How can i make my foobar properly list tracknumbers for my vinyl lists. That is, rips beeing numbered a1, a2, b1, b2 instead of the regular 1, 2, 3 formula. As for now, all vinyl-rip tracks are listed as track 00, and are not recognized as beeing part of the same album.

I don't have the experiential answer, although I am very interested in it, as one of my audio goals is to digitize my vinyl collection.

But from my understanding:

ID3 tagging is going to expect numeric values for the %TRACKNUMBER% field. While ID3v2 may allow non-numeric characters, I'm pretty certain ID3v1 won't. Regardless, I would take the following approach (until I read someone's better suggestion ):

1. Use the %TRACKNUMBER% ID3 field in its literal sense. This refers to the numeric location of the track in relation to the rest in the work, regardless of the side or disc it appears on. This can be used for album association and ordering then.

2. Use a separate ID3 field to keep track of the "vinyl track" (a1, a2, b1, etc.). What you call this field is up to you, I haven't checked into the standard yet. I'll edit here if I get the chance.

3. Set foobar up (in the panel editor, or column UI, or whatever you are using) to display the vinyl track field for the 'tracknumber' column if it exists, or the 'tracknumber' field otherwise.

I honestly do not have a large vinyl collection however what I do have is numbered so that the tracks of the B side are simply appended after the tracks of the A side. So for example if you have a vinyl with 4 tracks on side A and 5 tracks on side B the tracks would be tagged like this:

a1 -> 01
a2 -> 02
a3 -> 03
a4 -> 04
b1 -> 05
b2 -> 06
b3 -> 07
b4 -> 08
b5 -> 09

While this solution is obviously not ideal as it loses the information about which side each track was published on, it does provide a logical ordering of the tracks and often mirrors the order found when a vinyl is re-released onto CD. Hope this information helps, maybe someone else will come along with a better solution.

This has allready been suggested but I am offering a slightly alternate version.
You could use two tags... one for the number and one for the side... this would mean there is no redundant data being kept. (not that it will make much difference.

ie %side%
%track_number%

in %side% I would place only the data "a" or "b"

I would then put these two pieces of data back together in whatever application you are using to display ur a1, a2, b2 etc...

This solution will not work as I read it. The sequence you have given would not occur (A2 and B2, the second track can only be on side A or side B, not both). The idea is interesting, but it would introduce an entirely new numbering scheme that would probably not be readily apparent to an uninformed viewer.

I'm afraid my initial response might not be clear, so allow me to try to rephrase it.

First, follow Yotsuya's explanation of just translating the A1, B3 etc to their tracknumbers, as they would appear if released on a CD.

Then second, make a new ID3 field for your somewhat redundant vinyl track information.

Now, in practice, since you have the normal tracknumber field, you can use that for ordering and sorting. You've met the practical goal. However, for display purposes, you can instruct foobar to use the vinyl track field for display information if it is present, instead of the tracknumber field. You've met the aesthetic goal thusly.

I think this solution is the most flexible and meets all your desires. The only downside is slight redundancy (i.e. you have track number information twice, in 2 different formats) and space (a few extra bytes).

my way is to treat sides as discs (I know, not optimal but does the thing) so I just use %tracknumber% for track order and %discnumber% for sides

It also might not be a bad idea to use the %COMMENT% field to store this data (that is, if you aren't using it for something else). The benefit of this is that it's a "standard" id3 field, IIRC some players / tagging programs don't handle custom tags or id3v2.whatever so well (I'm looking at you iTunes). On the other hand if it's just foobar you're using then feel free to go nuts with the custom fields.

I'd do as yotsuya recoomended for providing numeric values for the %TRACKNUMBER% field, and populate the comment field with the actual alphanumeric, perhaps in the format "Track A2". It would be pretty easy to write a tagz script in foobar to display the alphanumeric track numbers instead (if they're available).

I second Empyrean and Yotsuya.

I've got a huge vinyl collection, and I use the suggestions above, except I don't use %vinyl tracknumber% when there is only 1 track on a side. I don't want to see the redundant "1" (just a personal taste thing).

My display string for tracks is:

$if(%vinyl side%,%vinyl side%[%vinyl tracknumber%],%tracknumber%)

Having used foobar for a few years, I find this is the best compromise.

Cheers,

c0utta