Hard drive organization

Off-topic
21

I have an 8 gig Sansa mp3 player connected to the Rhapsody music service. For a flat fee, I can download as much music as I want. So, rather than ripping all my CDs, which I have to find, de-scratch, etc., I’ve just used Rhapsody to load up my player.

Eventually, I will rip all my CDs. But to what format? Mp3? What bitrate? I don’t want the lossy mp3 format to be my only copy – say if I lose or scratch a CD beyond repair. I want a higher bitrate for playing on the PC and a lower bitrate for playing on the mp3 player. And what about the AC3 format?

Since there is no definitive answer to the encoding question, and since the answer may change over time …

I create wav files using Exact Audio Copy. I keep the wav files permanently. They are the master copy. An exact, lossless copy (and backup) of the original media. From the wav files, I create mp3s at my currently desired quality level (which may change as I learn more or as my equipment changes). Since I had trouble storing the song info inside the wav file, I found an even better solution. Exact Audio Copy lets you configure any mp3 encoder. To encode to mp3, it calls an external program and passes parameters. I wrote a trivial program to accept those parameters and write them to a “songinfo” file, which is a simple text file (of my own design) that is easy to parse. So, when I grab the wav file, the songinfo file gets created with it. Later, I use the info in the songinfo file to drive the mp3 creation process. Encoding is always done using the original wav files, which I can also use to make a perfect replacement audio CD.

The directory structure is by artist then album, with files named with track number and song title. I can truncate or otherwise mangle the file and directory names – because the full original info is in the songinfo file. Oh, and within the album’s directory, there are subdirectories called wav, mp3, ac3, and songinfo (depending on what formats I’ve converted to).

Right now, the collection is small and I don’t play directly from it. I’m simply amassing an archive of all my music. When I’m done, I’ll cancel my Rhapsody service and re-read this thread for ideas on how to organize a large music collection.

The master wav file plus the easily accessible metadata (the songinfo file) is what future-proofs my collection. I don’t have to commit to any particular encoding. I can also use any directory structure I want, because I’m not using the file names and directory names to store information. I can write simple programs or scripts to totally rearrange, rename, list, or re-encode my entire collection. It’s all under my control because of the easy programmatic availability of the metadata. Here’s the contents of a random songinfo file –

PROGRAM        CaptureSongInfo
AUTHOR         David C. Lowell
FILEVER        1
DATE           Wed Feb 20 00:23:53 2008
DIRECTORY      P:\Music\CD Collection\Geddy Lee\My Favorite Headache\wav\
WAV            01 My Favorite Headache.wav
ARTIST         Geddy Lee
CDTITLE        My Favorite Headache
TRACKTITLE     My Favorite Headache
TRACKNUMBER    01
YEAR           2000
GENRE          Progressive Rock
COMMENT        freedbID : 900B410B
22

J. River Media Jukebox and Media Center have a solution for that. They can transcode as they sync to an MP3 player.

So you can rip everything to a lossless format like FLAC. Then when you sync to the Sansa it will transcode the FLAC files to MP3 (you get to choose the bitrate) and maintain a database that stores and tracks the MP3 files so they don’t have to be re-transcoded the next time you sync. So the first sync will take a long time as it transcodes all the files. But the next sync will be faster since it doesn’t have to re-transcode what has already been converted.

That saves you from having to maintain two libraries, one FLAC and one MP3 for all of your albums. You only have to maintain and manage and tag the FLAC files. J. River takes care of the rest.

An advantage of FLAC over WAV is that FLAC files can hold tag info. So you don’t have to maintain a separate text file for title, genre, album art, and other info. Just store all that in the FLAC tags.

I’d like to say that is the way I do things. That would be the audiophile way to do it. But, alas, I chose to go with high quality VBR MP3 files encoded with LAME as my reference copy. I honestly can’t hear the difference between a LAME encoded VBR MP3 and a FLAC file. Some people claim to be able to hear the difference. I can’t even with high quality headphones and electronics. My hearing isn’t all that good though. So I took the easy road and just rip to MP3. The MP3 format isn’t going to go obsolete like 8-track tape. MP3 will continue to be supported for a long time, and once the patents expire it will be free going.

23

I meant FLAC when I said AC3. I was experimenting with making a music DVD and that’s why I had some AC3 files lying around to confuse me. My friend told me about FLAC when I was asking him what mp3 bitrate to use. Given the multitude of choices, and then hearing about a new one (FLAC), I decided not to commit – and to roll my own solution using old-fashioned components – wav files and text files.

I still like the idea of having the metadata easily programmatically accessible. It lets me do anything to the collection by writing a simple Perl script. I guess by now there’s probably a Perl module for accessing FLAC files. That would give me everything I need. Perfect, lossless master. Ability to easily retrieve metadata. And the ability to encode-on-demand.

24

Can someone explain vbr a bit better to me? I know it uses very high compression during the silent parts of the audio file, to get the best compression and best sound compression.

I just get kinda confused when setting my converter up to vbr.

Never mind! I was gonna screenshot my program (Blaze media pro) and looking at it, it all made sense to me. haha.

25

Thank you. I didn’t forget about your post about photo organization. I’ve been working late every night and now I’m rushing to pack to go away for the weekend. Thanks again and I’ll have some comments coming soon…

(I posted about the way I organize my music to give you a feel for how I like to stay in control of the data that I enter – rather than having it swallowed up by software that has bugs or won’t be around in five years. That’s the gist of my reservations about investing a lot of time entering stuff into a potentially crappy piece of software. Anyway, more soon. Thanks.)