How anal are you about mp3?

plus ive got too many, i want to whittle it down to just the things that i really like, and not things i dloaded to see what it was like.

i dont rename them either

i plan to do all the above! one day

OTM, except I never could figure why the dash was necessary.

I'm ridiculous about my mp3's. I only keep those that are burned at 192 CBR or VBR --r3mix, I eliminate all of the ID3v2 tags and retag everything with ID3v1 only, each artist and album gets its own folder, and I almost always include a downloaded copy of the relevant AMG page in that folder.

I have a tiny life.

Phew. I thought I was the only person who did this and as a result thought it must be a bizarre thing to do, even though I really hate ID3v2 tags. I feel normal again.

i do ID3v2 tags in WinAmp and copy them to ID3v1 too

i've backed up a fifth of my CD collection to mp3 so far - most of this is now on CD-Rs with a few ketp on the hard drive

mmmm cathartic

when i used to download everything at the office i had everything put into alphabetical folders, but that was only because i had to burn them all onto cd. i've got maybe a douzen cds worth.

ID3v1 is too restrictive and doesn't give me enough space to work with. I also fill out my ID3v2 and WinAmp/X11Amp copy (whatever will *fit*) to the ID3v1.

And lower case only? Now, that's just peverse.

because .mp3 files, like bits of paper, have ways of rearranging themselves, moving, and generally getting lost.

I am in the process of organising everything in individual alphabetical folders, but I might move back to my random pseudo-genre tree order eg, root has folders for Pop, Rawk, Hip-hop, Dance etc, with further folders inside for sub-genres e.g Jungle, Garage, House etc. Of course there are many problems with cross-classification, but nothing that a few shortcuts to albums stored in another folder can't cure.
This method is very good if you are like me and like to use random play functions, but like to tailor the music to your mood sometimes too.

often i create folders to hold copies of .mp3s for various purposes (sampling, mixing) and it makes sense to be able to see the artist name right there.

also, if you ever use any kind of removable storage to transport .mp3s back and forth from one pc to another, it makes sense to have as much detail as you can in the filename.

the other thing is that the whole mp3/p2p explosion coincided with and helped propel my realization that there's no need for timeless music. there's plenty of good music and more is being made all the time.

so as an alternative to organizing my mp3's, i just rm -rf the whole folder whenever it gets up around a few hundred or so and start from scratch...

01 Jefferson Airplane - Live in Detroit 1967 - White Rabbit.mp3
02 Jefferson Airplane - Live in Detroit 1967 - The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil.mp3

What do we get?

01 Jefferson Airplane - Liv.mp3
02 Jefferson Airplane - Liv.mp3

because of soulseek's download folder thing, I'm much more organized as they're already named and in their proper folder.

Used to be when I got full albums, I'd put each individual mp3 into the ARTIST - ALBUM directory, then relabel the tracks ARTIST - TRACK# NAME, though sometimes I just left them in a mishmash of formats and just save the trackorder in an m3u file. I also resorted single mp3s (without albums) according to genre, e.g. Hip hop, listening music, easy listening, folk, etc, but these filenames I wouldn't change, perhaps only the ID3 tags (though I'd make sure the ID3 tags were uniform for my albums).

But nowadays I try not to move things around my hard drive too much out of vague notions about defragmenting it later, but also because on the audio hierarchy, mp3s are lower than CDs for me. Thus, if I really like a song, it doesn't matter if I'd already have it on mp3, it will be replaced by a genuine CD. (RIAA PLEASE GOOGLE THIS)

I have more burned to cd that i miss sometimes but i guess they'll have to wait until i get a new 80Gb drive.

so, basically, i used to be maybe slightly anal but now i do just enough to get by.

in 1998 i had about 100 random songs.

since then i ended up with 500 cd-rs/8000+ albums/53,401 songs .. and became an anal librarian along the way. numbered files/descriptive text files/cover scans/excel file listings = normal. i lost 60gig of stored music from an 80gig drive last year so got *even more anal* about burning to CD.

i recommend DiskTracker for macs - it's searchable. and if you phsically store CDs in the same order that they're ordered in DT, then you can be playing any album in under a minute. i'm hoping they get better with outputting the info to text/html with the next releases.

actually the problem isn't 'being anal' .. it's what comes after that - having no time for anyone who doesn't match your anal extremes. resulting in bad behaviour like ignoring any 'so what have you got' emails. :)

explain soulseek's download folder thing
spencer.

My next project: filling out all the SONGWRITER fields. I only noticed that it even existed because I typed 'Dylan' into the search box and the results included XTC's All Along The Watchtower - someone else had been even more obsessive than me when adding White Music's details to the central iTunes tracklisting database.

In reference to the debate above, I hate it when I import track names and they have the artist embedded in the trackname. Use the fucking proper tags for that shit. Get yourself a decent mp3 player if you are relying on filenames for organisation.

70s
80s
Billy B. Childish
Country
Don't Stop Indie Pop
Français
Garage & Psych
Girl Garage
Hip Hop (also includes modern R&B)
Magnetic Fields
Modernista (basically pop/rock stuff from the 90's on)
Pre & Post Punk
Sixties & Seventies Redux
Soul
The Brian Jonestown Massacre
The Dandy Warhols

sue me.

after years of neglect I just spent five solid hours getting my MP3 folder into serviceable shape.

I've forgotten what life is.

I let iTunes organize the folders; it does many things badly, but folders it can handle.

I'm very meticulous about tagging (made much easier since I figured out how to use Mp3tag a year ago...there used to be all sorts of hidden glitches lurking that I never knew how to fix). When I think about the hours and hours I've spent tagging mp3s, it's embarrassing and irrational. Will these files exist five or ten years from now, and if they do, will they still be useable--and if they exist and they're still useable, will I want to use them? They're not like records. The 35 years I've spent maintaining a record collection, there was never a time where doubted that they'd always be around; they weren't going to suddenly disintegrate, so as long as I had a working turntable, they'd have value. I have no idea if that's true of my 2000-2500 mp3s, yet I still make sure they're all properly tagged, and I won't hesitate to spend 15 minutes tracking down a date or proper cover art.

Like I muttered in my EMP talk last year, we're all librarians now...

I'm with Mark, letting itunes organise my music has worked out quite well. If ever I buy something other than an ipod (a likely outcome considering the probable death of the click wheel) I can just drag it all into something else.

I've liked finally having a computer with a ton of hard drive space to rip quite a few of my couple thousand Cds. That said, Mp3s make me nuts. Beyond the boring tedium it takes trying to rip bunches of CDs, I hate listening back to something down the line and hearing those little artifacts they pick up in the transfer process. I have tried quite a few different ripping software and nothing is really 'perfect' and the ones that are better are a bit funky to use. I don't know to me the whole thing is pretty much the digital equivalent of having a bunch of dubbed cassette tapes.

Like I muttered in my EMP talk last year, we're all librarians now...

A point I echo here - http://sickmouthy.com/2011/04/14/record-store-day/

we're all gonna be on a cloud in five years. stop wasting your lives on this

http://i.imgur.com/i2bbK.jpg

http://guidesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/external-hard-drive.jpghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1tAYmMjLdY

dying

I hate listening back to something down the line and hearing those little artifacts they pick up in the transfer process. I have tried quite a few different ripping software and nothing is really 'perfect' and the ones that are better are a bit funky to use.

What bitrate are you ripping at? I've not really had any problems with those as long as I go above 192, I just rip everything to 320 these days since disk space is cheap, and everything sounds fine. And I'm using an ancient copy of CDex from about 2003!

Yeah, I'm thinking either the settings are wrong or the drive sucks? Even my grandmother's ancient 2002 PC rips stuff reliably.

something I'm never sure about is which gives the best sound quality, a constant bit rate of 320 or a V0 variable bit rate. as I understand it the thing about VBR is that it assigns a higher bit rate to the louder parts of the music and a lower bit rate to the quieter parts. the advantage of this is obviously that it takes up less disc space. but how does it sound in comparison to a high constant bit rate rip?

I personally dislike VBR because a lot of programs report incorrect track lengths on VBR mp3s, and don't really care about disk space, so I stick to CBR, but ymmv. I wouldn't have thought V0 VBR sounds *better* than 320 CBR, but I also wouldn't think it would be noticeably worse either.

If you can hear the difference between good VBR and CBR, you have better ears than me. But most 192 rips sound good to me.

My understanding is that 320 will sound better than V0 in theory - 320 is the max that V0 every allocates, I think? But I can't ever hear a difference.

i really notice a 192 in like hi-hat sounds, but that's pretty much about it

I personally dislike VBR because a lot of programs report incorrect track lengths on VBR mp3s,

I always wondered what made this happen, thank u

said it on other threads, but I am gonna be laughing my ass of at you cloud clowns in 10 or 15 years when Amazon or whoever decides your files aren't legal enough and deletes them.

OFF

something I'm never sure about is which gives the best sound quality, a constant bit rate of 320 or a V0 variable bit rate. as I understand it the thing about VBR is that it assigns a higher bit rate to the louder parts of the music and a lower bit rate to the quieter parts. the advantage of this is obviously that it takes up less disc space. but how does it sound in comparison to a high constant bit rate rip?

I think it has more to do with what's going on in the music than the bitrate, but I honestly can't tell the difference between 320 and a good v0 rip and I doubt many people could

320 is the max bitrate for an mp3, so 320 cbr is the best you can do. v0 will go up to 320 if the algorithm determines that the sound requires it but averages ~240. you are unlikely to notice the difference, however.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/images/2/2c/Lame-chart-2.png

if you're really that hardcore, rip to flac

i used to hate VBR because it made my pirated Ukrainian market copy of Pro Evolution Soccer slower (when playing whilst listening) Strangely enough this did not happen with CBR mp3's.