[lug] audio questions

[Lori Reed]

dio2002 at indra.com wrote:

> when you rip from cd with something like amarok, is it smart enough to 
> pull the artist, album, track info from the audio file on the CD (wav?) 
> and insert that as appropriate id3 tag info in each new MP3 file?  or 
> does one have to manually tag every song post rip?

There is no meta data stored on cd's. The ripping s/w needs to access a 
database out on teh intarwebs. There are several and I don't know which 
one Amarok uses.

> assuming you have a bunch (a crapload) of MP3 files already on disk, can 
> tools like amrok be used in "bash script" mode to mass id3 (re)tag the 
> existing file collection to speed up the ops?  i'm thinking if the files 
> were organized in artist and album directories and the file names were 
> equivalent to track names, this could be scripted to put the info in 
> there.  does amrok make this easy?

I don't know if Amarok does this, but there are tools that do. The 
windows based Musicmatch Jukebox (see below) is one.

> same goes for tagging existing mp3s by categories (artist, album, genre) 
> so that i can organize the music without having to rely on directory 
> structures?

genre is a supported tag, but unless you're ripping from a database, 
you'll probably have to add that manually. MMJB is fairly painless in 
that regard.

> how do the media libraries implement the mp3 file categorizing?  do they 
> use a separate metadata db proprietary to each media lib to store the 
> category tags and use a file pointer field or do the cat tags get 
> inserted into the mp3 itself?

Tags are part of the mp3 file. Much like the Multi Fork File System. ;)

> what about other id3 taggers and media lib tools other than amrok?  if 
> someone out there uses something else please chime in on the same 
> questions asked above?
> 
> fwiw, my current mp3 collection is on a windows box but i'd happily move 
> it to linux if i can bash script process the files when and if needed.

I've used the windows based Musicmatch Jukebox since 1980, and it's an 
abominable piece of software, but it's the best I've found (including 
Amarok) for ripping and maintaining large collections of mp3's (I own 
over 1100 cd's). Sadly, it reached it's zenith with v7.5 just before 
Yahoo bought it and turned into a Realplayer clone. Most versions, 
including 7.5, can still be found archived on the web (or on my hard drive).

Lori