Hi there,
I need some advice on tagging split CDs.
The directorystructure of my music collection is
D:\Music\A\Artist\Album\Artist - 01 - Track.flac
Let's say we have a split CD which contains half tracks of "Abba" and the other half "Madonna", album name is "Split".
Basically I do not want to put everything of that album into one folder.
I want the "Abba" stuff in \A\Abba\Split\ and the "Madonna" stuff in \M\Madonna\Split\
I have a custom tag "SPLIT" which lists all the artists that are part of this release, to reconstruct all the parts of this release
(because the album name "Split" isnt that unique to do that)
The problem with this is, that I have 4 tracks numbered with 01 - 04 in one directory and in the other directory it starts with 05 - 08.
I can't stand seeing 4 files starting with number 05, on the other hand manually renumbering the 05 - 08 to 01 - 04 seems even worse.
Things like VA or Various Artist or Compilation are a nogo to me.
What would you do? What do I need to change to make it work the way I want?
Looking forward to your responses!
Regards, Sebastian
(I really hope this wasn't asked many times already, search didn't find anything useful to me)
(I was thinking about maybe something like a REALTRACKNUMBER tag, additional to the "changed" tracknumbers, to reconstruct the release if needed, but maybe you have a better way)
Tag & Rename (and other tagging applications) have a wizard that will automatically fill track numbers. Keep in mind that this wizard numbers tracks in the order they appear, which is alphabetically. As long as the track number is part of the filename (e.g., Track01.flac, 01 – Title.flac), the wizard should work.
You can then rename the files based on the new track tags.
Update: I keep forgetting that Tag & Rename isn't freeware. I do know that Foobar2000 has this feature.
Treat them as two different albums and renumber tracks 5-8 on the second album. If you have any classical works in your library, you soon learn that organizing a file-based library around the physical CD isn't always best.
Many people also number the tracks from multiple CD sets and treat them as though from a single disc by renumbering the tracks ripped from discs 2+.
I have a release of Frank Zappa's two albums, 'Apostrophe' and Over-Nite Sensation', on a single disc. These were originally released as two different albums, so instead of having an album in my collection called 'Apostrophe/Over-Nite Sensation', I split it into two albums.
Don't worry about going through all kind of OCD gyrations so that you can "reconstruct" the original CD(s). You're not backing up your CD library.
Tag & Rename (and other tagging applications) have a wizard that will automatically fill track numbers. Keep in mind that this wizard numbers tracks in the order they appear, which is alphabetically. As long as the track number is part of the filename (e.g., Track01.flac, 01 – Title.flac), the wizard should work.
You can then rename the files based on the new track tags.
Update: I keep forgetting that Tag & Rename isn't freeware. I do know that Foobar2000 has this feature.
Thanks for your reply, I bought T&R many years ago and I know it has this feature (aswell as foobar),
i just thought this renumbering is some kind of wrong
Treat them as two different albums and renumber tracks 5-8 on the second album. If you have any classical works in your library, you soon learn that organizing a file-based library around the physical CD isn't always best.
you're definitively right there, i have some classical stuff and it was hard to find a suiting way to make it as right as possible
Many people also number the tracks from multiple CD sets and treat them as though from a single disc by renumbering the tracks ripped from discs 2+.
I thought about that, but I have splits that have track 1 from artist 1, track 2 from artist 2, track 3 from artist 1 and so one, this makes it even worse i think
I have a release of Frank Zappa's two albums, 'Apostrophe' and Over-Nite Sensation', on a single disc. These were originally released as two different albums, so instead of having an album in my collection called 'Apostrophe/Over-Nite Sensation', I split it into two albums.
I have this case once, and I put it all in Album tag, which seems kinda wrong ;/
Don't worry about going through all kind of OCD gyrations
i do that alot
i think ill continue to split the stuff and go with the extra tag for the real tracknumber and renumber the stuff starting from 01
thanks guys
Let's say we have a split CD which contains half tracks of "Abba" and the other half "Madonna", album name is "Split".
Basically I do not want to put everything of that album into one folder.
I want the "Abba" stuff in \A\Abba\Split\ and the "Madonna" stuff in \M\Madonna\Split\
I have a custom tag "SPLIT" which lists all the artists that are part of this release, to reconstruct all the parts of this release
(because the album name "Split" isnt that unique to do that)
I am doing like this: If I have identified it as a split (and I did that before ripping, sorting those in a pile), then I would use ABBA +++ Madonna as <ALBUM ARTIST>.
You have a SPLIT tag which could be used similarly.
Now if you have these distributed around in your library, I would – using foobar2000, but you might do similar in e.g. mp3tag – search and display only those which have the SPLIT tag. (fb2k: split PRESENT searches for those). Then autotag, using the split rather than track-artist.
My 2 cents' worth - to me, it's MY (in this case YOUR) music collection and you should use the concept of "ALBUM" as a flexible container to meet your needs and listening patterns.
On the other hand it seems that you want to be able to easily reconstruct the original (artists'/label's) definition - for me I don't care about that, especially arbitrary dictated-by-outdated-technology paradigms like "discs".
So if you do care about that, perhaps you should keep two copies for those albums where this is a concern - one that satisfies each of these two separate needs.
Your dilemma is coming from trying to satisfy both at once, which then of course makes things very complicated.
As I said, I personally don't care about the second one, so for example with "Birth of the Dead", which has a "live sessions" disc and a "studio sessions" disc, since I have thousands of live shows, I keep that group's work separated between studio and live collections. I simply treated each disc as a separate album and I'm done. If I ever for some reason want to listen to the "whole album" as the label released it, it's really not an issue, but if I really cared about automating that reconstruction I'd just store an extra copy as a multi-disc album separately.