Managing phono recordings

[Allen_N]

Several years ago I embarked on a project to digitize my vinyl so that I could listen to my records during my long daily commute. I soon settled on Audacity as my primary audio file processing and conversion tool.

The most tedious part is editing the entry and exit segments of each side to eliminate or attenuate clicks & pops, and and to fade in/out from/to the surface noise to the music. Then, having settled on a set of standard procedures (after a fair bit of initial experimentation and research), the rest is a breeze; exploiting the 'chains' facility has vastly simplified the tasks of normalization, basic noise removal, and export to MP3 format.

Nevertheless, with over 700 LPs in my modest collection, the search for greater efficiencies is unending. In this regard, I have been obliged to write a stand-alone program to achieve batch file management tasks that exceed the current scope of Audacity; I wonder if these might be candidates for future enhancements.

For example, while it is nice that Audacity prompts for artist, title, etc. when exporting to WAV, filling in these fields is virtually useless if one intends the ultimate format to be other than WAV, because Audacity does not transfer the tags upon export to mp3 or ogg. Having typed in all that data once for the WAV files, I was dismayed to realize that my subsequent MP3 exports had no tags. However, a solution came to mind.

When I first started recording my LPs. I adopted a standard for naming the recordings: [Artist] - [Album Name] - Side [n]. (For example, the file arising from the first side of an album I recorded yesterday was named "Jethro Tull - Living In The Past - Side 1".) I then wrote a .NET program that tags 3 fields of all the MP3 files in a designated folder -- Artist, Album, Title -- which it parses from the file names. I suggest that this feature be added to Audacity, and that the tags be applicable to any export format that supports tags. (Nb. The mechanism is different for each type of file; I used freely published code to tag MP3's and OGG's, but I haven't got it working for WAV's yet.)

Recently, as my collection of MP3's became more challenging to manage and the task of uploading to a playback device (smart phone or iPod) became more onerous, I added a hugely time-saving feature to my program: it can now move a batch of MP3 files into subfolders named after the artist (which it creates if they do not already exist), making it easier to keep them organized. Android devices appears to have no problem uploading all the content when pointed to the top-level folder, and they get all the artist:album relationships correct. (Android's default music player even pulls down the album artwork, which is a cute bonus!)

The only thing I feel that I am really missing is the parsing of songs. Right now, I can select a side of an album, but it would be nice to be able to access the content at track level - automatically. (Although, to be honest, I'm not sure that people should be stuffing around with individual song selections while driving, anyway.) I have in mind a strategy ripping one of my recorded album sides into songs (and tagging the tracks, of course), but it presumes the existence of open-domain data -- the existence of which I have yet to verify.

I would be pleased to contribute my code to the Audacity project if there is a consensus that my small achievements might be generally useful.

Any feedback?

-- Audio Al

[Gale Andrews]

For example, while it is nice that Audacity prompts for artist, title, etc. when exporting to WAV, filling in these fields is virtually useless if one intends the ultimate format to be other than WAV, because Audacity does not transfer the tags upon export to mp3 or ogg.

Clearly Audacity exports tags to MP3 and OGG as well as WAV.

I wrote a .NET program that tags 3 fields of all the MP3 files in a designated folder -- Artist, Album, Title -- which it parses from the file names. I suggest that this feature be added to Audacity

Audacity already parses existing tags in MP3 files.

Definitely it doesn't create new tags based on a file or folder name and can't create subfolders in the export folder with automatic naming.

Is this about using Chains or Export Multiple? If it's about Chains (which you mention) you can specify the tags to be used before exporting.

I would be pleased to contribute my code to the Audacity project if there is a consensus that my small achievements might be generally useful.

Thanks. First we need to know exactly what the actual Audacity problem or feature request is. Steps to reproduce and bullet points are good.


Gale

[steve]

Audacity does add metadata to MP3 and Ogg files. Whether or not other applications will read that metadata is another question. There are such broad differences between how one application handles metadata and another, that the most reliable way to add metadata that will be read correctly by a particular player is to use that player to add the metadata. Few programs other than Audacity recognise metadata in WAV files.

I have in mind a strategy ripping one of my recorded album sides into songs (and tagging the tracks, of course), but it presumes the existence of open-domain data -- the existence of which I have yet to verify.

Although not as comprehensive as some of the commercial databases, Musicbrainz is open: https://musicbrainz.org/