MP3s, ID3 tags and bit rates

Morbyd

Morbyd

Moderator
So... I've got a pretty big CD collection... well, probably no sooo big with all the music lovers on here. Over a thousand albums... don't have an exact count. A few years ago, I took the time to rip everything to MP3. It was a month-long project.

I recently finally got fed up with what a mess the ID3 tags are on the files. Fields like album artist almost never set. Genres all over the place. Slight differences in the names of artists (do you capitalize The or not?), etc. It was driving me nuts.

Also, when I was ripping many of them nearly a decade ago, everything from A through L was done at a bitrate of 128kbps, and L-Z ripped at 160 kbps. I finally moved to 192 kbps when I got to compilations.

I know... the audiophiles among you have gasped in horror. Not that my hearing is good enough to always tell the difference but as my CDs will eventually go into storage, and as better quality digital releases become an increasingly large part of my collection, there's just no excuse for these poor old files.

So, now I'm going through the whole collection and fixing everything. Filling in the key bits of data on every file (artist, album artist, album, title, track #, # of tracks, disc #) and re-ripping (or being lazy and downloading from torrents) each of my old albums to at least 256 kbps. (No grief from you "lossless" FLAC lovers). Standardizing file names. Etc, etc.

It's nightmarishly tedious. I'm up to the letter G in the Rock-Pop folder which is nearly halfway through that list. But while that's my biggest folder, there's still tons more to do. Really not looking forward to the dance compilations folder. Not sure I have the patience for it :confused:

Anyone else done this?
 
No but I want to!

This has been on my to-do list for ages. I can't bear to get rid of any CDs... or tapes... even my old Tiffany and Roxette tapes! :lol:

But they take up so much room, I need to!!

I need to figure out how to do it! Not much help, am I!!??
 
I did this about 5 years ago with all my dance music (also built an iTunes in excel VBA, not that I'm a nerd...). It was at the time about 20k records tho with such little commonality it was a right pain. Next time I see you I'll regale you with the tips and tricks and fun times I had to ensure everything was consistent.

Silly as it sounds, the one thing that I found the best piece of advice I wish someone had told me at the start, is to make a 'document' stating all your rules and thoughts (I can't think of the proper name for it, Project Managers will know what I mean) so you can refer to them and maintain naming constistency and prevent Armageddon.

This microphone isn't switched on is it?...
 
Oh, and ID3 tags were my nemesis.

As a (and still am today) the only music manager and player I need is Windows Explorer, Winamp 2.x and the power of (NTFS, Fat 32 can't handle big directories well, or the other way round) directories.

Pains me to say it, and I recommend you uninstall as soon as this is done, but if you're working with ID3 tags, I found iTunes (the real one by Apple, not the one I made in Excel) song manager interface really good when I had to do my Mums ipod.

If you're doing it just filenames/directories (as I did), then this http://www.1-4a.com/rename/ is simple and brilliant.
 
Oh, and finally, I guarantee that infinitely quicker than re-ripping your music (if you want to bump up the quality), is to take 30 mins or so queuing up (the albums you already own, of course - NOT condoning stealing etc!) on utorrent before you go to sleep and by the time you wake up the following day they'll all be downloaded.
 
I've been doing a mix of torrenting and re-ripping. Sometimes the latter is easier because you know everything will have the right tags (why do people always get the release year wrong?!) and the filenames as you want them.

I've always been very strict about file names and directories too. Winamp has a great plug-in called Dynamic Library which lets you skip all that 'importing media library' stuff and just go by directories. But I've started using another player for its smart playlists and random shuffle function and this the ID3 tags are more of an issue.

There's a great program called Tagscanner which I've been using to tidy up the tags. Highly recommended.
 
Maybe too late but if you have created a database you can import it into excel and create a form which will have all the information you want. Then after you are finished you can do reports and get any listing that you want.
 
I've been meaning to do this for a very long time. Sadly, the last time iTunes ran, it completly destroyed my music directory. (Sorted it into artists... most of which aren't right anyway). I've got about 125GB of music, I don't think I can bring myself to sort that much out. Especially as a huge chunk of it is in WMA, which iTunes refuses to read.

My DJ Music collection is sorted into Key, and all the tracks are properly named with artist and title. Don't use any of the other ID3 tags

I use http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ for sorting out tags
 
djchewie said:
my hearings shot to ****, so 192 for me for anything 'ripped'.
Click to expand...
Ya, mine too. I probably won't even notice the difference over 128! But I figure I should keep some level of quality. I've read that over 192 only trained ears can actually tell the difference so I've set that as my minimum. 256 vbr is what I'm ripping at, although some of what I'm downloading is 320.

Ikoda said:
I use http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ for sorting out tags
Click to expand...
Looks OK but check out TagScanner. It's not as pretty but really works well - aside from tag editing, it can download tag info and rename files.
 
I wish I had the time and patience to do this whole process, a mate despairs when he uses my winamp setup and mish mash of albums. He showed me how to set the tags correctly, I did a few dozen and sacked the project.

With regard FLAC, I downloaded a lot of Beatles stuff in this format, could tell absolutely no difference and was unable to change the tags on the downloaded files.

I can anticipate your joy as you fix the very last file in your collection:D
 
I've pretty much finished A-J, which is around 700 folders out of 1100 (double albums take up 2 folders).
I think I'll finish before I go travelling for the holidays.

But that's just the "Rock/Pop" folder. I've still got dance compilations, dance/electronic, chill out, industrial/EBM, 80s pop, jazz, classical, R&B and Russian to go through :cry: Those first two are big.

It might be mid-2012 :lol:
(seems like the initial ripping project was a lot easier!)
 
I wish you the best of luck! Will take a look at tag scanner. You can rename files with mp3tag as well.
 
Hey, British people.

Would you categorize Madness as pop, rock or ska? They sit right on the borderline... not sure what to do with them!
 
I'd categorise them under 80's-90's pop.

Ska needs to be spared for less commercial stuff - nothing against Madness tho. 8)

As for your project - I'd pay someone good money to do this exercise for me.

Time well spent.
 
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