Maintaining a very large digital music collection. Pain in the butt!.

jeffro503
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jeffro503
Edited Date/Time 9/2/2020 5:08am
I'm sure there are quite a few of you guy's that collect music / movies ect......??

I've been working on a project here at home for about the past 6 months. I knew I had a big library , but it ended up being bigger than I thought. Around 100 GB ( I think? ). Multiple files of the exact same song , different bit rate , bogus tracks , and missing songs labeled as something else. I found myself taking on a project trying to organize about 100,000 songs here , and I'm editing the actual files so they can be seen correctly by whatever player I'm using.

What do you guy's use to organize your digital music? One of my biggest hurdles right now is all my old CD's. In the past , I either only burned two or three of my favorite songs from that CD , and did it at a low bit rate , so I screwed up two ways. I needed the full album , ripped at least 320bit.

But......almost every single one of my CD's don't have info included. It'll just say " Track 01 - Artist unknown " .......so I have edited easily a couple thousand digital tunes. With many , many more to go. After I finally finish ripping all my CD's , I have no idea how many GB's I'll have here.

Good god , is there an easier way of doing this? Btw , on my two computer's , I am using Winamp pro. What's your player choice?

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Jeff K
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Jeff K 8/30/2020 6:51pm
8/30/2020 6:51pm
I have 33 gigs of Apple Music on my phone. Sound quality is pretty decent. I have never had much luck converting my cd’s. Sound always sucks for me. Probably something I’m doing wrong. At home it’s mostly vinyl on the turntable
jeffro503
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jeffro503 8/30/2020 7:43pm
8/30/2020 7:43pm
Jeff K wrote:
I have 33 gigs of Apple Music on my phone. Sound quality is pretty decent. I have never had much luck converting my cd’s. Sound always...
I have 33 gigs of Apple Music on my phone. Sound quality is pretty decent. I have never had much luck converting my cd’s. Sound always sucks for me. Probably something I’m doing wrong. At home it’s mostly vinyl on the turntable
When you convert / Rip your CD's , you have to make sure they are ripped in a high bit rate. The " WAV " files that are on most all CD's are extremely high quality , but WAV files also take a LOT space on HD's. I tested quite a few songs at like 128bit , 196bit , 320bit and even 448bit , and I found that 320bit was what I was after.

If you have a good quality set of head phones and a decent player , in the higher bit rate ripped music , I've noticed I hear certain things in a song , that were not there on lower quality burned music. I picked myself up an actual dedicated MP3 player , plugged in a good little set of my ear phones , and at 320bit , it sounds pretty amazing. It depends not only on the head phones / ear plugs you use , but even more important , the player , you are playing your music on. I picked up this little MP3 player about 2 months ago , to replace my 15 year old " Creative " MP3 player I have ( which still works really good ).......but this new device blows it's doors off.
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jeffro503
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jeffro503 8/30/2020 7:45pm
8/30/2020 7:45pm
Also , one more thing...........There isn't a phone out there that can put out the same sound as a good quality , dedicated player. I can't believe the difference in sound between my phone and my player. Not the same category.
Deja New
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Deja New 8/30/2020 8:20pm
8/30/2020 8:20pm
Jeffro iTunes all day everyday... mine is 1900 ash albums all with cover pics some with lyrics its 161GB about 55 days of non stop music non stop playing Smile



it has some awesome features like duplicate search and more


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Falcon
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Falcon 8/31/2020 1:41pm
8/31/2020 1:41pm
X2 for Deja's suggestion of iTunes... just DOWNLOAD YOUR COPIES. Apple has a tendency to "de-authorize" your own music and tries to make you repurchase it at some point down the road. Screw that, it's mine.
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jeffro503
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jeffro503 8/31/2020 8:14pm
8/31/2020 8:14pm
Thanks for the tips guys , but unfortunately My player or phone won't do iTunes. I had came across some music a few years back that was in an iTunes format , but had to convert the music so I could listen to it. This mobile player I have will play about 50 different types of formats , but it won't do iTunes.

@Reese , I haven't tried to even use my WMP in a long time. Been stuck on Winamp and VLC player for years , but I will definitely check it out. I honestly forgot about that to be honest.
TXDirt
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TXDirt 9/1/2020 4:23am
9/1/2020 4:23am
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named pretty clean. I have another 100,000 plus songs roughly organized. It’s almost just too big a project and not worth my actual time.

Combine all of that with the fact that you have tons of streaming options now and I frankly rarely even touch my music library anymore. I use Amazon Prime Music 95% of the time. I use Dash radio on occasion. Spotify, etc.

It’s pretty rare I can’t find what I’m looking for on one of the streaming apps.

The time it takes to properly organize 100,000 plus songs is immense.

I’ve got a pretty good sized movie library that I have organized perfectly. About 3,100 movies now and maybe 5,000 TV episodes. That’s much easier to organize because the size is smaller.

The music is almost impossible to handle because of the shear scale of how much you have to organize.

I’m struggling with family photos. We probably have now 250,000 photos. Trying to organize that in a way that makes sense is an enormous task.
APLMAN99
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APLMAN99 9/1/2020 6:29am
9/1/2020 6:29am
TXDirt wrote:
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named...
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named pretty clean. I have another 100,000 plus songs roughly organized. It’s almost just too big a project and not worth my actual time.

Combine all of that with the fact that you have tons of streaming options now and I frankly rarely even touch my music library anymore. I use Amazon Prime Music 95% of the time. I use Dash radio on occasion. Spotify, etc.

It’s pretty rare I can’t find what I’m looking for on one of the streaming apps.

The time it takes to properly organize 100,000 plus songs is immense.

I’ve got a pretty good sized movie library that I have organized perfectly. About 3,100 movies now and maybe 5,000 TV episodes. That’s much easier to organize because the size is smaller.

The music is almost impossible to handle because of the shear scale of how much you have to organize.

I’m struggling with family photos. We probably have now 250,000 photos. Trying to organize that in a way that makes sense is an enormous task.
I have tried finding some sort of pictures organizer that will allow you to “tag” the people and locations in it so that you could filter them.

So if you wanted to find all pictures with “Joe”, you could just use that filter. But ideally you could also find all pictures that had both “Joe” and “Jill” in them, or just “Joe” and “Jill” in them, and so on.
TXDirt
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TXDirt 9/1/2020 9:55am
9/1/2020 9:55am
APLMAN99 wrote:
I have tried finding some sort of pictures organizer that will allow you to “tag” the people and locations in it so that you could filter...
I have tried finding some sort of pictures organizer that will allow you to “tag” the people and locations in it so that you could filter them.

So if you wanted to find all pictures with “Joe”, you could just use that filter. But ideally you could also find all pictures that had both “Joe” and “Jill” in them, or just “Joe” and “Jill” in them, and so on.
I’ve used a couple and biggest problem with those is when the developer stops supporting the software. You can spend all this time tagging stuff. And then if it stops working then you are out of luck. And it typically only works on the system you have the software installed on.

I know you can also embed tags inside the photos metadata. But none of the programs do that.

The best way I have found so far, atleast for me, is to organize pictures by year and then by event.

So in year 2020 Folder I will have birthdays, Christmas, lake trip, Easter, Zoo visit, etc broken down into specific folders for each one of those events. If I have pictures not related to any events I just put them in a folder called Random usually.

This is by no means great, but I can somewhat atleast find something in a flat file and folder structure.

Usually when we want to go look at photos (family slide night), we usually are looking for events. Like our first Disney trip. Or Easter 2018. Etc.

It’s not perfect but it’s the best way I have right now.
jeffro503
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jeffro503 9/1/2020 5:43pm
9/1/2020 5:43pm
TXDirt wrote:
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named...
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named pretty clean. I have another 100,000 plus songs roughly organized. It’s almost just too big a project and not worth my actual time.

Combine all of that with the fact that you have tons of streaming options now and I frankly rarely even touch my music library anymore. I use Amazon Prime Music 95% of the time. I use Dash radio on occasion. Spotify, etc.

It’s pretty rare I can’t find what I’m looking for on one of the streaming apps.

The time it takes to properly organize 100,000 plus songs is immense.

I’ve got a pretty good sized movie library that I have organized perfectly. About 3,100 movies now and maybe 5,000 TV episodes. That’s much easier to organize because the size is smaller.

The music is almost impossible to handle because of the shear scale of how much you have to organize.

I’m struggling with family photos. We probably have now 250,000 photos. Trying to organize that in a way that makes sense is an enormous task.
I hear ya TX. I'm doing this for a couple reason's ( mainly because I'm stubborn ) , but also , when I'm out camping and fishing at the coast , I can't stream much of anything with no WiFi or good reception. So I have to have those actual music and movie files with me. In my original post I mentioned I had been working on this for about 6 months.....that was incorrect haha. I remember starting this project around Thanksgiving time when my work was slow.

And movies.......you wouldn't happen to have Sinister 1 & 2 would you?
TXDirt
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TXDirt 9/2/2020 5:08am
9/2/2020 5:08am
TXDirt wrote:
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named...
I’ve taken on a similar project before and ultimately I just gave up. I ripped over 300 of my CDs and those I mostly have named pretty clean. I have another 100,000 plus songs roughly organized. It’s almost just too big a project and not worth my actual time.

Combine all of that with the fact that you have tons of streaming options now and I frankly rarely even touch my music library anymore. I use Amazon Prime Music 95% of the time. I use Dash radio on occasion. Spotify, etc.

It’s pretty rare I can’t find what I’m looking for on one of the streaming apps.

The time it takes to properly organize 100,000 plus songs is immense.

I’ve got a pretty good sized movie library that I have organized perfectly. About 3,100 movies now and maybe 5,000 TV episodes. That’s much easier to organize because the size is smaller.

The music is almost impossible to handle because of the shear scale of how much you have to organize.

I’m struggling with family photos. We probably have now 250,000 photos. Trying to organize that in a way that makes sense is an enormous task.
jeffro503 wrote:
I hear ya TX. I'm doing this for a couple reason's ( mainly because I'm stubborn ) , but also , when I'm out camping and...
I hear ya TX. I'm doing this for a couple reason's ( mainly because I'm stubborn ) , but also , when I'm out camping and fishing at the coast , I can't stream much of anything with no WiFi or good reception. So I have to have those actual music and movie files with me. In my original post I mentioned I had been working on this for about 6 months.....that was incorrect haha. I remember starting this project around Thanksgiving time when my work was slow.

And movies.......you wouldn't happen to have Sinister 1 & 2 would you?
I’ve got them both. Shoot me a PM if you want them and I can send you a download link. I’ve got them in MP4 format so easily playable on any computer, phone, etc.

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