[Old Thread] Calibre for music?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by AnnieWalker

So you want me make an empirical case on why MediaMonkey won't fulfill my classical music organizing and managing expectations? )

Sure. Why not? We might actually learn something.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by AnnieWalker

So you want me make an empirical case on why MediaMonkey won't fulfill my classical music organizing and managing expectations? )

Seriously, I wish you would. It's always interesting to hear another view and it might shed light on a better way to do things.

[evolutionary]

@AnnieWalker

I use quodlibet for my classical music collection: https://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/

Its main advantages are full support for custom tags and very powerful searching. This allows you to tag classical music appropriately: 'work', 'movement', 'composer', 'conductor' etc. etc., (as the tags are customisable there's really no limit here: for example, I also have my music tagged by musical era, e.g. 'Romantic', and musical culture, e.g. 'French'). You can then search your collection based on those tags. So I can bring up, for example, all the French music of the Romantic era conducted by von Karajan.

It represents a complete end to all those: "should I put the performer or composer in the 'artist' tag" type questions.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by evolutionary

@AnnieWalker

I use quodlibet for my classical music collection: https://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/

Its main advantages are full support for custom tags and very powerful searching. This allows you to tag classical music appropriately: 'work', 'movement', 'composer', 'conductor' etc. etc., (as the tags are customisable there's really no limit here: for example, I also have my music tagged by musical era, e.g. 'Romantic', and musical culture, e.g. 'French'). You can then search your collection based on those tags. So I can bring up, for example, all the French music of the Romantic era conducted by von Karajan.

It represents a complete end to all those: "should I put the performer or composer in the 'artist' tag" type questions.

You can do all that in Media Monkey.

[Aidan]

I use xbmc for my music, mainly for the video side of the program, but it does a very good job with music as well. If you're a power user it has an active community developing add-ons for pretty much every use you can imagine.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Sure. Why not? We might actually learn something.

it seems not - either she has no case, or she aint sharing

[Sabardeyn]

Interesting discussion. I do hope Annie responds as she might know a better tool and/or have a suggestion on a better means of handling / organizing data. I'll take any and all tips I can get!

[Agama]

Originally Posted by Sabardeyn

Interesting discussion. I do hope Annie responds

+1 so do I, (even though it's nothing to do with calibre!).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

That was my thought, also, but it appears Annie joined to ask a question, didn't get the answer she wanted, and has gone.

[AnnieWalker]

Actually it's harder than I thought. The version I had mm checked last and installed seems to be v3.0.1.1127 and the actual version I've acquired 6 days ago is v4.0.6.1501. There are drastic changes. The problem is I've a one-by-one edited library which took years to organize and I'm being over-careful. I don't like the player, the sound levels(added izotope ozone 5 to overcome that...which did the trick) and can't get the most out of the playlist yet(i.e. adding the whole tracks, clearing the playlist, if an album is double-clicked or adding a track to the playlist, w/o clearing, if only e track is double-clicked...
I'm quite impressed with the library editing functions but I'll have at it more... I'll be back

[Lady Fitzgerald]

As you apparently noticed already, if you set the file association for your music files to a player other than Media Monkey's, playing from media Monkey will be done through the other player. I happen to like Media Monkey's player but everyone has their own preferences.

Clearing the play list is as easy as clicking on Edit just below the list itself, then clicking on clear. If you want to add only one track to the play list, you have to right click on the track, then chose either Play Next or Play Last. Double clicking an album or even just one track will add the entire album to the play list, clearing out the existing list.

Part of your problem may be from being overly concerned with your existing library. As long as you don't click on anything that will reorganize your actual files, Media monkey will work only from its own database and not change the files themselves. i find it convenient to rename the occasional folder from within Media Monkey but will not allow to organize or alter my folders otherwise. My music is organized very simply; I just have a music folder that contains album folders with one folder per album. I either treat singles as an album or lump similar singles together in an "album" folder. I prefer to let Media Monkey organize the music in a manner similar to how calibre organizes books (other than calibre actually making a copy of the original book). If you really want to be cautious, you could make a copy of your library and direct Media Monkey to access only that copy.

Media Monkey has the ability to rip CDs but several later versions had a bug that caused problems. The latest version is 4.0.7.1506 and has supposedly fixed that bug (another version, 4.0.7.1507, is due out soon) but I'm going to wait until I see some users confirm that. I'm still using 4.0.3.1476 and have no problems ripping. I also got the Gold version ($50) since it has better mp3 encoding (I rip at an insane 320 kbps; whatever loss there is can't be heard) as well as another option I feel is useful. If you do your ripping from another program, there are free ones available that will just as wellas MM's Gold version. If you want to get an earlier version, like the one I'm using, you can get it from here or here.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by AnnieWalker

...I don't like the player, the sound levels(added izotope ozone 5 to overcome that...which did the trick) ..

I don't get it - you collect classical performances but don't want to hear what the orchestra/ conductor & producers intended you to hear - instaead you run it through a load of electronic audio fakery ??? ( I googled that package - it's full of such gems as "harmonic exciters" - I bet beethoven make no allowances for that in his scores )

Any MP3 player reproduces exactly what is in the mp3 file - it has to ' cos we are talking digital. anything you do after that is changing the sound. so we haed towards a calibre player ( the equivalent of calibre viewer) but with extra electronic doo -dahs. That's a slippery slope. A real audio purist will tell you to never to mess with the audio - be it via Creative x-fi fakery or 99+ band eq tools - leave that to the rappers & hip hop crews.

anything you don't like has to be an artifact of converting that back to analogue i.e. it s within your sound card / sound chip D/A conversion, or or amp or you speakers, depending where exactly the sound ceases to be digitised.

come to think of it, what are you using mp3 anyway - a true purist collector should be spinning the vinyl or converting only to lossless flac or wav format.

todays music quiz - which of the following features increase fidelity ( as in put the hi into hi-fi)

iZotope's complete mastering system in a single integrated plug-in includes eight essential mastering tools:
Maximizer, Equalizer, Multiband Dynamics, Multiband Stereo Imaging, Post Equalizer, Multiband Harmonic Exciter, Reverb, and Dithering.

answer...



NONE

[Agama]

MP3's (256 kbps) played back through a decent hifi or good headphones certainly sound a bit lifeless compared to CD (16-bit, 44.1khz), and CD itself loses out on some low level detail and ambience compared to a good vinyl playback system. But to be fair to AnnieWalker, she does say that she has 5000 records and talks about tagging CD's, so maybe these are her primary formats and not MP3. Maybe izotope ozone 5, (whatever that may be), helps alleviate some of the losses of compressed audio formats.

In terms of using calibre for tagging and cataloging a music collection it could be very good, but there would then need to be a way of opening a music file from with calibre by linking to the user's preferred music player, and of sending the music to a device. Music formats would obviously need to be disabled from book conversion and I'm not sure how playlists could be supported.

One book related use for such capability within calibre would be for managing audio versions of books.

Calibre is very good at what it does, (and is continually improving), so maybe digressing into music/audio management would slow down the main development.

[cybmole]

well she did complain about mp3 player quality, so does not appear to understand digital audio. its all 0's and 1's until you get to the D/A stage, and all the MP3 player does is send those unaltered 0s and 1's to the sound card or chip

shes probably one of those folks who think that dropping $99 or more on a gold-plated oxygen-free HDMI cable gives you a better picture, ( just like how a $999 printer cable improves your print quality) ....we're drifting way off topic but given a lump sum to spend I'd go for a mere 1000 - 2000 recordings ( that's a hour a day's worth for 5 years ), and spend the rest on a world class sound system , not 5000 records ripped to MP3 for PC playback - but each to his/her own.
Even with an expensive soundcard, my Dell PC motherboards add a certain amount of noise to the audio channel , which no amount of cable/component swapping will cure. it's not an issue at normal in-house listening levels but if I crank my 100w amps to max, with no track playing there's a LOT of noise, compare with what I hear after unplugging the pC audio & connecting a dedicated CD player.
Its not earth loops or anything like that, it's that mass market PC motherboards are not built to audiophile tolerances. audio/video crosstalk is the primary cause but general E/M radiation from unshielded PC components will always affect analogue audio out.
Digital out from PC & hi-fi amps with digital in could be better but are out of my price range. - they are anyway aimed at multi-channel Home Cinema crowd. If you look at upmarket 2 channel stereo HI-fi amplification (to match what is on your vinyl / your Cds ), its all analogue stuff.

But hey, if you are collecting great classical recordings by the 1000s, you probably have stuff remastered from old 78s / recorded with a bent pin on a lump of wax so what the hell . Anything pre 1980s will be analogue mastered, on tape ( remember tape???) , then pressed to vinyl. Caruso did not release many DVDs


PS The idea of "alleviating.. losses in compressed formats" is a marketing hype thing. you can't really interpolate & replace what was removed during compression, despite Creative attempts to make you think otherwise.
To drag it back to a book discussion , it's like selling software that can restore your abridged book to it's former unabridged glory.

[Agama]

Agreed. I've tried home conversion of vinyl to wav with a dedicated sound card and the results are not good, though playable in the car.

Interpolation can help with CD's limitations: some CD oversampling DACs do seem to sound better, (at least to my luddite, vinyl-tuned ears!). It would be nice to see a higher standard for music audio. I know that there is SACD but it never really seems to have caught on, so I guess that for most listeners flexibility and convenience matter more.

Yes I remember tape: 1/4" mastering was good but cassette was it's MP3 equivalent.

And back on a book note: is there any mileage in being able to add audio books to a calibre library?