Tips/Software for organising an mp3 collection?

3stripe

Totally off-topic, but figure someone might have some pointers for me...

Just bought a 500gb Formac external hard-drive, to stick my burgeoning mp3s collection on. (Actually ran out of space on my laptop for anything at all now...) When I get rich, I'm gonna hook it up to a Mac Mini, and then link it to something like a Roku Soundbridge in another room :-P



Now I need to sit down and move the mp3s off my laptop into a sensible directory structure on the Lacie (can I trust iTunes to do this for me... probably not?). Is there any usual mp3 organising software out there?

The best advice I've seen for a structure is simply:

ARTIST OR COMPILATION FOLDER
→ ALBUM NAME FOLDER
→ TRACK - ARTIST – TITLE.mp3

ithcy

i've got a ... large mp3 collection and i organize mine as such: genre/artist - album/track# - title.mp3 just because i'm not crazy about having all the thousands of artists hanging out in one folder. it gets a little difficult to assign a genre to everything, though.

FLC

i just let itunes organise it for me

artist -> album -> song title

dom

Another option is to go: First Letter -> Artist -> Album -> Track

eg: B -> Brendan Benson -> Alternative To Love -> 01 Spit It Out.mp3

I have used iTunes once before to move a large collection (well, 11 gb, so large-ish), and it seemed to behave alright.

3stripe

The genre thing does kinda of make sense, but then you have to get anal about categorising everything... tricky especially with dance music... hmmm

techno/house/tech-house/tech-breaks/breaks/bassline-breaks/dubstep/ etc

Minisweeper

i've solved your puzzle...delete the dance music.

brady

Once you get em organized, this will give you remote access - mp3act

jonezy

tag&rename is your new best friend

3stripe

delete the dance music :-? :-? :-? :-? :-?

tag&rename looks promising, ta jonezy...

mp3act is JUST what i've been looking for in our office, just installed slimserver but it seems a little clunky...

3stripe

oh yeah, another question, what's a sensible rate for encoding, i usuall use 192kbps... anyone who claims to be able to tell the difference between this and a higher bitrate is a LIAR imo, i've got a seperates hi-fi and they still sound fine....

lech

192 is perfect. The ONLY time you can really tell is if the encoder used to get that bitrate introduced it's own pops & clicks or if it made voices or instruments sound distanced and synthed up a bit. Generally most encoders these days do a decent job compared to those from the earlier years.

3stripe

cheers lech.

lech

No problem. 128 is ideal if you're worried about space. but these days that shouldn't be an issue. 192 if I recall correctly is nearly if not exact cd quality and anything higher just preserves the quality a bit better. I presume someone who's more a technical sound engineer could explain this better.

Minisweeper

i could be wrong but i believe higher qualities are also used to help with different sound channels (e.g. 2.1 5.1 7.1 etc) I've never had a problem with 128 but 192 seems a good base.

3stripe

seeing as i got 500gigs to play with, i reckon 192 should be perfect

(although i've just tried installing the damn Formac drive, and good old XP won't recognise it.. sigh)

jonezy

holy shitnuts you need a 500gb hard drive to store mp3's?

3stripe

nope... probs only 50gigs... but i thought i should future proof a bit as it only cost me twice as much for the extra space :-)

jonezy

holy crap even 50gigs of mp3's is alot of music

brady

I can't wait to get my hands on Sonos

3stripe

Sonos... nice!

jonezy

yeah that sonos looks very awesome