Comment by alisonatwork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alisonatwork | Hacker News Reader

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I use MusicBee for everything too and sounds like my workflow is the same as yours. I basically take whatever is tagged on the file straight out of Bandcamp and then manually follow Discogs-like rules for normalization of the artist name so the directory structure works out, plus adding iTunes compilation metadata to deal with the "various artists" issue, adding BPM, customizing genre and comments etc.

I think I started all this fussiness exactly because back in the old days when you synced to CDDB, you'd get somebody else's useless record label classification for a reissue or international release that obscured the original label, which in certain genres of music is quite important to be able to better categorize the music for auto playlists. Original year is also critical for auto playlists where you're looking for tunes around a certain era. I also have a vague memory of old CDJs or Serato or some damn thing not displaying the name I wanted so having to shuffle stuff around to Composer or Album Artist or something to make it work, and now here I am with custom-tagged all the things.

My problem is I was considering replacing all my 320k MP3s with FLACs, which I have for all my Bandcamp purchases and most of my CD rips (although not from Beatport and other online stores)... but I realized it was going to be absolute hell to try and match the untagged files that I downloaded and put straight into cloud storage with the tagged files I already have in the library. It would need some kind of heuristics to fuzzy match the files with what's already there, then retag them with my preferred tags from the MP3, then move the file into the same location the MP3 is, then move the MusicBee proprietary metadata (play count, add date etc) across, then delete the MP3. I keep thinking there has to be a program or a plugin for this, but seems like not, so for now I've just given up and decided that 320k is good enough, actually, which makes me wonder why I'm keeping all these FLACs around in the first place. Not like I'm starting the Library of Alexandria here, I just like music.

> actually, which makes me wonder why I'm keeping all these FLACs around

Sometime last year, I actually redownloaded all my BC files, and reripped all my CDs (had to re-do genres, but that was fine, I wanted cleaner genres anyway). It’s simply archival. Lossless means you can convert it to whatever file you might want in the future without loss of quality.

This made extra sense for my CD rips, because many of those were from the early 2000s and I made questionable quality descisions ;)

I'm wondering about diminishing returns, because up until switching to FLAC about 10 years ago I ripped all my CDs to 320k and thus only have about 20 files in my "low bitrate" auto playlist that are weird indie or bootleg things that I couldn't bring myself to delete for nostalgia reasons. Is FLAC really all that much better? Can anybody hear the difference? I don't want to spend months awkwardly moving thousands of files around just because it's more useful to a hypothetical future archaeologist version of myself with hearing that got better with age instead of worse...

That said, I wouldn't mind going back and retagging my genres in particular because one of the annoying things is that over the years my perception of the genre of certain tracks has changed, so it might be easiest to just roll back to ID3v1 "we got both kinds: house and techno" genres for the broad category and then cram subgenre keywords into the comment field instead... but it's been so long since I used CDJs that maybe all these hacks to maintain compatibility with different players are moot now. I saw that the latest and greatest DJ equipment just hooks up direct to online streaming services so I wouldn't be surprised if it also had a feature to sync everything to MusicBrainz as soon as you plug in a USB, which makes all the fussing around with legacy tags kind of pointless for a casual who mostly just listens or mixes at home.

It seems like many people online say that there is no perceptible difference between e.g, 320kb/s mp3 and "flac" (which usually means CD-quality 44.1kHz 16-bit). Often sources say something about there being no way it sounds different and then talk about the Nyquist theorem [0].

Personally I don't get it as for me, there is a clear difference not only between mp3 vs. CD, but even between different bitrates beyond that. Maybe I'm not typical as I've been usually listening to stuff through studio monitors and also usually through a recording interface which handles 192kHz and >24-bit.

Definitely I noticed on certain systems you aren't going to notice a difference as the system itself is the bottleneck (i.e, bluetooth). In my experience though if you use the right driver, so ASIO or WASAPI in Windows (or anything in Mac and Linux nowadays), I can tell the difference instantly on recordings I know well.

Most music did not get released in ultra HD but some things are available in 96kHz and beyond. I recommend checking out Radiohead, Bob Marley, or Pink Floyd in ultra-HD ( >= 48kHz, >= 24-bit) as there have been releases. I have found Bob Marley - Legend in 192kHz 24-bit and it sounds incredible. You can hear each individual member of the percussion section.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist-Shannon_sampling_theor...

Pioneer DJ, I mean AlphaTheta, probably don't even know MusicBrainz exists. They're too busy selling subscriptions for RekordBox. And they do nothing to help you with the metadata on your files, besides filtering in browser mode.

I can relate to the problem of revising genre or energy ratings over time. I've gone with custom genre tags for ages, ie "dub/house/techno" or "funk/disco/edits" with a sprinkling of extra qualifiers in the comment field and do bulk updates from MP3Tag/Foobar2k. The extras only really help when preparing "crates" for export to USB for outside use, or when just playing off the entire collection at home. I'm fast, but still not much time to read the comment fields when browsing on the players, much less input any words with the scroll wheel.

I keep every purchase around in FLAC, and the part I might realistically play out stays in AIFF, for minimum fiddling of tags (ie stars map a bit differently between Traktor and Rekordbox) - because of course Rekordbox will warn you you're exporting files you can't play anywhere, but won't do anything to transcode them.

Lossless whenever possible because I just want to give the sound quality as much of a chance as I can when recording sets, especially if they might get posted online and getting lossy-transcoded multiple times. I've tried the mp3 of mp3 thing, and you do hear it at home (out at a gig, most of the time, probably not).

I don't suffer from track bulimia, so the numbers work out - and disk space has gotten a lot cheaper in the last 20 years.

I let this thread go for a while, but just saw your reply and wanted to say thanks for your insight! I am a hobbyist DJ for whom "playing out" just means "on a friend's equipment from time to time" so I probably don't need to fuss as much as I do, but your experience has kinda reaffirmed for me that keeping stuff MP3 is going to be the least hassle.

It really used to annoy me that bringing along just a USB left me with a useless "filenames only" view on old CDJs, and then even when they did read the file they only cached the metadata of a fraction of the tags, which is how I ended up same as you - custom genres with modifiers in the comment. It's not the ideal data structure for organizing your collection at home, but it seems to work the best for bringing music to go.

The core benefit to me of FLAC is that it's lossless. I can convert the same file to an MP3 for the car and OPUS on my phone and don't have to worry about (compounding) losses in quality.

I stream FLAC at home because I already have it there but I can't say it's "better" than 320 MP3s.

I did a re-rip project during Covid because so many of my rips were 128 bit MP3 from back when storage costs drove all CD ripping decisions.

Edit:typos

I started ripping before FLAC was a thing, and my first albums are all in 256k CBR mp3. I've never seen a big reason to re-do them. Yes, the files have gone through LAME's acoustic filter so they don't match the original bit-for-bit, but I mostly can't tell the difference. There have been a few times when I got annoyed by audio quality issues, but it's been 50/50 that it turned out those were also on the cd, so either a deliberate choice or a mistake during mastering.

As others say, there is an issue with compounding losses when you transcode mp3 to vorbis or opus, but I've never needed to do that -- and when I export, it's to move the files to lower-quality devices anyway.

320 vs FLAC: unless you are both a mutant and audiophile with the right equipment, you won't hear any difference at all. It's purely for archival purposes for me, that I have the "originals" or as close as possible.

Legacy tags: luckily not an issue for me, I only care about multiple (usually metal) subgenres and that my players show/filter them.

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