Tagging CDs

Posted by: Gajdzin on 05 March 2014

I apologize for my ignorance, I know this has been discussed here many times, but when I read those threads they are full of advanced discussion, no basics...

So I bought a NAS (Synology DS214Play + 2x4TB WD Red) and dbPoweramp, based on the advice from this forum. Now I'm starting to rip the 1500+ CDs in my collection. I just put my first CD and started ripping to FLAC Level 5, with the idea of transcoding to WAV on the fly before the stream hits ND5XS. What should I know about tagging - anything I should adjust manually? So far dbPoweramp seems to identify all albums, songs and cover art correctly - do I have to do anything more?

Posted on: 06 March 2014 by Gajdzin

Originally Posted by Solid Air:

Also maybe have a look at MP3tag which, despite the name, works well with FLAC. You can find it with Google. It's a bit quirky to use, but works fine.

Ripped CDs generally tag ok, and you can tweak them to your taste, eg with DBpoweramp. I suspect some bigger tagging issues come from people downloading torrents - not on this forum I'm sure, but more widely.

That makes sense... As a musician I would sooner cut off my left little finger (surprisingly important for drums) than steal music. However, I already had to do some editing when one out of 6 Alan Parsons Project's CDs was tagged differently and ended up in a different subdirectory. And I'm sure when I get to my Japanese CDs (by Japanese bands, with tags in kanji) there may be some editing to do... I wonder how Naim gear handles Chinese characters

Posted on: 09 March 2014 by likesmusic

JRiver Media Center will let you export your tags into a spreadsheet, and will also let you change tags singly or in batches, do clever searches, restructure your folders,mdefine your own tags ... an extremely fine and powerful product. fwiw I used to use mediamonkey, but JRMC is a way better IMO. Free for a month.

but also don't forget that dBpoweramp has an edit metadata button which you can press before you rip and where you can choose between sets of metadata! and edit them. You might also want to turn some tags on, like ComposerSort.

Posted on: 09 March 2014 by Gajdzin

Thank you, likesmusic - I'll definitely check it out. For now I'm ripping away and in most cases dbPoweramp does a good job at fetching the right info from the internet. It only gives up on my CDs bought in Japan in 1980s, I have to put the song titles manually.

Posted on: 09 March 2014 by Hook

Not sure if this would help, but in addition to using FreeDB, MediaMonkey also allows auto-tagging from several Amazon.com databases from around the world, including Japan.

I've had a couple of dozen CDs show up as "not found" in FreeDB, but autotagging from a remote Amazon web site saved me from having to do quite a bit of manual editing.

Good luck!

Hook

Posted on: 10 March 2014 by Gajdzin

Originally Posted by Hook:

Not sure if this would help, but in addition to using FreeDB, MediaMonkey also allows auto-tagging from several Amazon.com databases from around the world, including Japan.

I've had a couple of dozen CDs show up as "not found" in FreeDB, but autotagging from a remote Amazon web site saved me from having to do quite a bit of manual editing.

Good luck!

Hook

GREAT info, Hook! I'm off to download MediaMonkey. After dbPoweramp has failed to find my Japanese CDs in half a dozen db's, I assumed that's it, I have to type in manually... Fantastic news, because half of my collection is old Japanese CDs (and they are going bad fast, which is why I started this whole ripping project...)

Posted on: 10 March 2014 by mutterback

Originally Posted by Gajdzin:

Originally Posted by Hook:

Not sure if this would help, but in addition to using FreeDB, MediaMonkey also allows auto-tagging from several Amazon.com databases from around the world, including Japan.

I've had a couple of dozen CDs show up as "not found" in FreeDB, but autotagging from a remote Amazon web site saved me from having to do quite a bit of manual editing.

Good luck!

Hook

There is also an option in dbpoweramp to adjust the databases it uses for look up. Not sure you can add one directly - but you can focus it.

Posted on: 10 March 2014 by Gajdzin

Originally Posted by mutterback:

There is also an option in dbpoweramp to adjust the databases it uses for look up. Not sure you can add one directly - but you can focus it.

Yes, but in case of Japanese releases for the Japanese market only (and I have plenty of those - I've lived in Japan for 10 years) none of those db's recognizes them. MediaMonkey does!