Your Ripping Workflow #5 - stray questions

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Dillydipper, Nov 5, 2019.

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  1. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    It’s my hope by asking questions 10 different ways to Sunday, I’ll gain both knowledge and wisdom to help me in my ripping project, and maybe give you ideas as well. These are some maybe questions that didn’t really fit in any of the other threads, but I still could use your opinions as to whether these are worth worrying about...

    Such as, whether you keep tracks separate, or in some cases they absolutely HAVE to be tied together, such as the instrumental intros that go before the Boston and Steve Miller hits, but have a separate title? Or those all those Zappa live albums where the songs change with no air between them, like all the Stevie Wonder albums? And we all assume, you HAVE to keep each track of the Side Two medley together, right...(or does “Her Majesty“ occupy her own throne)(and, with or without the long pause...)?

    Of course, "customizing" tracks ends up playing holy-hell with your tags, and it sometimes means doing them over to reflect your changes.

    I’ve done a lot of “post-producing” on album tracks to separate them aside from the way they’re presented on the record; sometimes Joe Jackson does a kick-a** medley where one track sounds just dandy all by itself, and I’ll have both versions on the server. Mine of course will always be re-labeled in the track name as my own mixes, but I'll still store them with the albums, as well as those singles and tracks that were released as b-sides under the umbrella of the albums era.

    I’ve done some mega-mixes specifically for cassette, one of which I faithfully recreated (perhaps tighter, better quality on a workstation), using extended mixes, segue’d transitions, beat-to-beats, and morphing back and forth between live and studio versions. I did it in .wav, but only had an mp3 player to play it in at the time; obviously that’s gonna have to stay in some mp3 dumping ground on my server, unless I can locate the original .wav some day on an older hard drive. If you were proud of a work like that, would you put it in with actual albums or an artist folder, or keep it separately as your own personal work?

    In some cases, I’ll have the altered version set aside (like a single), and keep the other one either with the album it belongs on, or in my “third” folder (first folder “go-to” tracks, second folder “GenPop” in other words, everything I would listen to, and third folder, the extras, duplicated tracks in perhaps lesser mixes, and everything else I wanted to have SOMEwhere but just didn’t want to have available to listen to all the time).

    And yes, I'm saying some of this stuff all over again, but hoping to keep it relevant to the threads they're in, so some points don't have to be spread all over the five threads and render them babble. Thanks for understanding!
     
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  2. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    Another question, maybe specific to Oppo listeners: do you keep all your tracks on the server, or do you have to load the occasional flash drive, because your player doesn’t play the tracks gaplessly? I seem to recall that being a part of the hullabloo over ripping your 5.1 SACD’s with the BDP-103, and I wondered if that’s still a thing.

    Because my intent (if I ever get finished with the CD’s and CD-R’s), is to have a whole folder of preferred surround mix tracks from SACD, DVD-A, DualDisc and Blu-Ray, some Dolby discs (and who knows, maybe a few needledropped quad rips as well), rotating on their own, whenever I feel like a multichannel mashup evening.

    Love to hear your comments, about whether you’ve considered any of these questions, or how you tackled any of these yourself.
     
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  3. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    By the way, just to have all five of them in one place:
    Your Ripping Workflow #1 - (NAS or) hard drive structure*
    Your Ripping Workflow #2- tagging questions*
    Your Ripping Workflow #3 - multiple formats
    Your Ripping Workflow #4 - multiple recording versions

    And of course, the one focused on vinyl rips, started some time ago (God, this one is a beast!),
    which no doubt will also answer some of your own concerns:
    Your Vinyl Transfer Workflow (sharing best needledrop practices)*

    Like I said, I did some searching here and found many different threads (a few of which I started earlier), by using the
    keywords, "metadata", "tagging", "ripping" and "NAS" individually, so I know, there's a load of knowledge already on
    this board, people sharing not only their personal solutions to their specific needs, based on their skill level, taste,
    hardware profile, and that all-encompassing drive to make the best possible system even if they're dumb enough to try
    doing it with a Kenner Close-n'-Play.

    I'm hoping by putting all my questions and general (lack of) knowledge in five separate threads on four over-arching
    subjects, it might be easier for others to file their own answers that work within their plan. And this would be a good
    place to pose your own questions (or solutions) that you think may have not been addressed in context of your specific
    usage, or just want to help make the discussions relevant! :wave:
     
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  4. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
  5. GreenDrazi

    GreenDrazi Truth is beauty

    Location:
    Atlanta, GA
    I prefer to leave the file “as ripped” as often as possible. I only change the cue points or indexing of files ripped from a CD if the cut point is bad/off. In other words, if the track gets cut off early or if it starts late. I do have some rare exceptions like Prince’s “Lovesexy” album which had no index points for individual tracks.

    To your second post, I post all of the different formats under the same artist/album folder, but with a modified folder name - i.e., for a high res file:
    artist/album date - album title (24B96K)
     
  6. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    If I can rip any hidden track one audio (HTOA) then I do as track 00, which keeps the track numbers the same as the case.

    Any "hidden" tracks after several minutes of silence, I keep the silence in all it's glory! Actually, I have considered reducing the silence considerably, but (so far) left it the same as the CD.

    As for [SACD], [DVD-A], [24/96] etc, I haven't felt the need to put them into special folders as searching with [SACD], for example will bring them all up. This is entirely personal preference, so all my music regardless of format, goes into a single Artist folder.
     
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  7. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    Hidden tracks, that's one contingency I never thought of. I would always number them as later myself, assuming if the artist "hid" it in the first place, it wasn't therefore intended to be in the body of the album flow. I will say, to my knowledge I have no discs with a hidden track #00. Those would show up on most computer players, like Foobar and Window Media, right? And surely EAC and dBPoweramp see them, right?

    How often do we see hidden tracks before the numbered tracks, would you think.
     
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  8. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    All of the ones that are a HTOA are at the start. To play them from the CD, you rewind from the "first" track.

    Out of 7, or 8 CD drives, I only have one that rips them properly.

    David Gray - White Ladder is possibly one of the more well known CDs that has a hidden track - there is probably 10,000s who have no idea that Through To Myself is "before" Please Forgive Me.
     
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  9. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    1) Rip CD with EAC. I use metadata tagging info if available. I rip to a custom folder for that particular album. If it is a dual or multi-CD set, I create a folder for each disc within the album folder.

    2) I open the ripped files in mp3 tag to tweak the tags to my specs.

    3) I then open the files in MediaMonkey to further tweak the tags to my specs and add artwork.

    4) I check everything in Foobar 2000 to ensure everything is exactly how I want it to be.

    5) I go into Windows file explorer and create a duplicate of the ripped file folder. I place one folder in a "Ready To File" folder, and the duplicate folder in a similarly-named folder for mp3.

    6) I re-open MediaMonkey and create a mp3 version of one of the folders using my tweaked settings of the highest quality lame mp3 settings using the duo stereo setting. I used to use the joint stereo settings but realized that the sound was compromised. No debate about this. If I can hear a difference, there is a difference. The only difference is that I use the constant bit-rate settings as opposed to the variable bit-rate settings. yes, it may sound a bit better and be more efficient to use the variable bit setting, but my goal is for 100% universal comparability. I don't like to take chances.

    7) I copy the completed ripped album and its mp3 counterpart to the appropriate backup drives for archival purposes.

    There are people who use automated programs for all this work, and some are satisfied with the tagging of one program, but I don't allow any program to control the database. I prefer to do it all myself. This allows for the simplest filing, and ensures that all of the players/software I use will read the files and data with ease and accurately.

    If I have hidden tracks before the first index, i'll do what it takes to rip that too. If it comes after the last track, meaning that a considerable space is placed between the last track and the "hidden" track, i'll keep the silent gap intact. So, if I play Nirvana's "Nevermind" as a file, i'm going to sit through that silence, but I may also give it a track number so I can skip to it if desired.
     
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  10. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    Hi @Grant. Certainly I can do all the operations you require in one program, dBpoweramp and the operation can be automated, but probably like you, to get tags and cover art that I require, I do use manual editing. Examples of this are release date, genre, sort tags and often selecting my own choice of cover art all pre-rip. I control the database, but the software makes this far simpler and quicker.

    You can select multiple encoder each with their own configurable options to write for example, FLAC and mp3 to independent locations files, avoiding the need of another program to convert later.

    Three years down the line I'm still learning how I can make multiple operations simpler, simply with a better understanding of dBpoweramp. It may be a small investment, but there are very good reasons why it is known as the Swiss Army knife of CD ripping programs.

    I do use the excellent mp3Tag to correct early mistakes I made!
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2019
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  11. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    Here are some: List of albums containing a hidden track - Wikipedia

    Click on the link contained within that page, the list is reasonably long, but it is perfectly feasible that you may not own any.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2019
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  12. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I know about file routing, but, again, I like to do things manually.

    As far as tagging is concerned, no two programs tag exactly the same way. I may like the way mp3tag handles one aspect of tagging, but like the way Mediamonkey handles other tags. That's why I use both, to get the exact results I want. Sometimes tagging in EAC gets what I want and all I have to do is open the files up in mp3tag to remove the period after the track number and add a hyphen. I like the way mp3tag capitalizes letters better than mediamonkey's strict adherence to not capitalizing conjunctions. However, the latter app reduces image sizes to where I want instead of mp3tag's using whatever size I feed it. Stuff like that influences my using both programs.
     
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  13. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff

    Location:
    NY
    I loaded up a 3TB external drive and attached it to my Oppo BDP203. I can use the Oppo Media Control app on on my (old model) iPad, but it is not very stable. I have to restart it if I haven't kept it active. I have the app on my (old model) Samsung Galaxy and it is flaky there as well.
    I have a separate directory for Surround Mixes and another directory for stereo and mono.

    When albums have hidden tracks or bonus tracks I tag them as disk 02 and change the album name to: [Hidden Tracks - The X-files] or [Bonus Tracks- My Aim is True]. I also will use the ALBUM SORT tag as "My Aim is True" for both the album proper and the "[Bonus Tracks - My Aim is True]" album so that both 'albums' appear together when sorted (album proper is disk 1, bonus is disk 2) but don't play together when one is selected.
     
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  14. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    Did anybody here see this new thread about the glitches caused from irregular assigning of meta information?
    Getting properly named and titled MP3s to play in the correct order
    Like me, he tried to do something out-of-the-ordinary with his tag info without realizing the consequence, and it came back to bite him in the tuchis. Worth reading.
     
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  15. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
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  16. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    Not quite the same link as the one from last Sunday, but they get to the same place, so, we're good! Thanks!
     
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  17. Randoms

    Randoms Aerie Faerie Nonsense

    Location:
    UK
    Oops!!
     
  18. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    While it's top of mind, has anybody gotten the recent Version 17 upgrade of dBpoweramp yet, with any first impressions?
     
  19. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite Thread Starter

    Location:
    Central PA
    By the way, for those of you looking into quick insights about ripping more advanced formats, like DVD-A & V, SACD, Blu-Ray and the like, here's another handy set of helpsters...

    OK so how hard is it to rip the audio
     
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