Handling albums with more than one disk and artist

[Jerrysnb]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to organize this particular situation: I have a disk set with five disks. In this particular case, each side has one performer; but the two sides of the same disk might have different performers. It looks something like this:

Album Name: Legendary Keyboard Immortals

• Disk 1
  
  
  
  • Side A Artist: Jan
    
    
    
    • track 1
    • track 2
    • ...
  • Side B Artist: Jan
    
    
    
    • track 1
    • track 2
    • ...
  
  
• Disk 2
  
  
  
  • Side A Artist: Wanda
    
    
    
    • track 1
    • track 2
    • ...
  • Side B Artist: Wanda
    
    
    
    • track 1
    • track 2
    • ...
• Disk 3
  
  
  
  • Side A Artist: George
    
    
    
    • track 1
    • track 2
    • ...
  • Side B Artist: Camille
    
    
    
    • track 1
    • track 2
    • ...
• ...

One issue is that the author has to be listed at the album level; then it carries through to all of the recorded sides. If I enter the author as "Various" and the title is "Immortals," then all of the recordings will be named

• File 1: Various - Immortals - side 1.wav
• File 2: Various - Immortals - side 2.wav
• File 3: Various - Immortals - side 3.wav
• ...

That makes it hard to tell which disk is which. I'm trying to avoid a complete hodgepodge. If I burn disks, once I figure out which is which I can label the tracks on the disk label.

If I want to use this stuff with a media player, I need to be able to figure out what the heck I'm listening to. The track names are long too. They are by different composers, even on the same disk and side. For example, a side might have these tracks:

• Liszt: Valse Impromptu in A minor
• Mozart: Sonata no. 18 in D major, K. 576, Allegro
• Mozart: Sonata no. 18 in D major, K. 576, Adagio
• Mozart: Sonata no. 18 in D major, K. 576, Allegretto
• Ravel: La Vallee des Cloches No. 5 from Miroirs

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Hi Jerry,

Two things come to mind right now.

1.  For Legendary Keyboard Immortals, it might be wisest to treat them as three separate albums.  Or even 4.  You might consider using the Grouping tag to group them all together, if you have concerns about that, but it would probably work fine without.

2.  When there are different composers on the same album side, see if you can do something creative with the 'When saving tracks, name them as' field in the Settings dialog (Menu -> Options -> Settings).  This is documented in the VinylStudio Help file (there's a link there that you can click on that will take you straight there).

Re: 2, please let me know if there's something you would like to do with that that VinylStudio doesn't currently support and I'll see what I can do.

[Jerrysnb]

I think this will do what I want:

[Album Title] \ [Track Number] - [Track Artist] - [Composer] - [Track Title]     (4: Use album title only)

01 - Ignace Jan Paderewski - Chopin - Mazurka, Op. 24, No. 4, In B Flat Minor

That lets me put all of the tracks in one pile, but I can still tell which track is which. There are no tokens for side or disk, but in this specific case it doesn't matter. The track list that got imported from the database lists all of the tracks in order from one to thirty-six. If the track list were ordered differently (for example, if there were a separate list for each disk), I'd have to break the set up into separate albums.

I am a bit confused about that last token. How is it used?

Four other notes:

• It would be really neat if you could export and re-import the track listing (as edited) for an album. That way you could do global edits on them, split them, and combine them.
• It seems that every time I change the track naming string, it creates a new option in the dropdown; is there any way to get rid of one?
• I've managed to wind up with naming strings that look like

[Album Title] \ [Track Number] - [Track Artist] - [Composer]: [Track Title]     (2: Group albums by album artist)     (4: Use album title only)

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Sounds reasonable to me.  Go for it.

Some specifics:

> There are no tokens for side or disk

Doesn't mean there can't be.  Will consider.

> I am a bit confused about that last token. How is it used?

Do you mean "(4: Use album title only)"?  If so, that's just a comment, you can edit that any way you choose as a note to yourself (or just delete it).

> It would be really neat if you could export and re-import the track listing (as edited) for an album. That way you could do global edits on them, split them, and combine them.

VinylStudio now supports Cue Sheets, and I think you can do it using those.  If not, please LMK and I will look into it.

> It seems that every time I change the track naming string, it creates a new option in the dropdown; is there any way to get rid of one?

Don't panic Captain Mainwaring.  VinylStudio forgets the oldest ones as the list grows longer (max 10 or so, IIRC).

> I've managed to wind up with naming strings that look like:

[Album Title] \ [Track Number] - [Track Artist] - [Composer]: [Track Title]     (2: Group albums by album artist)     (4: Use album title only)

No worries, just edit or remove the trailing junk as described above.  We will make a video about this, but suffice to say that VinylStudio ignores everything in that string after it encounters a tab character.

[Jerrysnb]

> There are no tokens for side or disk

Doesn't mean there can't be.  Will consider.

Very low priority, but perhaps low-hanging fruit.

> It would be really neat if you could export and re-import the track listing (as edited) for an album. That way you could do global edits on them, split them, and combine them.

VinylStudio now supports Cue Sheets, and I think you can do it using those.  If not, please LMK and I will look into it.

The cue sheet format (is it a standard?) doesn't look very useful for manual manipulation. What I had in mind was something like a CSV or spreadsheet format. I suppose you could use XML. That would make it platform (and software) independent, but I'm not sure what application you'd use to work with it.

> It seems that every time I change the track naming string, it creates a new option in the dropdown; is there any way to get rid of one?

Don't panic Captain Mainwaring.  VinylStudio forgets the oldest ones as the list grows longer (max 10 or so, IIRC).

My putzing around added some useless entries, and I was concerned I'd have to live with them forever.


BY the way, we don't get Dad's Army here.

> I've managed to wind up with naming strings that look like:

[Album Title] \ [Track Number] - [Track Artist] - [Composer]: [Track Title]     (2: Group albums by album artist)     (4: Use album title only)

No worries, just edit or remove the trailing junk as described above.  We will make a video about this, but suffice to say that VinylStudio ignores everything in that string after it encounters a tab character.

Got it, thanks.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

> There are no tokens for side or disk

...

This will be in the next release V9.0.8, namely [Album Side]

The help file calls these 'keywords', IIRC.


> The cue sheet format (is it a standard?) doesn't look very useful for manual manipulation. What I had in mind was something like a CSV or spreadsheet format. I suppose you could use XML. That would make it platform (and software) independent, but I'm not sure what application you'd use to work with it.

Cue sheets are an informal standard, yes, and they're supported by most pro- or semi-pro- audio software.  Wikipedia has more (the main issue is the weirdo format they use for specifying track times.  Once you get your had around that they're fine).


> By the way, we don't get Dad's Army here.

Lol.

When you get the new software, please post back here, tell me if it works for you.

[Jerrysnb]

> The cue sheet format (is it a standard?) doesn't look very useful for manual manipulation. What I had in mind was something like a CSV or spreadsheet format. I suppose you could use XML. That would make it platform (and software) independent, but I'm not sure what application you'd use to work with it.

Cue sheets are an informal standard, yes, and they're supported by most pro- or semi-pro- audio software.  Wikipedia has more (the main issue is the weirdo format they use for specifying track times.  Once you get your had around that they're fine).

Yuck! I'll look at Wikipedia and see if I feel like writing import-export code to transform them into a spreadsheet format. I probably won't. Real life is taking up too many CPU cycles.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

Lol.  Yeah, me too

Still, better that than the other thing, eh.

[Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft)]

> > There are no tokens for side or disk

> Doesn't mean there can't be.  Will consider.

Added in VinylStudio 9.0.9: [Album Side]