"Grooming" your media library

[Boomzilla]

It's a new year, and I decided to "groom" my media library (on an external HDD) against the discs in my storage. I'm only up to "C" when grooming in alphabetical order, and so far I find that:

1. 25% of the discs on my shelves didn't get ripped into the library prior to being physically "archived" on the shelves
2. 10% of the "new" discs that I'm ripping have bad sectors & are being discarded
3. 5% of the library is missing tracks that are on the original discs
4. 20% of the library has the wrong cover art

Needless to say, this is becoming a HUGE time sink. So allow me to ask youse guys: How often do you "groom" your music library, and are your numbers close to mine?

Thanks - Boomzilla

[indyscammer]

Haven't done it. I've only been ripping for about 2 years. I usually have trouble with extra copies showing in the library. I also recently found an actual CD not on the shelf though I just ripped it late last year. Still don't know where that one went. I'm appalled because it means I never got it to the shelf. That doesn't happen often...first time I'm aware in fact.

[klinemj]

What do you mean by "grooming"? Neither my CD's nor my NAS are hairy.

But, I can tell you I went through an extensive process to get all my disks ripped, and so far I only found 1 out of ~1000 that I missed and forgot to rip (other than a small pile of CD's my wife just found that was buried apart from our collection), one has wrong/missing metadata (but the original likely had it wrong and was from a local friend so the proper data is not anywhere on the net), I have only had 1 that had ripping issues and would not rip properly, and I have not found any missing tracks or any having wrong cover art.

Mark

[Boomzilla]

The "defect rate" that I have probably indicates the source of my CDs - yard sales. Apparently, many don't take care of their discs as they should. To date, I've found only one album in the library that I didn't have the source CD for, and I deleted that one. I'm finding LOTS of discs that I have more than one physical copy of, though. I'll put the spares out at the next yard sale.

I'm also finding a surprising number where the title and track info is not available on the the internet. If it's a disc I really want, I'll enter the data manually - the rest are discards.

I'm also finding issues where some of the albums in the library are missing tracks. Where that happens, I delete the album from the database (and from the drive) and just re-rip.

Maybe this is worth all the time & maybe not...

[djoel]

Do you guys find that what ever player your using for the ripping of the disc can't find the data, Artist Name, Song/title, Genre, year. etc? I have a stack of cd's I can't get the info for them.
I was surprised Moody Blues Days of Future past was giving me problems, as well as Gypsy Kings Greatest Hits album...Mean while more esoteric disc loaded without issues!

Besides manually writing the song which is a major PITA, any other solution?

Thanks

Dan

[Gary Cook]

This is very strange , I did some music (as you call it) "grooming" over the Xmas break (ie; 1 day) of the iTunes library, which is also on an EHDD. Yes, in alphabetical order by artist.

Slight difference in the numbers though;
1. 20% of the discs on my shelves didn't get ripped into the library prior to being physically "archived" on the shelves
2. Since all of my CD's are new I had no bad sectors
3. 3% of the library is missing CD's that I have the original disks, no tracks alone missing, just whole CD's
4. 5% of the library has the wrong cover art and/or has lost its cover art and that's a *bleep* to fix
5. Once I groom the #1 EHDD I then have to copy the data to the back up EHDD.

Yep it's a time sink, that's why I only do it once a year


Happy New Year
Gary

[Chuck Elliot]

I've never had a major problem with this in any sense. If a rip is screwed up, it is something I did.

I have a large set of CD storage shelves and what I do is file into a "new" section of the "physical" archive for about 6 months at a time. At the end of that period I re-shuffle the new CDs into the full alphabetical section.

Don't b%$*&, but I'm going to talk about iTunes a bit here.

Although I like dBPoweramp for ripping, I find that iTunes ripping to Apple-Lossless a better experience. dBPoweramp doesn't find 1/2 the cover-art that iTunes does. If you don't get what you want, it's a easy fix if you can locate the cover-art someplace on the web.

I have a local music store called Bull Moose that is a great source of used CDs at very reasonable prices. Their disks are always clean and you can inspect them yourself before purchase. When I cruise yard sales, I always bring my CD cleaning solution and cloth wipes to differentiate smudges from real scratches on possible buys.

On an aside, Lenscrafters sells an eyeglass cleaning solution and 100& cloth towelettes that are the best CD/DVD/Blu-Ray cleaning system I've found.

If you have the combination of iTunes and JRMC, JRMC now installs a audio driver that allows you to send iTunes output through JRMC before going to your DAC. This addressed my one major complaint with iTunes, sound quality. I also no longer need to dup. a critical listening CD to JRMC for playback.

The newer iTunes also has a much better "Recently Ripped" interface. You can see the last week/month/3 months etc.

[drtrey3]

I am kind of obsessed with having my music library up to date and in order. Often I pour something and sit and do the boring crap for an hour or so. I am listening while I work, so that helps. And I remind myself that I will be leaving a well organized and maintained music library for my family when I get old and senile.

It's for the kids. 8)

Trey

[Gary Cook]

Losing cover art is the most common problem I have with iTunes. I have a few (not a lot of) CD's that I have had to search for the cover art, local Australian artists mostly. I load it when I first rip the CD, works OK, stays there for a few weeks, then it just disappears. Once it's gone I can't just search and attach it again, I have to delete the whole CD, re rip it, then locate and load the cover art. There is one particular CD that I have gone through that process 3 times previously and it needs doing again, it's getting tiring. Other than that iTunes does it all pretty well for me.

Oh, and I rip my CD's pretty much straight away, it's super fast and easy to do while checking a day's emails. The full "grooming" is the once a year thing.


Happy New year
Gary

[hemster]

I know I've mentioned this before but I will again.. I use EAC for ripping and then I use mp3tag for handling my metadata. It gets things right most (95%+) of the time and searches through several repositories. This includes album art also. 

If you have a lot of music that requires album art you can use AlbumArtAggregator but I find mp3tag to be much more powerful and it's scriptable so with some simple scripts I can do intelligent and complex manipulations of my library. Other features such as creating playlists etc. are just icing on the cake.

So from me, mp3tag is strongly recommended. 


Ok now to the topic in question.

Full grooming is something I do about every 2-3 years. Mostly because I decide to reorganize the way my music is filed. 

I think about < 1% of my 500GB collection (over 50,000 tracks) has incorrect album art. Most of that is because I can no longer find it online and have substituted it for generic images (e.g for the same band, or general such as "Great sax" etc..).

Other than the BluRays and a couple of SACDs I have most of the shiny discs digitized. The physical media is in 2 places... some that I don't use frequently is in a box, the rest are organized alphabetically by band/artist on my media rack. 

No tracks are missing in the digital archive that are present on the disc. But I do have quite a few HDTracks music for which I have no physical media. 

Generally I would say that if you're having to "re-groom" your entire collection more often than annually, you need to think through the actual process you're using and perhaps optimize it using some different tools. 

[Boomzilla]

Many of my discs are obscure enough that even Google can't find the original CD cover art. In those cases, I scan the insert & then copy it to the disc metadata.

[klinemj]

So, I was serious when I asked "what is grooming"? Can someone explain what you are doing? Are you just laboriously manually comparing what is on your shelves vs. your library?

Mark

[Axis]

I have had two issues ripping my CD library with dBpoweramp and both just a learning curve on my part. One that I just discovered that will have me going back to groom was how albums with multiple disc had there tracks numbered. For example Pink Floyd / The Wall each disc has 13 tracks and dBpoweramp saw this album as disc 1 tracks 1-13 and disc 2 tracks 1-13. My Walkman plays gapless and played track 1 of disc 1 then track 1 of disc 2. I figure on albums that this matters instead of doing another rip just manually go in and re-number tracks on the files. Next thing to fix is where the disc had populated different artist for individual tracks and now when I look at my library by artist an album is scattered all over the place. Live and learn.

[Boomzilla]

Hi klinemj -

Yes, that's basically exactly what I'm doing - comparing what is on the shelf to what is on the media server library. Music that I haven't listened to (and probably won't), I delete, and put the source discs into the "sell at yard sale" pile. Discs that I've bought in the past year, but not yet added to the library, I'm ripping. While I'm at this, I also verify that the cover art is accurate and that all tracks are still functional & intact.

I call it "grooming," but there's no formal term for it.

Boom

[Priapulus]

I use dbPoweramp cd Ripper to rip my cds. Before ripping, It shows all the metadata and gives you an opportunity to edit it. Metadata is frequently wrong on the original cd (usual error on classical CDs is to confuse the composer with the artist). dbPoweramp checks the checksums for your rip to ensure an accurate rip. Cleaning the cd (windex) usually fixes errors for re-ripping. About 25% of the accuracy errors are actual media faults that dbPoweramp will attempt to recover. I've found that rips with errors will almost always play w/o audible errors.

After ripping, I check the metadata again with "Tag&Rename" <http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm> and do any necessary metadata corrections. The best place to find cover photos is Google Images; I get at least 500x500. It is a lot of work to get the metadata correct, but absolutely essential, because iTunes, jRiver, Media Player, etc,  needs it to catalogue your music. If its missing, iTunes, etc will attempt to recreate it, often with unfortunate results.

Both dbPoweramp and Tag&Replace correct the actual metadata on the original music file. I would never use Windows media player or iTunes to rip. Apparently they do not correct metadata on the original music file, instead they create a separate database to keep your metadata in; then promptly screws up that database and loses info. Windows wasted a lot of my time this way, before I realized the problem.

You can use media player/iTunes to play your "clean" music files (although jRiver is much better). If/when it fucs up, you can easily clear iTunes and reload your "clean" music again.

I have never had lost files or songs (unless I accidently deleted it myself). I have never had wrong metadata, unless I didn't use the correct the metadata, when I ripped it.

Windows media player, and iTunes frequently hash up their internal databases to screw up the ~display~ of your metadata and music files. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your music files, just with iTunes.

Sincerely
/b

As for grooming, every few months I sort the music in jRiver, by Artist, composer, title, etc to spot errors, usually spelling mistakes from my original ripping. Then I use "Tag&Rename" to correct metadata. Then I rescan with JRiver to update jRiver's database. It is so reliable that I've given away, or traded for vinyl, all my CD physical media after ripping to lossless.

My latest "grooming" is to rerip any mp3's and flac to Apple lossless. (Apple lossless because I have Apple players, otherwise flac would be fine).

[Chuck Elliot]

Jan 7, 2015 8:12:48 GMT -5 Boomzilla said:

...I call it "grooming," but there's no formal term for it.

Boom

Sure there is: Culling!

[drtrey3]

For me, culling would be thinning out the music. Grooming is making sure the year of each release is right, that the genre is song specific (I have been told my genre tags are pretty idiosyncratic, but hey, it works for me) and such. Keeping the metadata kosher on a large collection is a chore, but one I do.

Trey

[cwmcobra]

My retired school librarian wife would call it "weeding"......

Kind of makes you think of a spring garden, doesn't it???

[linvincible]

My first rips were very bad, I had to use musicbrainz eventually to re-tag them all. Then I lost the hard drive on which they were...
Since then I've been obsessed with tags and cover art, folder organization, "genre" filing (especially since the LMS random mix is based on "genre") and BACKUP!!!
I rip with EAC and then check the tags with MP3tag. Every album I rip or download goes into a temp folder before I make sure everything is up to my standards, then I move into my library.
I've never re-ripped my discs, I sold them now ;o) Can't really know if I lost anything... But so far pretty happy with my library.

[monkumonku]

Jan 7, 2015 6:38:11 GMT -5 klinemj said:

So, I was serious when I asked "what is grooming"? Can someone explain what you are doing? Are you just laboriously manually comparing what is on your shelves vs. your library?

Mark

Same question I asked. Seems kind of obsessive to me.

I rip my CD's using EAC, which is linked to some external database that provides the album artist and track information that is used by my Sonos system. So far I have not had any errors. When it comes to album cover art or other information, I have the original CD if I ever want to look at it so it never occurred to me to want to digitize any of that stuff. I just enjoy the music, which comes from a database that so far has been accurate in terms of artist and track.