Help a vintage 2-channel owner create centralized digital audio library

I like iTunes.

 

I Like turtles

 

Maybe a POPCORN HOUR C200 ? I use it for watching TV series and movies, but it should play wav files and you can easily connect a HD .....

 

Actually, you should have refrained from capitalizing the word like, given that it is a verb and not a proper noun. Also, a period is always desirable at the end of a sentence, which your utterance clearly was.
Thank you.

 

Thanks for clarifying.

 

No DAC onboard, but this might work for you and it provides HDMI.

"A rear-panel HDMI video output lets you connect a TV and brings up a graphic user interface."


Pro-Ject - Stream Box S2 Ultra Media Streamer

 

Thanks for posting this psulionlinks. It does seem to be the only box out there with HDMI out to a monitor (you need to attach a mouse and keyboard to interact with the monitor selections though). But maybe there's some mini wireless keyboard/touchpad that would work, even if that essentially gets to the size of a small tablet.

At first glance, $900 seems really steep for what amounts to an electronic patch panel, with a file browser; no audio circuitry at all. Excluding the cost of the box, which looks nicely machined even if small and bland, the bill of material for the innards seems like it would be under $50, but maybe I'm not looking at the value proposition from the right perspective.

Let's say I added their matched DAC box, bringing the total to $1250. And for the sake of discussion, compare that combination to the Cambridge Audio CXN V2 which is $1100 MSRP. Assuming the analog output audio is comparable between them, and besides the HDMI-out on the Pro-Ject (let's assume that's worth the $150 difference), what would the Cambridge CXN V2 do that the Pro-Ject combo wouldn't, or do better than the Pro-Ject combo, and vise versa? If there's no material difference, then I guess the $900 for the Pro-Ject S2 Ultra isn't out of line after all.

 

It's going to come down to the user interface for browsing and playing your music from each unit's app - they will both be different. Aside from potentially different sound from the chips used in either DAC:

1. You get a pretty display on the CXN v2
2. You don't have to use a remote with the CXN v2...you can use the jog dial to select the music you want to play directly from the unit.

In essence, the CXN v2 looks and functions like a CD player or other audio component in your rack. The Pro-Ject (and Node 2i) are small boxes that require an app to use them.

 

Thanks psulioninks.

For the dBPoweramp users, I get the occasional track that shows up in rip status with a red x and says "inaccurate" followed by a number in parentheses. I didn't find any good info on what to do for these so what I've been doing is, I right click on the inaccurate track, and it gives these options:
>re-rip inaccurate and insecure
>re-rip Secure (warning) & insecure
>Re-rip matching CRCs

I couldn't find what these mean, so I picked the middle one since it has a green icon next to it, and re-ripped, overwriting the prior rip. Usually that comes back with it being accurate on re-rip. In one case I had to re-rip twice for it to come back accurate. But I just had a case where it was still inaccurate after 2 re-rips (disc had no scratches or dirt), so I listened to that track, didn't hear any obvious problems like drop outs, and just moved on to the next CD, leaving one of the tracks "inaccurate."

Is there a different process you'd recommend, or is this essentially the way to proceed (assuming you don't want to spend a bunch of time on a single track)?
thanks.

 

First I look at the number of rips with which it is being compared. If it is only one, there is no guarantee that one is accurate. If it is say ten rips, and my rip is inaccurate, I look very carefully at the disc. If I find a scratch, I polish it out by (a) wet or dry paper, wet; 1000 grit or finer if you can find some. The CD then looks absolutely awful - mat grey. Then I concentrate on the scratch only and continue to work on that area until the scratch is removed. Then (b) I use wadding polish Brasso Wadding - RBR (there must be similar stuff in non-UK countries) and work the CD back to a high polish. This takes a while. The rip usually then is accurate.

The thing that there is no solution for are scratches from the label side - that damages the thin reflective layer. But a careful magnifying glass inspection will show if the problem is a scratch or damage to the layer.

 

Does not do higher res than 24/48. Annoyingly bloated, slow pig. Does not handle large libraries very well.

 

can't speak to the fat bloated stinky pig part, but higher res than 24/48 isn't an issue.

 

iTunes is obsolete now, anyway. Why not stick to software which is supported.

 

OP here. I never expressed any intention to use iTunes so how about we drop it. Thanks.

 

Fine. How about Foobar 2000 as a solution.

 

I agree and Dillydipper's thinking practically.

 

I've now ripped most of my CD's to FLAC using dBPoweramp. I could use some advice on how to make use of mp3tag.

Keep in mind I don't use any streaming services or any sort of digital delivery really, so I don't have any sense of what tags can do for me and how to format them or what new tag fields would be useful.

dBPoweramp seems to generally do a good job of filling in tags. When I view all in mp3tag, I do have a bit of manual editing to do in about 5% of the tracks I ripped, but that's not too bad.

dBPoweramp creates filenames of the form [track number][artist][song title]. That doesn't seem like the best format, but maybe the filename field really isn't used by applications when you're searching and the more specific fields are used? What format for filename do you all use, or is this field not really used much?

One thing I'd really like to be able to do is to create a tag (a custom tag, I guess) for all files that are instrumentals, and maybe a subtag for categories of instrumental.
Is there a way to do an automatic search of all my ripped filed versus some database of instrumentals, and tag the ones in my database that are instrumentals? I have a lot of entire albums that are instrumentals so those won't be too bad to do manually, but there are cases where all but 1 or 2 songs on a given album are instrumentals, and cases where only one song on the album is instrumentals. (The reason for my questions on this is I prefer instrumentals as background music during the day so I want to be able to filter by instrumentals)

Any other tips or things I should consider about tags via mp3tag would be appreciated.

 

How you set up tags may well depend on the app or player that you're using for playback

I would like to have song title without track number, but my playback device and software, when I browse with my preferred view of my library, sorts primarily on filename, not track number, so I have to set filename as [Track num] [Title].

You could use the Comment tag for instrumentals and sub-categories, but that will only be useful if your playback software and device will allow you to search on it

 

As I read your post through a magnifying glass I can sympathize. However I will say that a lot of Roon's clientele are probably in our same boat, and it seems fine on a tablet. Even a big tablet, in the long run, is not crazy expensive. For me there's kind of two streaming setups:
- Apple Music (or Spotify) over iPhone/iPad, loal content uploaded to Apple Music.
- Roon to integrate Tidal or whatever with all your local rips. Yes, it costs something. Yes, if you can afford it, it's worth it, it's just pretty elegant. No apps to sort through, it just works and is very nice with the integrated artwork. Also if you subscribe to Tidal or other lossless, that could well reduce the need for a lot of ripping in the first place.

 

I like that app! BUT if you're on Mac, it won't run on Catalina or newer. I gotta find a newer Mac program for this.

 

Thanks, that's useful info. I was under the crazy impression that any given app reads all included tags and allows you to sort and group all tracks that contain those tags. So how does one find out what tags a given app will read and allow you to sort/group based on its contents? Or maybe more specifically, is there documentation for the BlueOS and
StreamMagic apps?

 

If you only care about local ripped files, JRiver is king. You can edit any tag, create your own non-standard tags, embed them in the files if you want, and slice and dice them in any number of ways for playback. More refined selection based on the tags might require learning their complicated query language, but posting a question on their forums on how to achieve a desired result usually results in the exact syntax needed.

Roon is far more limited in this regard. But a combination of focus and bookmarks can get close. And it incorporates your streaming library, which is way more valuable to me.

For me, life is too short so I've gone with roon and simplifying. Its nicer UI is a bonus.

 

Yup, hard to beat JRiver for its customization and sound quality playback options. Once you get in and start to use it, I don't find it hard to create the query strings as their program pretty much builds them as you tell it what it is you want to do. I have lots of custom fields I set-up. One of my favorites is the "Audio Series" field I created to quickly filter and select things like Mobile Fidelity, Music Matters Jazz and Analogue Production titles.

 

The reason a program like Mp3Tag is so versatile, is because various players use tag information in different ways, and display it in different ways, as well. That's also why batch-editing is such a handy option.

For instance, I prefer my filename to be [ARTIST]-[TITLE], and have no need for track number, unless I'm playing an album in its' entirety. So I want my filename without the numbers.

I've actually got a whole file of tracks from Various Artists CD's that I don't even need the track numbers or album titles on, ever. Because when I shuffle them, I only need to know they're the best single (or album) versions I've got, whether they're from a Rhino collection, a Time Life series or other reissue label packages; AND, I have a separate playlist for that same folder, of only Steve's remasters, from at least five different labels; but they get album title assignments. But they all run without specific need of this information, because they're all from someplace else anyway. Just like on radio.

Also remember, as in your all-instrumentals shuffle, you could do that with a big ol' playlist, and shuffle that, instead of worrying about including the extra comment field if you desire.

I could have absolutely my personal favorite Christmas tracks in one playlist to shuffle for private use, or shuffle the whole category as a whole, with more general-interest Christmas music, for a party, for example. And yet they all stay in a "Holiday" folder, so they don't get mixed into playing with everything else in April.

Everybody's got a different use for the info, so a tagging program like this one tries to consider every eventuality.

 

Well, now I know why I've tried to avoid watching audio forums...it quickly mushrooms into a multi-thousand-dollar "to do" list ;o)

As I think about this local digital music library solution and what works for me, it occurs to me that I'd have this playing background music close to 24/7, and my Adcom GFA555-II is not really intended to operate that way, plus it's over 30 years old and operating it that way might be the beginning of the end. It also gets quite toasty when idle, and my air conditioning bills are high enough already.

So I started down the rabbit hole of also buying a small, cool-running power amp for this 24/7 listening mode, maybe in the 40wpc range, and I'd manually plug the streaming device into that for the background cases, and plug into the Adcom for when I have a need for higher volume. But my speakers are Polk SDA 2.3TLs, and F1nut (the resident polk expert) informs me a 40wpc amp is probably not a good pairing with the 2.3TL's (even ignoring the need for a common ground power amp, which is often hard to tell from product data sheets). Plus I'd not only have to disconnect and swap amplifiers, I'd have to disconnect and swap the speaker terminals (when I switch between the adcom and low-power system), and that's not very practical.

So...slightly more practical would be to have a streaming device (including D/A, possibly as a separate device) that allows me to just push a button to switch between either driving the music to the Adcom/Polk combo, or driving it to some TBD low-level listening setup that includes its own cool-running amp and small bookshelf speakers.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the bluesound node2i and the cambridge CXN v2 could serve as my streaming device for such a switchable setup? The analog RCA outputs in either case would go to the Adcom preamp AUX input to operate the larger Adcom/Polk system, and the digital output from the streamer box would plug into the low-level listening system, which would need to include: digital in>> DAC>> power amp>> speakers. Before I go any further down this rabbit hole, does that sound right, and the same user interface and app would allow my local hard drive based music library (which is plugged directly into the streaming box) to play on either system?