I'm encoding directly to flac via EAC. Let's say I want to rip and encode an album like "Totally 80's". I would like the tags to be:
Album - Totally 80's
Artist - Various Artists
Title - Addicted To Love - Robert Palmer
I can't figure out how to do this. Using "Various Artists" in the Artist field automatically activates EACs special various artist handling scheme. So the tag of the file ends up like this:
Album - Totally 80's
Artist - Addicted To Love - Robert Palmer
Title - (blank)
I think this is because EAC sees the Title field and since there is no "/" it thinks everything is part of the track artist.
Is there any way to permanently disable the various artist handling scheme? Unchecking the "Use various artist naming scheme" in the Filename tab of the EAC Options has no effect.
Is it possible to make this work correctly? If it helps, here is my flac command line from the External Compression tab:
-V -8 -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s
I find it much more useful to have the actual artist in the artist field on various artist compilations. Mainly because if you don't then winamp or any tag displaying program would show "Various Artists - Title - Artist" if you're displaying the artist like the normal default view.
In this case you need to have the / between the artist and song title when using the various artist checkbox. EAC includes standard transofrmation options to change hyphens to slashes and also to flip-flop artist and song title to get things in the right spot.
I know it's not what you originally asked, but that's how I'd suggest doing it and makes the most sense to me. Media library programs will also make sorting through and finding a song easier if the artist field contains the actual artist.
G
I almost always listen to full albums. For me, it is much easier to look for compilations under "Various Artists." This is especially true on my portable and I assume it will be true on the portable I'm looking to purchase soon. I like my music arranged like I arrange my CD rack. I do individual artists by name, then soundtracks by title (in my scheme these albums have the artist of "Soundtrack",) then cast recordings, then compilations.