This topic is similar to this one, but different.

I just got this 6-CD set, and I was wondering what people's opinions on this were. The first 3 CDs are continuous mixes by one artist, and the last 3 are by another artist. So, do you think it is more logical to scan each disc as an album, or to scan the entire set of 6 as one album, or to scan the set of 3 discs (for each artist) as an album? [note: last option not listed in poll]

... undecided...

Have you tried the two options? Is there a great difference? I'm curious...

Logically there should'nt be a great difference *IF* (as is likeley to be) every CD have random mix of LOUD and quiet titles and the mastering engineer choice was to have all album to play at similar volume...

Cheers.

I would scan each CD as a different album. In my experience multiple disc albums are mastered similar so scanning each as a separate album is relatively a safe thing to do.

Here are the various results I got:



So, there is a little bit of variation. I think I'm inclined to go towards ChangFest's suggestion of each CD as a separate album.

I'd say it depends on what kind of set it is, if it's really one album I don't see why one would ever want to scan the CDs as separate albums (you'd probably give them the same album tag too).

Not necessarily. If I have a multiple CD album I do not tag both CDs as the same album. This allows for the CDs to be burned properly because how would I know what tracks were the seperation point if I tagged all tracks as the same album? This is the reason then the original poster came up with his question.

For Multi-CD albums I use a "disc" tag to mark which disc in the album a track is from.

As for replaygaining them together, it sorta depends. If both CDs are clearly a single work that was split across several CDs for storage reasons, I'll replaygain them together. An audiobook is a perfect example of this. If the CDs are separate works that happened to be bundled together, I'll replaygain them separately.

I put the disc number in as part of the album name, like "album name (disc n)". This way, if I am using a player that doesn't support APE tags on MP3s, it will still display it, since the "disc" field is not part of the ID3 standard as far as I remember. Then for consistency, I follow this convention even for other formats that will support a "disc" tag, e.g., Ogg Vorbis tags or APE tags. As an aside, my filename convention for various artists albums is like:

album (disc n) - tracknumber - artist - title
or
album artist - album (disc n) - tracknumber - artist - title (if the album artist is the same for all)

so that they will sort properly in file listings. I also keep all the files for all the discs in one big folder, not separate folders for each disc, so I can see them all at the same time.

In this particular case, each CD is an individual set (hour long DJ mix), so I guess then it makes more sense to replaygain them separately, since they didn't really promote it as a 5 hour long set, or two 2.5 hour sets, but six 1 hour (or so) sets.

I agree! Album 5 & 6, will play to low if replaygained at -8.35.

Sergio