EAC, metadata and classical music

N8Nagel

AK Subscriber
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Hi all,

I am re-setting up my Windows PC as I had to completely wipe it and start over. At the same time, I am putting a big push on getting all my old CDs organized and making sure my rips are good.

I am having this sinking feeling I've messed something up.

When I rip classical, I know that this is probably not the accepted way to do it, but to play nice with my filing scheme I do it this way:

Artist is actually composer, last name first.
Composer is composer, in normal format
Performer field in EAC, which is given as %albuminterpret% in EAC, is the performer (symphony/composer, whatever)
Comment is the label/number if I remember to input it.

Here's where I think I've messed up. I started playing with Foobar2000 since I had to set it up again anyway and after installing the HDCD plug in started adding columns for all the info that I wanted displayed. None of my classical stuff is showing Performer info when I put a custom column in Foobar2000. Composer and Comment are coming through fine.

Does anyone have any idea what I messed up?

Here are my FLAC compressor command line options.

-8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %haslyrics%--tag-from-file=LYRICS="%lyricsfile%"%haslyrics% -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "DISCNUMBER=%cdnumber%" -T "TOTALDISCS=%totalcds%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" %hascover%--picture="%coverfile%"%hascover% %source% -o %dest%

Any help greatly appreciated. Now I feel bad as I've shared some rips with a few people and if they drill down into my classical they're probably thinking what the actual hell was this guy doing, I know this is Beethoven's 7th but who the hell is performing it?

Also, what would you recommend to actually look at the metadata of the individual files so I can see if this is a EAC issue or a Foobar issue? Windows Explorer does not seem to do this natively unless I put the files in my My Music folder and I can't do that as my HDD isn't big enough, I'm using a USB external drive to listen to music.

Thanks!
 
Also: is there any way within Foobar to sort my whole "playlist" which is actually my library by artist first, then date, so the albums will all line up in chronological order but retain the correct track orders?
 
I love classical music. I choose to drop a disc (e.g., SACD, Blu-ray, Pure Audio Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, CD) into the tray of my Oppo UDP-205 and hit the PLAY button.

What are you gaining by attempting to copy all of your discs to a hard drive? Are you saving time (considering the nightmare associated with tagging classical music)? Does the heartburn you're enduring represent "convenience"? I'd be interested in seeing the ROI analysis.
 
I literally don't have space to "display" all my CDs, not to mention what's her face's as well. Also, Spotify is blocked at work, so I like to leave a portable at my desk for when I need some quality headphone time and the radio isn't cutting it.
 
I'd suggest MP3tag as a good tag inspector/editor.

I remembered using that years ago when I started ripping; I just installed it again.

It doesn't appear that the %albuminterpret% tag used for "Performer" by EAC is a "real" tag. I'm assuming that there is a list of "accepted" tags in a standard somewhere? Gotta look some more.

I wonder if I should just change it to %performer%?

https://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html
 
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I love classical music. I choose to drop a disc (e.g., SACD, Blu-ray, Pure Audio Blu-ray, Ultra HD Blu-ray, CD) into the tray of my Oppo UDP-205 and hit the PLAY button.

What are you gaining by attempting to copy all of your discs to a hard drive? Are you saving time (considering the nightmare associated with tagging classical music)? Does the heartburn you're enduring represent "convenience"? I'd be interested in seeing the ROI analysis.
There are plenty of good reasons to rip ones discs.
Classical is just a genre that can be a PIA to get sorted out, tagging-wise.
 
I'd suggest MP3tag as a good tag inspector/editor.
+1 on this.

I've kept putting off ripping my 'classical' stuff because of the tagging thing. I'll get to it some day.

A couple of thoughts:
MP3Tag has a "composer" tag. Maybe that's the way to go for Beethoven, Mozart, etc?
Don't forget about the "comment" tag option. Lots of info can be dumped there.

YMMV, and all that!
 
OK, this is just flippin' weird.

EAC, the way it is set up, if I understand correctly, puts the "Performer" information in the %albuminterpret% tag.

However, I edited it in Foobar to be %performer% - and my data is there! *whew*

Not sure what that's about, but at least I can spot check stuff and don't have to re-rip or re-tag every flippin' classical CD that I own.
 
+1 on this.

I've kept putting off ripping my 'classical' stuff because of the tagging thing. I'll get to it some day.

A couple of thoughts:
MP3Tag has a "composer" tag. Maybe that's the way to go for Beethoven, Mozart, etc?
Don't forget about the "comment" tag option. Lots of info can be dumped there.

YMMV, and all that!

Already using those. Here is how one of my classical rips would look:

Date: 1963
Artist: Beethoven, Ludwig van (this is actually "album artist" - "track artist" is used for Various Artists albums, but that's a whole 'nother bowl of suck)
Album: Symphony No. 9, Overture 'Coriolan'
Track: 1.02
Title: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op, 12: I. etc. etc. blah blah
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer: Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert von Karajan
Comment: Deutsche Grammophon/PolyGram 447 401-2

Make sense?

If you have any suggestions for improvement I'm all ears.
 
EAC, the way it is set up, if I understand correctly, puts the "Performer" information in the %albuminterpret% tag

Ah, no; it's the other way round.

%albminterpret% is the EAC value. It's not a Vorbis tag. But the -T command writes that EAC value to the Vorbis tag PERFORMER. It sounds like %performer% is the name Foobar uses for that tag field.
 
Ah, no; it's the other way round.

%albminterpret% is the EAC value. It's not a Vorbis tag. But the -T command writes that EAC value to the Vorbis tag PERFORMER. It sounds like %performer% is the name Foobar uses for that tag field.

AH... that makes much more sense now. So when I was setting up the custom fields in Foobar, my misunderstanding of that syntax was the problem; the two fields that worked were coincidentally the same internally within EAC and also in the Vorbis tag.
 
I'm with cpt_p on this one. I've tried Foobar, Media Monkey and MusicBee. MusicBee is the one I use.
 
I agree tagging of classical is a nightmare--aside from some other music I'm into, classical is a rapidly growing part of my collection.

Thing is, I want the tags I enter to work everywhere, not just in JRiver (for example), especially if some apps or devices do not recognize anything other than standard artist/album/title tags. (Some today still do not recognize %albumartist%.) So I am sort of using a haphazard method where I use %artist% for conductor/symphony or soloist/conductor/symphony, and %album% for composer/work, with the track titles of course covering each movement. At least the search in JRiver is powerful enough that if I enter "rach", it shows me everything with Rachmaninoff (or Rachmaninov...I use whichever was used on the recording) so I don't have to dig for it out of a list.

It's a lot of work, though, so I haven't gotten through a lot of them yet. And then, what do I do with a classical box set like The Art of Bernard Haitink? That has held me up on a few things.

At least with MP3Tag, I can easily change all this if I want to. It's just the motivation... :D
 
I just looked up that Oppo mentioned earlier, Oppo UDP-205.

Lord, what a beast.

It is indeed. I have a 95 and a 105 myself. Actually had a 205 for a couple days, but traded it for cash plus the 105 because I couldn't afford to keep a $1300 disc spinner. I got it because I signed up for the "last run" waiting list and went ahead and purchased it even though I knew I couldn't keep it because I knew they'd be selling for more and that way I could probably work a deal for something that I wanted and still make someone happy, which is just about what happened.
 
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