Does anybody have any advice on a good way to tag classical boxed sets?
For example I've just acquired Gustav Mahler: Complete Works (150th Anniversary) Box set. It has 16 CD's, some of which have a mix of music, other disks have a single complete symphony.
Normally with multi disk albums I name all albums the same, use the disk number tag and then let Asset combine them into one album. This works well for non-classical music as "XXX artists greatest hits", double album works well for me displayed as one album as the combination of the 2 disks is logical and the constraint of the CD format meant that it had to be split into 2 disks for delivery.
With the Mahler I have so far kept each album title separate as one album with 133 tracks of unrelated material is not easy to navigate, i.e. the above method doesn't work as well. I have named each album so far in this format, e.g. for Disk 2
2: Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen, Symphony No. 1 In D Major (The Complete Works - 150th Anniversary Edition)
This almost works except that Asset is doing a sort on text rather than numbers, so disk 10 comes after disk 1 and disk 2 comes after disk 16! It would be nice for the order to be logical as the set does put the symphonies in order.
Also, what about classical compilations, I've bought some nice sets from Naxos which are themed, e.g. "Great Piano Concertos" which have material from multiple composers on 10 cd's. I'm thinking for this that I should really be accessing the music via the Composer tag instead.
I'd be interested in the views of people who have large classical collections.
Thanks
Richard
Posted on: 12 June 2016 by Bert Schurink
Originally I also did something like what you are doing. However it was not very satisfying to look at the list of albums with the same cover and intuitively always going for the same Nr f.i cd5. So what I did since then that I really dissected the box sets in their original format. So I always like to shoot for original cover, original order of the pieces etc. Which means that I and up with the color fullness of the original albums, the right artist etc, and quite often a more digestible listening experience (shorter so that you can switch). What you loose is of course the original collection - but I took that as a less important side effect.
Posted on: 12 June 2016 by bicela
Hello Richard,
This almost works except that Asset is doing a sort on text rather than numbers, so disk 10 comes after disk 1 and disk 2 comes after disk 16! It would be nice for the order to be logical as the set does put the symphonies in order.
Have you tried adding a 0 (zero) in front of one digit numbers?
If Asset manage the sorting likes computer logic, it will work fine.
Posted on: 12 June 2016 by Eloise
One thought is to completely disregard the album title. Instead of album title just use the composition name, track name then becomes the movement. And just put the box set title in comments.
Or use MinimServer which can use extended tags such as composition and movement :-)
Posted on: 13 June 2016 by R.K
Similar to Eloise I collect and separate the tracks into complete works. I tend to listen to a symphony at a time rather than a disc at a time. The original discs were constrained by time available and often had fillers for shorter works or spanned multiple discs for longer works.
An example album title would be:
Mahler- Symphony 3 (Klemperer)
Tracks stay as movements (or further subdivided). This allows searching title for both works and composer.
Posted on: 13 June 2016 by trickydickie
Thanks everyone, some useful tips. I 'm going to look at a combination of the idea's, i.e. use composition for some of the albums, and also look to see if I can apply Berts method to some of the albums.
