Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos - Organising 8700 Classical Music Albums

You don't search for a composer, you focus in on one.

Composer(s) related to an album are held in the creadits tab. You can view this these when looking at the album details.

To find a piece of work by a specific composer:

1) Focus on the composer, to filter the number of albums in the set.
2) The search that set for the title / track of the work you are looking for.

Of course (as Nick said) it's only as good as the metadata.

Regards,
Carl

Have you got "prefer local metadata..." ticked in Settings? The cover art is the one piece of metadata that doesn't change when I import an album with cover art from file when that's ticked.

Hi John,

The answer to that question is neither.
Composer is a completely different field which is stored in the credits tab of metadata. You have total control over what is looks like.

Have a look through your existing loaded composers using Control_PC My library/Composers/(alphabetised listing). Tidy up what is there as your base list. There might be some you delete here also.

There's a nice example of how it works in the Advanced Sooloos Collection Guide.pdf (page 37) which can be download from Meridian Sooloos System Guides Page (if you haven't already).

I really think this is thing that you are looking for. Use the mass edit functionality described in the guide to speed up your efforts.

Yes, On Control Mac I have that box ticked.

Is there a place on the Control:10 to tick that as I primarily use the Control:10 to RIP CDs.

Prefer local meta is only for importing folders. When you RIP a CD it must go and get the metadata from AMG etc. then you have to hit accept or choose to edit at that time.

For ripping, I prefer dBpa, as it utilizes AccurateRip, and many metadata content providers (aside from AMG), including Sonata, which is geared towards classical content.

Since you're post-rip, you'll need to invest in & learn how to use a good metadata editing program.

I own 3:

Tag & Rename : perhaps the best for a beginner, as the GUI is very intuitive.

MP3Tag : IMHO the best overall, as the scripting functions are powerful, allowing you to do a lot of 'global' changes pretty easily.

Media Monkey : haven't played with it much, but have found no advantages to either of the programs listed above, and several areas where it doesn't offer some of the features in the above programs.

Unfortunately, there is nothing more mind-numbing, tedious, boring, and time-consuming than editing classical metadata.

Well I guess I'll class myself as a dumb beginner - just came across "Tag & Rename" whose title suggests is what I need.

I've just struck some folders which are completely wrong. Being familiar with the music in one I was able to track it down but another is labelled as a Bruchner Symphony which it clearly is not so its identification would be useful.

From what I can see if the download is made from the net you have a file which can be identified by some of these programs. But I cannot see how you extract a file from Sooloos to be identified unless it is exported - that looks a particularly tedious process but I guess is the only way out. Correct??

TIA

John

Wow this editing is a time consuming venture.

I've struck another bug with Control:PC. While editing in covers and rearranging data for the 33 CD set of Haydn's Dorati symphonies I noticed I had not been editing the number of each set in the 33 so started to go back and correct that when I discovered it was not saving it all. The 33 was recorded but all were being classed as number 1 instead of the number I had entered. Bah! I gave up - not very important anyway.

I've given up editing on this PC and am doing it via the notebook - working out fine so far.

It is easy to become obsessed with the editing but I've avoided not getting too fussed about the track info for most and have not looked at the folders with icons. However I have stuck a couple of folders where the metadata was completely wrong with the disc incorrectly identified & track info completely wrong. A cut and paste job has fixed them so far.

There are 330 pages of icons and, apart from a few completely unknowns (maybe investigate later with the software you guys suggested) I've fixed over 100 pages.

Wouldn't it be nice if all this work was done for us by Sooloos?

John

I hear you and sympathize with you...I am working on organizing a database as well which has less than state-of-the-art editing capabilities and I have to admit is a real PITA from a time standpoint...

I have -- after a week of editing / working on it -- decided to spend no more than 90 minutes a day working on it with the hope that I will be done in 6 to 9 months time...though this is a tremendous amount of time it will hopefully be all worthwhile once done...

I think switching the system to per-track metadata would be a quite significant change, especially while keeping the well-scaling performance.

But I had an idea. I know that there are situations when you might want to know which drummer played on which track in an old Miles Davis recording, or specifically which tune on an album was written by Monk. But that is musicology, and I'm ok if Sooloos is not designed for that.

But combination albums are a pain. Prototypical example: my album with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Nielsen's Symphony 5. I like to file my music by composer, so who do I choose?

(It would be the same problem if I filed by artist: do I file the Emperor concerto under Rudolf Serking or Seiji Osawa or BSO?)

It seems to me that M could easily use the "phantom" trick they use in the configurator for the G68. Store the album only once, define one set of metadata with all the tracks and genres and ratings, but let me create multiple phantoms of this album, one filed under Stravinsky and one filed under Nielsen.

An even better variant would be if I could split the album and show only the Rite of Spring tracks in the Stravinsky phantom, and the Symphony 5 tracks in the Nielsen phantom.

The point is that this would not be a runtime change: when using the system, I can search and focus and explore and I find an album under Stravinsky and I play it. And if I look for Paavo Jarvi under "credits", I would find both albums, the Stravinsky one and the Nielsen one. Aha, I would notice they have the same cover, but that doesn't do any harm.

Phantom creation would impact only metadata management, during import and later. Control:PC could have functions for creating phantoms, or for splitting an album by composer or artists.

But no impact on the user interface for playing, and no performance impact.

What do you think?

Not sure how Sooloos will handle it but I'm listing most performers of note under "Artist" and am listing in the title all composers involved for major works of more than one track. Otherwise they get filed under "various" which is not very satisfactory. Note that at the moment I'm only editing the 1000 odd without cover icons. Not sure how far I want to go editing the other 7000 odd, although to be fair, surprise, surprise, many are listed accurately. Just a pity the "many" cannot be replaced by "most".

So I understand what you are driving at. If done on a track basis they could find all instances of Bolero (not that I want to find that ghastly bit of music - just using it as an example). But in a way Sooloos does list track info now. If I do a search for "Beethoven Symphony No 7, it lists all the tracks of this piece, possibly because that is in the track data - I have not followed up on that.

Bottom line - in owning Sooloos we have an unpredictable package using faulty/incomplete data. Such is life at the moment!

John

Anders & John,

Have you read my post above about the composer tag?

You have a example CD with both Nielsen and Stravinsky. It's not really about how you file it (if you mean directories and folders). It is about how you access it.
If you stay in the paradigm of album name or artist name then you have a problem cos there are 2 'artists' here.

This is not a new problem for Sooloos. Look at the core items listed in your view of 'my library' .....COMPOSER is listed.

You can add both Nielsen and Stravinsky as composers on this CD. No need for complex solutions of phantoms etc.

Goto my library/composer/Stravinsky and it'll show you the CD. Select all/some of the tracks you want.

Goto my library/composer/Nielsen and it'll show you the CD. Select all/some of the tracks you want.

If Sooloos implemented track data it would be quite complex as you have to edit all the data per track instead of just album. All it would do is remove the last step of selecting just the Nielsen tracks from the CD to play. Finding the CD would be the same.

I agree that Sooloos putting everything into 'Various Artists' is a bit too simple. Nothing stopping you creating 'various Opera', 'various Baroque' etc to help narrow it down a bit.

You could also use the artist tag for the orchestra and use composer as noted above.

@John, I don't think there is a bug in the x of y disc numbering. It is very easy to skip the save step when you are in edit mode (I've done it!!). Also, you have to make sure you increment the denominator first before incrementing the numerator. This might just be on the control screens though.

Cheers