Music files

[Tucher]

I have been out of the music file game for a long time. Just for pure ease and convenience I have been streaming, first from Pandora, way back when it first strarted. Then I started using Spotify when I moved to Sweden. Now that I am getting into files again and using moOde I have dug up my old music collection. 90% to 95%  percent of my collection is mp3's ripped at 320. I am thinking of going to something higher quality. Is FLAC still the king? Is there something new I need to look into? I do have a largish CD collection and I can start to rip it all.... AGAIN. I was also wondering where you can download FLAC or similar quality files. Is there a good, legal place to download music these days? Maybe one that doesn't cost a fortune.

I look forward to your replies,
Tucher

[the_bertrum]

I do most of my listening from local files on my NAS with very little streaming.  I find that my ears and equipment are not sufficient to allow me to distinguish between a 320 mp3 and a 16/44.1 FLAC, but I rip to FLAC these days anyway, because why throw information away?  I only bother to re-rip something I have in 320 lossy if I get the disc out for some other reason though.  Perhaps your well trained sound engineer ears will make that worthwhile in your case though .
As for downloading there are few options for "better than mp3", I use 7digital, but it isn't cheap.  Often it is cheaper to buy the CD and rip it myself.  I do this exclusively with older issues, buying them from second hand sites for even cheaper results.  There are also site that claim to be "off-site backup" solutions where you indicate that you own a disc and they make a "pre-ripped" version of it available from their servers, the legality of this is questionable though.

[Tim Curtis]

Definitely rip to FLAC. It's the most efficient and easy to work with Lossless format and is the standard among audio enthusiasts.

1. Try to use the typical directory structure /Artist/Album/Tracks
2. Use high quality cover art 600 x 600px.
2. To ensure the Library views work well populate all tracks with the minimum set of metadata tags below.

Artist
AlbumArtist - Set to Artist except for compilation albums where it should be set to "Various Artists"
Genre
Album
Track
Title
Date

Other useful metadata tags include Composer, Conductor, Performer.

3. Dealing with exceptions for example Albums with the same name and artist but that differ by some other tag like Year, Release, MusicBrainz ID, etc. This is typically seen in Albums named "Greatest Hits" or in Classical albums that differ by Conductor.

An easy way to deal with this is to add a differentiating string of text to the Album name for example the Year or Conductor name. Other more involved approaches include adding the MusicBrainz AlbumID and then in Preferences, Library (Advanced) set the Album key to Album@Artist@AlbumID or FolderPath@AlbumID.