Managing huge digital Music-Collections and digital Music Files

[jls001]

My folder structure:

1) Classicals
2) Country and Folk
3) Crossovers and World
4) Jazz & Bossa Nova
5) OSTs and Stage
6) R&B & Blues
7) Rock, Pop, Mixedbags
8) Samplers, Shows, Tests & Audiophile Records
9) Vernacs

Quite a painful and time consuming process to arrive at this structure since I never really bothered to classify my rips, but it has been worth the time spent doing it. Within the genre folders, albums are named in a simple format as <Artist name> - <Album name>, and arranged alphabetically to make finding any artist quick and easy. I dislike subfolders within the genre folder as one need to more mouse clicks to see what's inside. So if an album is a double or triple album, they are simply named similarly, ending with CD1/2/3...

Duplicate/mirror your media across two hard disks for safety.

Duplicate songs/ablums - don't tear your hair off or waste time trying to eliminate duplicates. Hard disk are now quite cheap.

 

[saketb]

I never cared to have a folder structure nor any file naming format before. But since, I started using XBMC, I went ahead and structured all the digital files as needed properly. It was a hell lot of work to do and it took almost a month off and on with approx 6TB of data.

Now, everything is streamlined and serving up from my NAS. I use the general structure and file naming formats to keep things simple and clean. All the media files are properly tagged with almost all data available and scanned into XBMC. For flac I use MP3Tag and for Movies and TV Shows I use Media Center Master. I even have the lyrics for songs in .lrc file format in the same folder as the songs.

For my music (ripped to flac) I use...
Music->English->Artist->Album->Songs
Music->English->Artist->Songs (for singles)
Music->Hindi->Album->Songs
Music->Hindi->Artist->Songs (for singles)

For movies and tv shows I use...
Movies->English/Hindi->Movie name (Year)->MovieName.year.720p/1080p.ext
TV Shows->TV Show Name->Season xx->TV Show Name - SxxExx - Episode Name.ext

 

[hydra]

I used to be pretty OCD about categorizing the folder structure by Genre > Artist > Album earlier. But since I started using Foobar and then later J River, I just drop all the music in one big folder called "Music". Inside the "Music" folder, I have just one sub-level -- the Album folder, named "Artist - Album (Year) [Format] [resolution, if Hi-res]". I also manually put a 500px X 500px image for the album art in the folder.

The front-end (now J River) takes care of everything else, in terms of presenting the music in an organized way. I am pretty particular about tagging the music (Track Number, CD Number, Track name, Artist, Album, Genre, Year) though. JRiver also displays the resolution and file format. Without proper tagging, none of this would work.

 

[andi10]

I do not know if I should post here;
I find this entire thing rather simple.
Just get J River.
Install it.

Hey to all

Thanks a lot for that, i had a try on jriver . Its more ore less the same as media monkey, but with some extended functions.. very nice piece of software.. i will dig deeper into that, but its a high possibility that this could get my new audio file manipulation software.

So my actual handling of music at home is:

1. NAS (WD MyBook) with twonky, Pc-jriver, cambridge stream magic 6, cyrus pre vs2, cyrus x power, epos elan 35 or GradoLabs SR Headphones.
2. NAS (WD MyBook) with twonky, Google Nexus7 with bubbleupnp, cambridge stream magic 6, cyrus pre vs2, cyrus x power, epos elan 35 or GradoLabs SR Headphones.
From next week onwards additionally
1. PRO-JECT xpression2 comfort, (phono preamp not clear, im searching) cyrus pre vs2, cyrus x power, epos elan 35 or GradoLabs SR Headphones.

I need to have a closer look, what possibilities id3 tags have for better categorisation, im sure there is more than simply the genre .

Regarding the fileformat, maybe im wrong and Im always willing to learn more but as per my understanding, FLAC is a "fullsizeformat" which is compressed but not cutted. Means there is no deleting of data to make it smaller like at mp3 but there is compression in the same way zip is doing, zip also dont cut or delete any data or info, its just packing and getting small filesize by rearrangimg the data
Adjacent to this topic and "ripping of cds": either you make wave or flac, more than the cd it wil never be, means higher datarate can not be achieved, right?

Greetz
Andy

 

[jsmithe]

Tracking down the error thrown by the Skifta DLNA app I find that it has something to do with filetypes as recognized natively by the Android device. Some posts indicate that installing the VLC/MX player/Rockplayer apps. on the Android device enabled it to play video's that refused to play earlier. Will try this and also will post those links once I find them again.

Haven't tried Twonky yet, but will give it a shot to see if that makes a difference in the mix. I've still got my fingers crossed for a shot at making this work over the weekend.

Update: I have been able to use the Skifta and BubbleUPNP apps as controllers for Homestream DLNA server and have them play m2ts video from a PC to my TV, selection playback controlled via the Nexus 7. MKV, AVI are still a no go. The m2ts stream can be paused via BubbleUPNP on the Nexus, but REW, FF do not work.

 

[blackscorpio]

If you are looking for just a upnp controller, try kinsky from Linn, its avaliable for windows, android and others I believe. I think it has very similar functionality as JRiver from upnp controller point of view and its FREE.

 

[andi10]

The UPnP Controller is one point, As it should give the right views and Data as per the requirements of the User, for sure this is different from User to user...

As i said, for my natural Behaviour and kind of use Bubble UPnP is the best but im missing very much the manipulating possibilities while listening, maybe ther is coming an additional Genre into mind, so you want to input immediately, (i dont want to get up the couch every time and crawl to the pc to do that) or you listen to something and want to mark it with a 5Star rating?? Not possible from Android evices so far as i know, grrrrrr.

In this case i was really wondering not to find almost any Software developer who provides software for multiple Platforms.
Just an example, if i would like to use JRiver for Windows, what is closer to the topic as developing a JRiver App for Apple and Android? I mean if i would be a Software house who, is developing a Music,Video,Picture manipulating and Handling PLatform, which is that good than Jriver or MediaMonkey and i would include functions like DLNA, UPnP Servers, the first i would do is to develop Software on all platforms to reach the Database i created with my own Software.... But hmm.. Softwaredeveloping is a huge Task and most time its good to concentrate on the Coreproducts.

But what HiFi Company can only focus on Integrated Amps and still make their living? Most of them are developing all kinds of Music reproduction devices, doesnt mean that any particualr device is therefore less quality. Look at NAIM, Cambridge, Cyrus... they all do high level stuff on Multiple devices...

So the same should come on Softwarebase in a time where Data storage is extremley cheap and HiRes Audioplatforms like HDTracks are increasing day by day...

With Media Monkey/Jriver i personally can live on Windows, with Bubble UPnP i can Live on Android, movies i stream directly from NAS to DLNA/UPnP Television device, but really satisfactory it is in terms of Musichandling to Network Streamer unfortunately not.... Every Software has his advantages and disadvantages, maybe theres never "the right one"... but still a lot of very good stuff outside....

Greetz
Andy