Classical Music and Itunes

[Michel]

Has anybody else experienced the frustration of the auto naming when importing your own CD's into Itunes(from Internet database)? Its almost always incorrect, displaying everything from japanese characters, incorrect artwork, poor names, etc, as described in the article below:

http://www.macworld.com/2005/05/secrets/julyplaylist/index.php?pf=1


Is there a solution, or must they be done manually?

[Michel]

A page here I wanted to share:

http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunes.htm

This guy obviously has too much time on this hands -- but it is a depressing reality.

Maybe I should just give up putting classical music on there.

[Tancata]

Sorry to hear you're having difficulties.

It should probably be mentioned these things are a fact of life for all media players, not just iTunes.

Still, as long as you're not too fussy, it's fairly painless.

The guy who wrote that page seems a bit clueless about iTunes - for instance, he says the database is organised by Artist not Composer - it's a simple matter of Control-clicking (right-clicking) the bar which has "Artist, Album, Track, Disc number" etc etc and activating the Composer field - then you can sort by Composer exactly the way you would normally sort by Album.

FWIW, here's my system - I don't have any problems managing my classical and non-classical music collections via iTunes (I do most listening via my computer). Just so you know it doesn't have to be ridiculously complicated.

Just let CDDB fill in all the fields except Album, Artist, Composer and Genre (tracks and disc number).

Album - take what CDDB uses or else clean it up to your own format. e.g. I use smart playlists to collect multi-volume recording projects (e.g. Gardiner Bach cantata cycle, King Monteverdi sacred music, Symphony cycles...) so all the discs in a particular series need to have a word/phrase that the smart playlist will pick up on. This will be something like "Cantatas (Volume 1)", "Symphony Nos. 5 and 6", "Messiah" or whatever. Remember you also have the composer field, so you don't need to put it here.

Artist - this is important for sorting and searching for tracks - I usually just put the conductor's name, or the name of the artist or ensemble if there's no conductor.

Composer - stick in the composer's name. Often, different discs will have this in different formats (e.g. Bach, J.S., Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach, Johann Sebastian or whatever.

Just make sure all your Bach CDs have the same format here.

Genre - I use Rock, Folk, Blues, Jazz, Early Music, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern - but whatever set of genres you use will depend on your listening preferences. Don't have more than a few genres if you ever want to sort by genre or make sensible smart playlists by genre.

Also, on the subject of Genre - some people do it by type of music e.g. Opera, Vocal, Chamber, Keyboard, Symphonic, etc etc - that just seems REALLY weird to me. I can't imagine a situation where I'd want Monteverdi's L'Orfeo grouped together with La Boheme but separated from, say, his madrigals... But it's up to you.

That's it...everything is sortable in any way I want, easily manageable, etc.

Takes about six seconds to do for each CD...just select all the tracks, control-click, Get Info, and set the fields for the whole CD.

It's vastly easier than messing around with actual discs... 

One other thing - you probably know this, but by far the best way to access a CD in iTunes is the search box. Just type in "beethoven zinman 5" or whatever, and that disc is pulled up immediately. I have seen people scrolling up and down the entire library which is just weird - also, IMO the Browse Library function doesn't work well for classical...but you don't need it anyway, it's much slower than just using the search 

Edit: Oh...and make sure to use Smart Playlists - they are massively useful with a big CD collection (the Recently Added default one is good...also try an Unplayed or Infrequently Played, or Not Played For Ages...or whatever...) They really are great.

[mahlertitan]

Has anybody else experienced the frustration of the auto naming when importing your own CD's into Itunes(from Internet database)? Its almost always incorrect, displaying everything from japanese characters, incorrect artwork, poor names, etc, as described in the article below:

http://www.macworld.com/2005/05/secrets/julyplaylist/index.php?pf=1


Is there a solution, or must they be done manually?

i don't think there is a systematic solution, i do it manually.

[George]

Has anybody else experienced the frustration of the auto naming when importing your own CD's into Itunes(from Internet database)? Its almost always incorrect, displaying everything from japanese characters, incorrect artwork, poor names, etc, as described in the article below:

http://www.macworld.com/2005/05/secrets/julyplaylist/index.php?pf=1


Is there a solution, or must they be done manually?

Mine has a program called gracenote that almost always gets it right.

This immediately comes up when I insert a CD, if there is more than one option, it asks me which one I want.

I would check my settings if I were you.

[Tancata]

Mine has a program called gracenote that almost always gets it right.

This immediately comes up when I insert a CD, if there is more than one option, it asks me which one I want.

I would check my settings if I were you.

Gracenote is the company that owns CDDB (I think...) - anyway, you are getting your CD details from the same database. IMO they're usually OK, or need a little reformatting - maybe some people are fussier.

[Michel]

Thanks for the info guys.

Just to clarify, I am referring to the CDDB database (gracenote).

Last night I put in Kempff's complete Piano Sonatas for Schubert, and all of it was in japanese!!!

Tancata - how do you doa  cd in six seconds? What about the complex track names, such as allegro mon troppo, etc - or do you just ignore these and go for movement number?

[Michel]

How weird, I've done a few discs this evening and it has become evident that most of them are working - just my schubert one last night that was totally wrong...

Just as another question, in addition to those above, what is the lossless format to use? Obviously, not the apple one, so just wav? I've decidd on ripping lossless, that way, I can always changes later - great flexibilty, even though its loads of space and time... but time well spent!

[George]

How weird, I've done a few discs this evening and it has become evident that most of them are working - just my schubert one last night that was totally wrong...

Yes, there are some that don't work, but it's rare enough to be workable IMO.

Just as another question, in addition to those above, what is the lossless format to use? Obviously, not the apple one, so just wav? I've decidd on ripping lossless, that way, I can always changes later - great flexibilty, even though its loads of space and time... but time well spent!

They say that Apple Lossless takes up less space because it reconfigures the info from the original disc. It's all there, just rearranged to take less space.

WAV is an exact copy of the info, but take twice the space according to Apple.

[Michel]

Right, open source is the only way to go for archiving, and becauses its very hard, though i dont think necessarily impossible to tag WAV's, I've decided on FLAC - which seems to be a great option. Wavpack was also tempting, but I've gone for FLAC - tis fast and using it on Max is REALLY easy - what a great program!!!!

I think this is the solution, now I just need to buy a massive hard drive.

[Tancata]

As far as I know, iTunes won't play FLAC files...

Apple Lossless is closed-source, true, with all the worries that implies. And, it is suspected that DRM could be retroactively applied to ALAC files (since they use the usual Quicktime container)...BUT, an open-source decoder which can write to WAV exists. It's definitely the most convenient lossless format to use on the Mac, so it's up to you.

As for six seconds - I don't change the track names (or very rarely). Just Composer, Artist, maybe Album, and Genre...ok, maybe 10 seconds...

[Michel]

It can work with itunes, with an unofficial patch!

Or you could use another player...

But anyway, the point is that these are the backup - I will probably encode to store the rest on my hard disk so that it will fit... I am getting my 320gig hard disk later...