AvocadosMax said:

Today was a large window day, so i found myself reorganizing all of the files on my computer. All of which i have been compiling the last 7 years or so. What really was a mess were unreleased tracks and internet-only downloads from 2014-2016 era. So I’m glad I fixed that. But what I noticed was most of the files that I ripped from the CD were .wma (Windows Media Audio) files. And nowadays I notice that I usually rip/download FLAC files only. This has got me wanting to re-rip the older albums such as Love Symbol on CD for example. What type of files do you have in your library? MP3s? WAVs? And how do you personally organize your Prince collection in your library?

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My music collection is about 14TB in total, with the Prince folder taking up about 1.4TB, and it has several different formats, but I guess about 90% of it is lossless (either FLAC or ALAC) and many of these are high definition (24bit) too.

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The Prince folder is organized into subfolders of 'official albums', 'singles and EPs', 'associated artists', 'unreleased', 'bootlegs' (these are also organised into further subfolders by label and catalog numbers), 'videos', 'documents', 'photos' etc... But it's an ongoing project, as always...
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Kares said:

AvocadosMax said:

Today was a large window day, so i found myself reorganizing all of the files on my computer. All of which i have been compiling the last 7 years or so. What really was a mess were unreleased tracks and internet-only downloads from 2014-2016 era. So I’m glad I fixed that. But what I noticed was most of the files that I ripped from the CD were .wma (Windows Media Audio) files. And nowadays I notice that I usually rip/download FLAC files only. This has got me wanting to re-rip the older albums such as Love Symbol on CD for example. What type of files do you have in your library? MP3s? WAVs? And how do you personally organize your Prince collection in your library?

.

My music collection is about 14TB in total, with the Prince folder taking up about 1.4TB, and it has several different formats, but I guess about 90% of it is lossless (either FLAC or ALAC) and many of these are high definition (24bit) too.

.
The Prince folder is organized into subfolders of 'official albums', 'singles and EPs', 'associated artists', 'unreleased', 'bootlegs' (these are also organised into further subfolders by label and catalog numbers), 'videos', 'documents', 'photos' etc... But it's an ongoing project, as always...
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damn that's a lot of bytes. really cool. Do you have a 'vinyl rips' folder or do you just not mess with that sort of stuff?

I have about 6tb of digital music. All of my lossless Prince stuff is on a 1tb external HD, which is full.

It's sorted into official, bootlegs, and associated artists. The bootleg folder is sorted by label.

I really need to get a decent cloud account and upload it all.

About 7 or so years ago, I was compelled to digitzie all my music in lossless format. I reripped every CD in iTunes lossless, and recorded every piece of vinyl I had, and encoded it in lossless. Added cover art, made sure things were in folders correctly, etc. I'd record a whole side or both sides of a record with Cool Edit Pro, then go back and chop it up into separate tracks, save as WAV, then encode them to iTunes lossless. It was a tough job, but once I was done, it was easy to keep up with new purchases. I keep everything on a cloud drive in my house. I access it when I want something from it. I have about 19K tracks in total. At least that much, but I don't think I'm at 20K yet.

I've added ID3 Comments to every CD or LP, so I can build smart playlists. I have one that finds "ELS4 CD" or "ELS4 LP" so I can just listen to my vinyl or just listen to my CDs. I have another "ELS4 M4A" that is lossless I've gained from other sources. Everything else (Mp3s) don't have a Comment tag on them.

With folders, it's just alphabetical, with the artist in each folder, last name first. My CD and LP stuff have their own respective folders (in case I have to replace a track or something). Any band that has a name like "The Who" is sorted as "Who, The" in folders and in iTunes (under the Artist, Sort As). This is handy when I have songs from and can Sort As "Prince", so the name-change years fall right in with Prince stuff, and not O. Same for Camille, but not Madhouse or any other protege group. Any band like Huey Lewis & The News is under H. A band like "A Big Group" is under "A", because it's not the same as sorting out "The". Just simple sorting stuff, really when it comes to folder structure. It just makes it easier to find things if I want a file to send to someone or I need to go behind the scenes.


I still have MP3s from torrents or left over from Napster days that I just can't find a better copy of anywhere; either just cuz they're not around, I don't want to buy them, or I haven't tried.

FLAC ripped with Exact Audio Copy including verifiable rip logs (ideally).

TrivialPursuit said:

AvocadosMax said:

Kares said:

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My music collection is about 14TB in total, with the Prince folder taking up about 1.4TB, and it has several different formats, but I guess about 90% of it is lossless (either FLAC or ALAC) and many of these are high definition (24bit) too.

.
The Prince folder is organized into subfolders of 'official albums', 'singles and EPs', 'associated artists', 'unreleased', 'bootlegs' (these are also organised into further subfolders by label and catalog numbers), 'videos', 'documents', 'photos' etc... But it's an ongoing project, as always...
.

damn that's a lot of bytes. really cool. Do you have a 'vinyl rips' folder or do you just not mess with that sort of stuff?

.

No separate vinyl rips folder, usually I don't like vinyl rips to begin with (often they represent more of the sound of the particular system used for the transfer, not the sound as intended by the mastering engineer), but I do have some albums transferred from vinyl. They are just filed with the rest, but I mark them as such.

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A couple of examples of the folder names I use for releases (they are subfolders of the artist-folders) :

Davis, Miles (1965) - My Funny Valentine [r2014] (MoFi) [24-88] {HD}

Syrius (1971) ‎– Devil's Masquerade [vinyl-rip] [24-96] {HD}

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AvocadosMax said:

Sweet. Have any additional tips/advice when it comes to recording vinyl? I have a basic 3 speed ion record player, it sounds good to my years when I play the record through my speakers, but when I record through my computer it just sounds like the bottom end is almost absent....and the hiss is too apparent (but I guess there’s no way around that) I guess it could have something to do with just the software itself? Maybe I should look for a better needle? Idk it could be I’m just too use to the CDs but it just sounds like there’s not enough punch in the drums or something. Maybe it’s because I’m using their software and not something else like what you mentioned

It's just whatever you think is best for your desires.

For me, when I recorded the vinyl, my main thing was making sure there was no hum or buzz through a shitty wire or not being grounded or whatever. You just can't remove that stuff. Do a few tests recording just with the turntable on and no record playing. See where you're at. That ever-so-slight hum is sorta normal, but anything more needs to be addressed. If you want to filter out a slight hiss or high end, that's up to you. Check connections, try different things, see what fixes it. Again, it's whatever you want to do.

Things like Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition) has filters for pops and clicks. But I wanted them left in. If I want to hear my vinyl, I want to hear my vinyl. So I cleaned the record itself just before putting it on the turntable and recording it. I didn't use any filters or passthroughs whatever. I recorded it to one big WAV file, then cut the songs up into individual tracks as they are on the album, saved them in an Artist>Album folder, then encoded them to lossless (you can do iTunes lossless, FLAC, whatever suits your needs. Hell, if you have the space, stay with a WAV, but you can't add album artwork to an ID3 tag on a WAV file, FYI).

A lot of folks use Audacity. I never have, but it seems to work for some folks. I'm just used to Cool Edit (on my older Dell Precision M90 which has Windows XP on it and runs like a charm; I only use it to record vinyl. Nothing else is on it. It works and that's what I use). I've used CEP since 1998 or 1999 editing songs.