Hi guys, I'm about to rip my CDs to my computer. I'm just wondering what you guys use for your naming schemes? I'm looking for something practical and that would allow me to easily transcode into a lossy format for portable use (MP3 player). I'm not too anal about this, but I want something that is logical and easy to follow.

Ummm... naming schemes don't matter to encoders. A FLAC named 123 will transcode just the same as one named xyz.

Anyway for what it's worth, mine is:

Artist_Album_Track_bitrate.format.

I use the above scheme so I can determine the essential info for a track at a glance.

I think naming scheme is very important to the looks, specially if you are thinking of spreading later on (gives the slight impression that the one who ripped it is not lazy and unworried about how he did it). Not only the naming, but also the tagging, although it can't be seen outwardly.

As for the naming scheme suggestion, I make use of the following:

Artist - TrackNumber(LeadingZero) - SongTitle (eg: Simply Red - 04 - For Your Babies.mpc)


About the transcoding thing, as it has been said already you no means to worry. All information on transcoding will most likely be taken from the file tags, so one thing you have to be careful when ripping first thing is get the tagging properly written.

My archives use the format:

Albums:

Album Artist - (Year) Album Title\Track Number (w/leading zero). Song Title.flac
i.e. Rage Against the Machine - (1992) Rage Against the Machine\01. Bombtrack.flac

Compilations:

Album Artist - Album Title\Track Number (w/leading zero). Artist - Song Title.flac
i.e. Various - The Crow (OST)\01. The Cure - Burn.flac

I omit the release year for compilations because I find it easier to find a soundtrack/compilation by its title, rather than its release year. My regular albums have their album artists alphabetized excluding "The" (i.e. "The Beatles" > "Beatles, The"), but I keep "The" at the beginning of my compilations. I'm weird that way.

Of course, if your portable doesn't support directory structuring, I suppose my input's rather useless. I don't really have to worry about it for my part, since my iPod does the job for me.

Tagging is more of a problem than filenames, because vorbis comments, which is what FLAC uses, aren't particularly standardized.

For instance, while there is TRACKNUMBER for the number for the track, there is no set tag to express the total number of tracks and different programs do different things.

The tagging for classical music could get cocked up quite spectacularly on transcoding. You can use COMPOSER for MP3 and MP4/AAC files (and iTunes, for example, will display that). The vorbis comments, however, expect the composer's name to go in the ARTIST field and the orchestra, conductor, etc. to go in the PERFORMER field.

This kind of thing can cause problems with tags not carrying over from one format to another--for example, see here.

The Hydrogen Audio site has a page in the wiki entitled Foobar2000:Encouraged Tag Standards.

I think that pretty much any naming convention can be useful as long as you're consistent in using it.

I have used <Artist>/[<Year>] <Album>/<Tracknumber> - <Title>.<Extension> for a while now, and I've found it practical.

Lately I've changed it in my quest to switch my collection completely over to lossless to have [<Year>] <Album> (<Format> <Bitrate>) for lossy albums.

I'm a newbie and I don't understand how to implement the Foobar 2000 standards. Can you tell me what the "code" is to put into EAC to ensure that it will adhere to the Foobar2000 standard?

It depends what tags you want! EAC can't pass many of the additional meta data, like the number of discs, or total number of discs (unless perhaps you use my REACT mod ). REACT can natively deal with setting ARTIST or ALBUM ARTIST depending whether you are ripping a VA album.

EAC can pass the total number of tracks, so an example (perhaps the only one) would be:



NB: On looking, most of the tags listed in that article are not suitable to set on ripping, only on playing. I was thinking more along the lines of: DISCNUMBER; TOTALDISCS; DISCNAME; ALBUM ARTIST; ALBUM SUBTITLE; TOTALTRACKS.

Using an interim app like REACT can help you pass such metadata.

I just want artist, song information, year of album, genre, and name of album.

I doubt you'd have any trouble with any of those whatever software you're using. But you could start by ripping a single CD to FLAC then transcoding to MP3 and looking at the tracks in the players/devices you intend to use before ripping the lot.

It seems to me that ARTIST is used in a ambiguous way in some naming schemes, but that's only with some genres. With, say, Rock and Pop that field is used in the same way by all the software around.

Take a look at the wiki article.

I use TrackNumber Artist - SongTitle (example: 04 U2 - One.mp3), because the quoted scheme sucks when you rip compilations with multiple artists.

The folder scheme i use is:

Artist/(Year) AlbumTitle (ex. Iron Maiden/(1999) Death)

that is useful when you like discographies instead of single tracks/albums because your OS will sort albums from older album to newer one :-) and generally i like to write album in the Album foldername because I visually know what the period of the music (nice is you listen to electronic stuff).

My 2 cents =
eldino

i never used tagging much, and have A LOT of music (90% bootlegs that would have to be individually tagged...) so i use:

Artist/Album/Artist - Album - Track - Title.(format)

when i rip CDs i rip to images, so it's just:

Artist - Album.{format, cue}


later