Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: EAC and Various Artists Albums (Read 5124 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Okay, I've gotten to the point of my CD collection that's filled with compilations, soundtracks and such. EAC goes out to FreeDB (whatever happened to CDDB?) and comes back with data that, knowingly, shows a song as follows:

Artist - Song Title

Of course that's great for reading but not great for tagging and creation of the file. For now what I do is to uncheck "Various Artists", CTRL-X (Cut) out the name of the artist and the extra 2 spaces and dash, paste it into the Artist field and then rip the file and repeat for every song on the CD. At this rate I'll be at ripping for months just to get through this part.

Is there a better way that I'm just missing?

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #1 –
Quote
Okay, I've gotten to the point of my CD collection that's filled with compilations, soundtracks and such. EAC goes out to FreeDB (whatever happened to CDDB?) and comes back with data that, knowingly, shows a song as follows:

Artist - Song Title

Of course that's great for reading but not great for tagging and creation of the file. For now what I do is to uncheck "Various Artists", CTRL-X (Cut) out the name of the artist and the extra 2 spaces and dash, paste it into the Artist field and then rip the file and repeat for every song on the CD. At this rate I'll be at ripping for months just to get through this part.

Is there a better way that I'm just missing?

Hi.  I pondered over the same dilemma when I started using EAC, myself.  Here's my method for each type of "various artist" album...

-1- Soundtracks.  What I do for soundtracks is specify "Soundtrack" in EAC's artist field and the name of the movie suffixed with "(Soundtrack)" as the album name, so that EAC will place the tracks under:

D:\Music\Soundtrack\<moviename> (Soundtrack)\<tracknames>

For <tracknames>, I use the format:

nn <trackartist> - <tracktitle>.<ext>

...then later, I use Tag&Rename to change the artist names of each track en masse to the correct artist for each track's "artist" tag field, while keeping the tracks all under the same album directory (as placed by EAC).  Then I use the tagging tool to rename the track filenames with just the tracknumber and song title (nn <title>.<ext>).

-2- Mixed Compilations.  For compilations that are mixed by one person (i.e., Paul Oakenfold or Fatboy Slim), I specify the name of the mixing artist in the "artist" field in EAC, and the name of the album in the "album" field, thus:

D:\Music\<mixingartist>\<albumname>\<tracknames>

For <tracknames>, I follow the same method as I do for soundtracks.

-3- Normal Compilations.  For "Best of Rock Music"-type compilations with various artists, I specify the "Various Artist" option in EAC, and in "EAC Options" under the "Filename" tab, I have %C\%N %T specified as the various artist naming scheme (<album>\<tracknumber> <tracktitle>).  After a rip, I end up with:

D:\Music\<albumname>\<tracknames>

Then, I use the same method again as used for soundtracks for parsing out the artist name for each track's tag info.

I hope this all makes sense.  It may not be the most effective method, but it's what works for me, and it makes it so I can rip/encode/tag a various artists album almost as quickly as a normal album. 


Edit:  minor fixes...

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #2 –
It didn't make a lot of sense. <grin> But it's late here.

All of my files are in one directory (F:\Music) and I'd like to keep it that way for simplicity sake.

Also, I'm not clear what you did to get a trackname that came down from FreeDB as:

Joan Baez - Blowin' in the Wind

to magically remove the Joan Baez part leaving the real title behind and putting the artist where it goes. EAC, as I understood it, has nothing to do there but report the Title as FreeDB provides it. Thus it has no way to know that the Artist name was arbitrarily stuck on the front of the Track Title to make it easier for us to know who sang it in a Various Artists disc.

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #3 –
Quote
Also, I'm not clear what you did to get a trackname that came down from FreeDB as:

Joan Baez - Blowin' in the Wind

to magically remove the Joan Baez part leaving the real title behind and putting the artist where it goes...

It can be done within EAC.
You just need to read the title formating options and maybe experiment a little until you get what you want.

Or you could use something like TAG.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #4 –
Okay, apparently EAC understands, at least so far, the "/" character that FreeDB sends and a delimiter. That's a first to me and that's amazing. On a few discs now I've just been able to check the feature in EAC that says something like, "Use Various Artist format" and change it from %T to %A - %T and now I can rip just like before. I highlight 10 songs and 10 songs end up just the way they would if I did it manually.

VERY, VERY, VERY nice. I just have some concerns as other times I've pulled from FreeDB I've gotten:

Artist / Track
Artist/Track
Artist - Track
Artist-Track
Track (Artist)

If EAC handles all of them, I'm golden. If not, at least now I'm ahead of the game on many of them. I just found that it isn't handling the last 3 so far. I also found that if I edit the track and add the "/" it works correctly as well so EAC IS doing the parsing here.

I do use Media Tagger as it supports WMA9-Lossless. What is TAG? URL?

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #5 –
Oh...
I forgot you were the WMA9Lossless guy...    (just kidding)

I don't know if it will work on that format but here, find out yourself.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #6 –
Take a look at the menu "Database/Transform Actual CD Information" ... EAC will convert "-" to "/" automatically ... additionally, make sure that the checkbox "Various Artists" is set correctly in the main EAC windows when handling VA discs.

Under the "EAC Options/Filename" menu, you can enter a scheme wich will be used to generate filenames for single- and various-artists-CD's ... again, the checkbox has to be set. If you do it the right way, EAC will create appropriate directory structures as well ...
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #7 –
Thanks, I was just thinking of suggesting such a feature. <grin> Great when it's already there.

I was worried about how it would handle:

Let's Get Physical - Olivia Newton-John

Note the double dash. Well, it only did the first one. I also got a bit concerned about how it would handle:

Tommy Tutone - 867-5309 / Jenny

Well, that one got the first dash converted and then it created this filename:

Tommy Tutone - 867-5303, Jenny

You can't have a "/" in a filename but, very nicely the Tag contained the "/".

EAC gets more impressive each day. If it would stop locking up on me so much I'd be totally impressed with it. I can lock it up simply by using it to playback songs. After 3 or 4, crash. It also seems to crash after encountering various problems.

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #8 –
Quote
I can lock it up simply by using it to playback songs. After 3 or 4, crash. It also seems to crash after encountering various problems.

Hmmm ... the same happens in my system, but its severity depends upon which drive I use ... haven't tried different Interface options yet, though (I use device I/O control a.k.a. native mode)

After all, EAC is still in Beta status but there will be a new version around christmas.
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #9 –
Quote
After all, EAC is still in Beta status but there will be a new version around christmas.

I wouldn't bet on it...
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #10 –
Quote
Quote
After all, EAC is still in Beta status but there will be a new version around christmas.

I wouldn't bet on it...

Andre wrote it himself ... so trust him
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #11 –
If you want to use CDDB with EAC, see my previous posts describing a work-around.

EAC and Various Artists Albums

Reply #12 –
Quote
EAC gets more impressive each day. If it would stop locking up on me so much I'd be totally impressed with it. I can lock it up simply by using it to playback songs. After 3 or 4, crash. It also seems to crash after encountering various problems.

Have no idea if it will help, but in the documentation there is a note on some switches you can try if you have problems with lock-ups. Don't remember the switches and I don't remember which file, but its there somewhere...