Meta data tag editing... And a HUGE lesson learned

Your advice is really precious. The only problem is that in the real world only few people start a ripping collection from 0 to 100% in a small amount of time and in a organized way: it is a more long time time (and full of interval) work that builds up like a tree and go on as it would have an own life: one day you realize that you have many thousands of CD's ripped by different software, different PC's and ... different friends. At this point you know that you will have a long weekend in front of you !

Dedicated to all crazy music lovers who are not so well organized but passionate, curious and always happy to share !

Hi Ingenious, I was fortunate in that I've designed data processing systems, so I'd learnt that lesson long before I ever starting to use music streaming!

And I was unfortunate in that I ripped my entire vinyl collection to Wav before I knew anything about metadata, at that time creating CDs, keeping waves on HD as backups - so I only ripped at 16/44 as well. Five years later and all is different, CDs now gone, and wavs converted to flac to enable adding metadata (which received wisdom at the time said wav couldn't do) 

And CDs ripped give inconsistent metadata.

Its a real pain trying to get it all consistent - the advice to do at the time of ripping is very sound!

meanwhile my simple filing system of major genre (classical/opera/rock/other) / composer/artist / album name, based on normal computer folder/directory hierarchy,  worked well with Logitech media server into ND5XS, but not with my system of choice, Audirvana, which ignores folder structure and mixes everything together...

For me a consistent folder structure and tagging schemes are essential to manage and search my music collection. I also very much rely on symlinks to order different interpretations of the same work (typically by different conductors or artists) in composer folders. In fact, composer folders tend to mainly contain symlinks in my scheme. I would not use a system that ignores folder structure or that does not support sysmlinks, I have to say.

Negative browsing experience is less important than SQ, which is reason for Audirvana - library irritation I am living with : it is all there, just Bruch follows Broughton.  

Others will suggest using the metadata to sort, but at the moment I have at least a couple of hundred albums with no metadata, and of the rest the metadata doesn't allow sorting the way I want: I only want broad primary divisions, while much of pop/rock music is classified into other categories (rock, classic rock, hard rock, metal, etc) and classical likewise (symphonic, orchestral, concerto, etc) when all I want is pop/rock, classical, opera, and everything else. And when ripping from CDs, the same music is not always classified the same, one recording of a particular piece showing as, say symphonic and another as orchestral  so I need manually to assign a high level primary genre according to my desired sorting, thereafter the sub-genres could be used for focused browsing on the rare occasions when I might want to do that. Unfortunately fixing the missing metadata and making the rest 'right' is laborious and very time-consuming.

Innocent Bystander - have a look at J River Media Center (you can get a months free trial). Whether or not you prefer it as a player to Audirvana, it has superb tag editing facilities - for example you should easily be able to do mass updates of your genre tags - eg change all the "Symphonic" to "Classical", and you can do useful things like set the tags based on folders and vice versa. It might be with an hour or twos work you can get your tags into good shape. You can also do this quite safely - you can save all your existing tags in an library archive which you can revert to should you wish.

I once got the advice from this forum when I started the streaming journey, I think it was Simon. And I was well advised at that point in time.

Rip some CD's. And don't do something before you have played a bit around with it. Only if you are ok continue the ripping process. It's painstaking to repair mistakes you made from the beginning. And it's very personal as everybody has a different way of looking at / organizing his/her collection.

Some tips I used:

Classical start the album title with the composer name: --> Beethoven: Triple Concerto....

Solve collections the way it works for you as some program don't deal well with it. I was quite drastically and always either allocate the dominating artist or call it various artists. 

Be consistent, while it might look easy...with big collections consistency becomes important

Check every album on correct rip (after the first notes you know), and on right tagging

Album art can sometimes be a challenge. Again look on the internet for the right one when the ripping program doesn't provide it. Check if it shows up correctly. If it doesn't work remove it from the songs and put a folder.jpg file in the directory of the rip.

Much more......., it is a painful journey

i am told that Audirvana has good tag editing facilities as well, including batch editing - I just haven't had time to fiddle about. Doing by folder is so much easier, making adding additional albums from any source a doodle, too.

But thanks for the suggestion - if I don't find Audirvana's tools work adequately I may try JR: has anyone done a comparison of SQ JR vs Audirvana on a Mac Mini, USB output? (Preferably with USB  isolator)?

I compared A+ and JRMC on Mac Mini, USB output into a Hugo but no isolator. Couldn't honestly say there was a difference. They both have all the reasonable audiophile options - dithering, integer mode, exclusive mode, etc.  Many people who like the way apple do things will find JRiver clunky though - it barely hides its windows heritage. But it's facilities for searching, organising views, ripping etc. are way more powerful than A+ imo. And the companion remote app for an iPad, JRemote, is a lot nicer than Audirvanas app. I listen to mostly classical music, but with a fair bit of jazz, so I like to see my classical stuff by composer then work then artist, but my Jazz by Artist then Album - JRiver does that just fine, as well as any other views I might fancy. A+ is fixed, which makes it less complex. If it does what you want out of the box, it's great. If you see things differently, then JRMC is worth getting to grips with. And it does rip cds, tag them, retrieve artwork etc..

Thanks, Likesmusic, that's a very helpful insight (and i was being simplistic - I also file classical by composer). it sounds as if I should at least avail myself of a free trial of JRiver.

Great, you're welcome, give us a shout if you get stuck. Their forum is also very helpful.

Bert, indeed that is my advice, I am glad it worked for you.. It certainly worked for me.

Simon

Check out BLISS media manager which can really help with errent artwork etc and gives you a nice interface to see how your collection is being tagged

For me, Jaikoz is the easiest tagger I've found