure as a way of buying music, because that is how music has traditionally been sold to the public. But looking beyond that, there is no reason why music should be grouped together in seperate "albums". It is something that has been driven by format and commercial limitations and considerations rather than by artistic ones.

If when recorded music was first sold to the public it had been sold as file downloads rather than on a physical carrier I suspect that the notion of an "album" of music would never have appeared!

Peter

Hmmm, this got me thinking ....

Very true!

Peter -- Very good points too.  And we know the sordid history of Beatles albums in the US -- cut up by the record company so they could sell more.

Maybe the reason why I listen to all of Who's Next is because "I always have."  Sure, I could make a 'category' for "Who songs I like" and lump the ones I like in there and omit the ones I don't.  It just doesn't feel right to me.  But that's my problem!!

I have one last minor thought on this topic, and I think it will only be of passing interest to "album listeners" such as myself.

I have a number of CDs that consist of the original album plus bonus tracks.  For a small subset of those CDs, the additions are rather thoughtful.  Completely different songs that had been eliminated from the final album on concerns about space, or perhaps the plan was to use them to launch a second, follow-up album that never happened.  In those few cases, I don't mind listening to them immediately following the main, original album.  But they are the exception, and most of the time, the bonus cuts are alternate takes, or live versions, or simply some oddball stuff that has been awkwardly tacked on, and does really add anything to the album's feel or "story".  They were likely were not added by the artist themselves, and yet, I don't want to just cut them off and throw them away.  Also, typically, they are not a separate CD.  But even when they are, as I said earlier, my practice has always been to rip multi-CD's as one large file.

Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I think I will move these bonus cuts (only) into a separate rip entitled "Original name.BCs" or the like.  For example, I had bought a CD version of the Kink's "Arthur" a while back (a deluxe reissue that I actually bought for the extensive bonus cuts).  An old favorite, I normally listen to this album on vinyl, but I guess I was too lazy to walk down to my storage area the other night to grab the vinyl.  As many know, the album is an almost cinematic story, beginning with the song "Victoria" and ends with "Arthur".  So when the first bonus cut called "Plastic Man" started up right after "Arthur" ending, well...it sounded all wrong and I went racing for the stop button!

This task has been officially added to my post-retirement to-do list! 

Hook

I've been following this thread with interest. As a diehard vinyl junkie this will always be my preference for my listening pleasure. I therefore tend to listen to the whole album. When I (rarely) listen to a CD I always find a tendency to want to hit the 'next' button and I find the whole experience unsatisfactory. There are some albums I have initially bought to try before investing in the vinyl and some of the tracks I tended to skip on the CD I would grow to like more when listening to the album as a whole with vinyl. I can understand where pjl2 is coming from but I have to agree with Hook and Bart on this one. The album as a whole is often greater than the sum of it's parts, and this includes bonus tracks which hardly ever work for me with an album I know well. Just because you can rearrange files doesn't mean it will work. As an example; when you put an iPod on shuffle how often do you think 'Nah' and go to the next track. 

One day I may go for the streaming option, I just hope I can control my 'skipping' finger, but for now I'll stick to vinyl and leave the digital music as the background option in the kitchen and car.

Steve

I guess we are all different. When I listen to music one track will often put me in mind of another track from a different album. I then want to listen to that. In general I find the experience of listening to an album all the way through to be quite limiting.

It also strikes me that the format and convenience factor may come into play here. When I used vinyl (many years ago now) I tended then to listen more to complete LP's. I'm sure this was partly because it was just too much hassle to keep changing them and re-cueing the stylus etc. When I moved to CD I found myself changing CD's much more often, probably because it is much less hassle than changing an LP. I can now use a memory stick and I find myself skipping all over the place even more. It is just so easy!

I do think our listening habits are governed partly by the format we listen to, if only subconciously.

Peter

I am a complete streaming convert, but I am still capable of listening to a whole album, even though I could access thousands of songs just by the tip of a finger.

But then there is also another aspect. Being completely digital also means that my collector's activities have taken on another dimension. I have about three times as much stuff now than about three years ago, when I started streaming. It simply doesn't take up any physical space any more. The number of albums that I only have for the sake of one or maby two songs has risen dramatically. This sometimes tempts me to simply dump those albums and only retain my favorite songs grouped by year of publication.

I actually do have such folders, named 'The 1980s', The '1970s', which contain single tracks of which I never had the albums. Most of this stuff comes from sampler CDs, which I absolutely refuse to maintain as albums.

Hook I highlighted something I wanted to emphasize -- imho, the "bonus tracks" rarely are of interest. Perhaps I want to hear them once out of curiosity (alternate takes, etc.) but then that's it.  I'm pretty happy to leave them in the list, and just on my own stop playing when I reach something I don't want to hear.

Steve, I actually do BOTH.  Sometimes I'm content to listen to an entire album (we finished our wine listening to all of Low Spark of High Heel Boys last night), and other times I am so grateful to be able to skip around from track to track, artist to artist, at whim.  I would never do that with physical cd playback; I am absolutely a digital playback convert.  It gives me both options.

Peter, that's what I meant about doing both; I agree.  I'll hear one song, it'll remind me of something else, and I can instantly on my iPhone find it and play it.  It's a great option for me.

Great thread! Also points up the flexibility of ripped music over physical CDs.

It seems to me that the Grateful Dead output has 2 dimensions: the album, and the show. I tend to keep albums as say Europe 72 CD1, CD2, but shows on say Dick's Picks or "unofficial recordings" as entire shows. When I get round to it I intend to split the shows into set 1 set 2 as I sometimes find myself in a first set or a second set mood; also I don't often have the unbroken listening time to run both sets. I can usually spot the set break from the track list and do a "play all from here" - sitting with Deadbase on my lap is too anal even for me! I also find it best to keep the Dead stuff as  a separate library as it overwhelms the rest of my music when I'm in a random mood - or especially when other people are around.

I found the bigger issue was going from vinyl to cd when I bought the box sets - the 4 sides of double albums were very distinct to me but when they fitted on to 1 CD it seemed somehow wrong but I'm used to it now.

(Only 19 shows, all in England - I did travel to San Francisco  for a run of shows in 1992 but Jerry was unwell...)