Sorry for this very basic question but...

I'm starting to rip a rather large collection of CDs to uncompressed .wav files for the first time using EAC (I will be playing back wav files). I want to be sure I select the best file naming convention right from the start. Admittedly, I feel somewhat insecure about this decision.

I've learned that the folder structure of "%A-%Y-%C" has some use as it sorts an artist's work chronologically. I don't know if there is anything better.

As for track naming, I'm torn between two possible options:

1. "%A-%Y-%C-%N-%T-%B"

or just plain:

2. "%N-%T-%B"

My problem is that I don't completely understand if it is advisable to use directory "\" structures...

...and I don't know the most elegant way to deal with the whole various artists issue.

I know that this is subjective, and I may be overthinking this, but can anyone share their experience?

Thanks

Are you sure you want wav? You could encode with lossless codecs, get a reduction in size, and have EAC manage tagging!

I'm one of those people who are obsessed with uniform and effective file-naming schemes. I've been through my share of schemes, and now I think I've finally found the right formula. I've found how to separate various artists albums, normal albums, and soundtracks. It might be tweakable still, but this is what I use:


For a normal album from a single artist:
%D - (%Y) %C - %N - %T

For a compilation with various artists:
VA - %C - %N - %A - %T

For soundtracks, even with single composer:
OST - %C - %N - %A - %T


With these naming schemes, your directory structure can be ANYTHING (meaning you could even throw all your files into ONE directory), and the files will still be sorted correctly, both alphabetically, and chronologically. There's no Year field in either VA or OST, because it's simply not needed. Repeated VA albums (the kind that release every 6 months or so) always have numbers in their titles, which then automatically sorts the files chronologically. OST has no Year because a movie doesn't have several soundtracks after another. There could be special editions of a soundtrack, but even in those cases, you simply don't need the chronological order. If you want to sort by genre, just making directories is probably the way to go. Genre shouldn't be in the filename itself IMO because the information just isn't needed, and it's more of a subjective thing anyway.

I've been testing these naming schemes extensively on my MPC archive, and sorting by filename in Foobar2000 gives the most sexy and professional looking playlist I've ever seen (disregarding single files which are simply named Artist - Title). I love it!

Artist [Year] Title\Track [Performer] Title

Same for VA (Artist = Various).

A complete filename with all options looks like this :

Artist [Year] Title (CD_number) {Edition}\Track [Performer] Title [Comment] #Date {Rip}

Examples :

U2 [1998] Best of 1980-1990 (CD 1) {2002 Limited Ed.}\12 [U2 & B.B. King] When Love Comes to Town [Edit] #1988 {ERRORS}

Various [1991] The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968 (CD 2)\01 [Booker T. & The MG's] Green Onions [A-Side] #1962

Talk about anal-retentive. Obviously, I don't often have all these tags.

Comment can be : Edit, Single Version, Alternate, Unreleased, Live, etc.
Date is recording date or release date if I don't know the first date (if Date = Year, I add the tag but I don't mention it in the filename).
Rip is only present if 1 - I had errors with EAC or 2 - The file was downloaded on the late E-music service, hence not ripped by me.
Edition is only for remastered or special versions of the album
I tag everything with Foobar with the appropriate scripts.

For a normal album or score:

%artist% - %album% '('%date%')'\%artist% - %album% '('%date%')' - $num(%tracknumber%,2) - %title%

For various artists, soundtracks, etc:

Various Artists - %album% '('%date%')'\%album% '('%date%')' - $num(%tracknumber%,2) - %artist% - %title%

For a compilation assembled by a certain DJ (ie. Hôtel Costes, Science Fiction Jazz):

%albumartist% - %album% '('%date%')'\%album% '('%date%')' - $num(%tracknumber%,2) - %artist% - %title%

You can have fun with this 'til you go nuts

Thanks everyone for the great suggestions.

I use a dreadfully simple approach, which is possible for me since I always keep all tracks parsed by H:\Music\<artist>\<album> (or H:\Music\<compilation-album> or H:\Music\Soundtracks\<album>).

%track% %title%.wav

Example:

Tag Info:
Track: 01
Title: In This Life
Artist: Chantal Kreviazuk
Album: What If It All Means Something

WAV Filename (after extraction):
01 In This Life.wav

FLAC Filename (after encoding):
01 In This Life.flac

Storage Location:
H:\Music\Chantal Kreviazuk\What If It All Means Something\01 In This Life.flac

People who use naming conventions like those in previous posts (and as razor pointed out) have the advantage of being able to have tracks by different artists and from different albums grouped together in the same directory and still be able to "tell things apart". Mine would be "lost in the mix" that way, hence the only real way my convention works is if I keep everything seperated accordingly. Also, if you're going to copy music tracks to a CDR all in one directory, for instance, or only seperated by one level of sub-directories, then "extended naming" would be needed.

I use directory structures as part of my extraction/organization process, and EAC (and for that matter, WaveGain, FLAC Frontend and Tag&Rename) have never given me a problem with this approach. But, like anything else, it all depends on what your needs are and what you intend to do with your music files.

Thanks for adding your point of view.

Not bad, and what is your directory structure?

I have to agree, out of many posts from a number of website, I like this format the best.

Sorry for not replying sooner, I'm not used to big forums like this!


Anyway, my directory structure is basically this:


> MPC

> My Rips

>> Full Albums
>>> Artists
>>>> Artist - (Year) Album [Quality] (" B.B. King - (1999) Let The Good Times Roll [--std] ")

>>> Compilations
>>>> VA - Album (Year) [Quality]

>>> Soundtracks
>>>> OST - Album (Year) [Quality]

>> CD Singles
>>> Artist - (Year) Album (Single) [Quality]

>> Single Files (Miscellaneous)

> Downloads

>> Full Albums...
...etc.


I like to keep my own rips separate. An album from a single artist, band or group, goes in "Full albums". Singles go in "CD Singles". Any compilation with various artists goes in "Compilations". Likewise with soundtracks in "Soundtracks". Single files that don't belong to any album or compilation, go in "Single files".

The [Quality] part isn't really needed, but it's a little bit of info which doesn't take a lot of filename space, and you instantly know what quality you'll be getting. You MIGHT want to sort further in these groups, genre-wise, but that really isn't necessary except in "Single files" as your archive grows. I haven't decided if I wanna do that yet.

I like to keep things simple.

What I do is I keep "By Genre" and "By Title" access to the same albums using NTFS junction points (junction.exe utility):


or

links to the same album. My filenames only are the track numbers. All the rest of the information is meant to be kept in the tags. Actually the most consistent way is to keep a CUE sheet and a huge WAV file especially if you are using lossless. Consistent because a CD itself is a single stream of bits with bookmarks for tracks. This also ensures gapless playback.

I'm still pondering over finally completely [finishing something I started and] fixing my music collection by using ...\Albums\Artist Name, The\Year-####\Album Name, The\CD ###\(single FLAC, MP3, and CUE file) for a regular 'artist album' and ...\Albums\Various Artists\Album Name, The\CD ###\(single FLAC, MP3, and CUE file) for 'Various Artists' albums (in my book, why not sort them where they belong: Various Artists, as opposed to 'VA' or something similar?) (the -#### would only be used for multiple releases within a single year, with 2000-0001 as an example of the first release in 2000 and the CD ### would only be used for multiple CDs within an album, with as leading zeroes as needed, depending on the final number of the disc (eg. A 50-CD set would start at CD 01 but, a 9-CD set would start at CD 1, whereas a 100-CD set would start at 001).

I see no point in putting soundtracks in a separate place, as they are either performed by an artist (The Last of the Mohicans: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) or various artists (Trainspotting: Music from the Motion Picture (believe it or not, this soundtrack does have a sequel. I forget the title, though. It's on www.amazon.com .).

For more information on my directory set-up, check out http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=17258& . Really, it all depends on what you need. I need everything sorted as best as can be, so I think long & hard over my best set-up (as it will be permanent after 2004-06-30).

I hope I covered everything about my set-up, if I left anything out between here and my original post regarding this at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=17258& , please let me know.

Thanks for reading!

What could be better than %D - %C - %N - %T?

%D - (%Y) %C - %N - %T

for the correct chronological order of the artists albums...

I just bought the CD 2004 Grammy Nominees and I want to rip it. Can I just rip the tracks into waves and then find the individual song names and artists and add it on after the ripping? I don't want to use the tag 2004 Grammy Nominees for the CD title. I just want to use the names of the album from the song as if it were from the real album and not a compilation. Btw are there any differences between the songs from a compilation like the 2004 grammy nominees and one of the singles that would be from the real album? Thx

I have Grammy Nominees 2003, except I just made the album name "Grammy Nominees 2003" for all tracks. The way you could add the original album each song is from would be to just use a tagging program like Tagger, The Godfather or Tag&Rename (the one I use), and set the album name for each track the way you want it. (The original album names should be in the liner notes, or you can find them at AMG Music.

As for whether tracks are identical on compilations to their original studio versions, this can vary. Generally, on a compilation such as this one, each track is indeed the same as it is on the source album it came from (because they want to show you exactly what was nominated). But the only way to be sure would be to closely compare them. One way to be semi-sure is to just look at the track times listed in AMG Music, and compare them for each track to the track times shown on the CD, or (more accurately) in an audio player when you play them.

There's something wrong with the various artist naming scheme. When I copy and paste the following into the various artist directory, VA - %C - %N - %A - %T, I get a file name like this: "VA - 2004 Grammy Nominees - 01 - Beyonce feat. Jay Z - Crazy In Love - Beyonce feat. Jay Z - Crazy In Love.wav" Is this correct? Why did it repeat itself? Also is it suppose to start with VA in the filename? Thx

The "VA" stands for "Various Artists". If you copied my EAC string earlier, then yes, the filename is supposed to start with "VA". This indicates that the file is from a compilation album, and the compilation's title follows directly after the "VA". It's simply a way to keep things organized. You can remove it if you wish of course, it's all a matter of personal preference and what information you would like in a filename.

As for the repeating artist and title problem, I'm not sure what you're doing wrong. I think tagging a VA album with original album titles for every single track is a very bad idea. If you want the original album title somewhere, put the information in the "comment" tag instead. Something like "Taken from the album Whatever..." perhaps?

I just copy and paste your naming scheme to the section for various artists. Then I go to freedb and download the names for the songs and then rip. Am I doing something wrong that allows the names to be repeated?

Just browsed this thread and I gotta be dense but I don't get this scheme:
How does it relate to EAC's please?


Thank you.

Well, those are the file-naming syntaxes I used to use in my EAC. I don't know if newer versions have updated the syntax somehow. Let's see.

The first one would be:
%a - (%y) %g - %n - %t

Second and third one are essentially the same:
VA/OST - %g - %n - track artist, which you haven't included a syntax for - %t

The 'VA' or 'OST' can of course be included in the %g field when you enter the CD information before you rip. I don't use this particular scheme anymore, but I use something very similar.

Of course, I overlooked how EAC handles track artists. To get the Track Artist and Track Title, you need to enter the track title in EAC like this:

Artist / Track

Notice the '/' instead of the '-'. I suspect that was your problem to begin with.

Thank you for your time, care to share what you use now please?

The schemes I've been using for the last few years (maybe 4 or 5 years) are what I thought up since I have never had to rename a single track in that amount of years, whereas I was constantly renaming tracks before which was too time consuming and tedious, not to mention if I forgot to rename a track. Since using the schemes (as listed below) tracks that have a dash "-" in them are no longer an issue as they previously were. Of course I only use the ripping schemes so that Tag Frontend, or other frontends by Speek can automatically tag files without me manually doing anything.
---
For ripping to .wav single artist audio CD's I use (with spaces):
%A\%Y - %C\%A+%Y+%C+%N+%T+%I

Equals:
Artist\Year - Album\Artist+Year+Album+Track Number+Track Title+Genre.wav
---
For ripping to .wav various artists audio CD's I use (with spaces):
%C - %Y\%A+%Y+%C+%N+%T+%I

Equals:
Album - Year\Artist+Year+Album+Track Number+Track Title+Genre.wav
---
My rename scheme after encoding for single artist audio CD's (no spaces):
Artist\Year - Album\Artist-Track Number-Track Title.???
---
My rename scheme after encoding for various artists audio CD's (no spaces):
Album - Year\Track Number-Artist-Track Title.???

My naming sheme is the following :

For normal albums : Artist - (Year) Album\nn. Title

And for VA albums : VA - Album (Year)\nn. Artist - Title

I don't give multi CD albums any file or folder names with CD1 in them, but instead i use tracknumbers like this : 1.01, 1.02 - 2.01, 2.02, and i give them a "Disc" tag with the value 1 or 2 etc. VA albums gets an "Album Artist" tag with the value "VA" in them...

I have previously used : "Artist\(Year) Album\nn. Title", but the reason i don't use that sceme anymore, is that i don't think it makes much sence when backing the albums up to CD/DVDs... It is fine when stored on the harddrive, but when backing up to CD/DVDs, then the discs would just have all the albums stored as folders named "(Year) Album", but no artists, and i couldn't just burn the whole artist folder since that was to big for the discs usually, So this meant that i had to rename the folders in the burning program before burning them, or to make parent folders with the artist name, and this is why i think that my new scheme makes more sence... Also, i have all my files in WavPack format, and they are perfectly tagged with correct capitalization which i get by checking the freedb results against Allmusic.com before i rip, and each folder consists of all the tracks of the album + EAC log + MD5 checksum file. I don't make cuesheets because i only care about getting a perfect copy of the actual music data and not about some subchannel data used for marking the gaps when burned to disc, as the only use of this, is to display negative countdowns between tracks on the CD players display, and for skipping the gaps under programmed playback...


Well, it's because that list you posted is the variables to be used in the "External Compression" dialog. The list you need is listed in the same window as where you input your naming scheme...

Well, the placing of the syntaxes hasn't changed, only the directory structure.

Artist - (Year) Album / Tracknumber - Track Title.ext
VA/OST - Album Title (Year) / Tracknumber - Track Artist - Track Title.ext

I used to do a lot of music sharing (over both LAN and internet), which was the real reason for my previous scheme. People who got music files from me could read all the necessary information from the filename, and put it in any folder they wanted and it would still sort properly. As I've tossed aside the needs of others, I found that using the directory structure more effectively was probably the way to go for myself. I still tag all my files though, so no information is really lost even though I've changed the naming scheme. I still like my previous one very much, it had its advantages, but it was a bit tedious.

Please ignore, double post.

Thanks a lot for the info, now I'm off to a good start .