Just interested in finding out if I'm the only OCD person when it comes to my music collection. I have everything all neatly organized in folders, but it goes beyond that. It actually annoys me to see this:

8. The Legend of 1970.m4a
08 - The Legend of 1970.m4a
8 - The Legend of 1970,m4a

I have to have it formatted like iTunes does it because I think it looks more simple and consistent, like this:

08 The Legend of 1970.m4a

Also, I hate it when the file names are messed up, like this:

01 the legend of 1970.m4a
01 The Legend Of 1970.m4a

It is actually proper grammar to not have the "of" capitalized, and it should be this way anyway. So, the proper way should be:

08 The Legend of 1970.m4a


Idk, I'm just really OCD, don't even get me on proper tags. One thing that I'm doing right now is archiving my entire collection in the cloud and converting it all to ONE codec, 256 AAC. It also somewhat bothers me to see a mess of different formats. I have ogg, flac, wma, wav, mp3, etc. Honestly, I really do not find that flac sounds much different than full resolution mp3, but this is mostly due to the headphones I use (EarPods!).

I know that it must be the most terrible thing to those lossless people, but yes, I am converting and deleting all my flac files. Not before backing them up though, because I am not sure if I might want them again someday. My reasoning for making everything AAC is so that I can store the most on my iPod. It sounds good enough for me.


So, what is your favorite audio codec, and are you so concerned with how your collection looks?

I use tags for easy reference, particularly in regards to compilations where there might be four or five composers on a project.
I sometimes eschew a composer credit and put the arranger there instead, because I always know who the original composer was.

As for codec, I usually take what I can get. All my CDs are ripped to lossless.

I use tags for easy reference, particularly in regards to compilations where there might be four or five composers on a project.
I sometimes eschew a composer credit and put the arranger there instead, because I always know who the original composer was.

As for codec, I usually take what I can get. All my CDs are ripped to lossless.

Interesting. If I had enough money to afford one of those Astell & Kern or Fiio Hi-Fi players, everything would be lossless, as I like to go portable.

I'm not OCD.

I haven't had anyone tell me to get tested and there was no concern from my family physician.

But I legitimately know people with actual, clinical OCD and it is a problem for them.
Not First World Problems.

This forum has the dumbest demographic for self-diagnosed hosers, ever.
And I've been on 4chan where people would claim such things because it's the troll center of the internet.

My music is all neatly labeled and organized in folders. I too, have every single audio file labeled with the track number first, then a dash, then the file name. So mine would look like this:

02 - 1m01 "You Don't Dream In Cryo...".m4a

The very first thing I do when I download something is properly label/tag it. Then I transfer it to my external, then open in iTunes.

Prefered formatting : 01. The Legend of 1970.m4a (01 - XXX could work too) but i don't browse through my folders for listening to music, just to upload stuff and check their quality (if they are fake lossless or not for exemple)

I'm not really a grammarnazi, because my english sucks, so i can't really correct myself grammar lol, and i think VGMdb/freedb is enough when it come to tags.

256 AAC is almost the same deal as MP3 VBR 0, but isn't the last one better for its compatibility/size ? (iirc mp3 works on Itunes stuff so you should be ok with it)

Also never transcode lossy format to other ones, only lossless, or you will loose a lot in the conversion.

Well i can't really argue about the lossless/lossy difference because i also have a really bad headphones. However from what people say, the difference between MP3 320K CBR/VBR 0 - OGG - M4A AAC and lossless (M4A ALAC - FLAC ..) is pratically non-existent. Only for some genres, and also you need a good Amplifier/DAC/Sound card (PC) for an headphone (depends on which the quality of the DAC of the device you want to use on it)

FLAC is nice imo, and space is really cheap, so yeah just archive them if possible ... Also you could transcode lossless to another lossless format without loose of quality, you should be able to do it for FLAC > M4A ALAC, only usefull if you use Itunes thought, and you probably won't have lossless files in your other itunes devices because they take too much space and its not worth it for going out or listening in a noisy environement


And yes i'm concerned with how my collection looks like, but can't really organize it properly because of the lack of space and computer lagging (could use SSD but if i can't afford HDD you would probably guess that i can't afford an SSD too)


Really like the :

Genre > Sous-Genre > Artist > Single/Compilation/Album etc ...

And for OST : Soundtrack (genre) > Movie (stuff which was first released as movie)/Anime/Game > Game/Anime/Movie name > Official/Unofficial > etc ...


And since i have a good long term memory i don't bother myself thinking about codec/bitrates, i only put the format/catalog number if there is various versions of the same thing

^ My Library.

I Like to Keep Stuff Organised.

Eg All My Disney Albums Are Labled As

"Disney: The Little Mermaid : (Original Soundtrack: Special Edition)

Ect.... I Also Like to Have Stuff In Order.

I've never understood why people have like five different versions of the same score. Why not compile it all into one album?

Coz I Like It That way...

I have my music stored in my HDD. In folders. Here's how it goes. HDD>Music>FLAC/MP3>Year - Movie Title - Composers, then inside the folder, the albums. If it's more than one, if it's just score, then I do "1990 Disco Label Catalogue Number. If not score, then "Music from the Motion Picture", "Score Album" etc.

As for how I like my music tagged? Well.. like the EAC perfect rip. 01 - Artist - Title of the Track and so on. Internal tags tend to be the same for american or other languages, but for japanese, I tend to put the track filename in English and ht emetadata in japanese.

Don't care that much about File Names as long as they are correct and spelled right,
Tags on the other Hand have to be in meticulous Order since i see them all the Time.

Albums without a Composer Breakdown make me die a little inside, i hate
seeing Various Artists or all Composer Names crammed into the Artist Column.

Single Folder for every Album, has to have the proper Album Name according to VGMDB,
all Albums in my big VGM Folder, at the Moment it contains 2,966 Albums.

99% of the Time i download FLAC, for archiving and Backup, i then copy them and turn them into Mp3 V0
for listening, because i don't have the proper Equipment to justify listening to Lossless.

My biggest Pet Peeve are Covers, 1000x1000 is my preferred Size, won't go lower than
700x700, Digital Covers>Scans.

My Foobar is customized to display Covers in a large Resolution, to me a pretty
Cover is almost as important as the Music itself.

I've never understood why people have like five different versions of the same score. Why not compile it all into one album?

Collection purpose + If i recompile them to one score then they will be no longer 'official' (atleast for me, because i know it because i'm the one who recompiled them)

Also its better to share the official thing to other people rather than recompilation, which are also aren't approved on many places

Albums without a Composer Breakdown make me die a little inside, i hate
seeing Various Artists or all Composer Names crammed into the Artist Column.

Same! It's so messy to have five different guys' names crammed in there! :laugh:
I usually just pick the head guy (usually there is one) and any tracks with additional composers get that special tag.

I've never understood why people have like five different versions of the same score. Why not compile it all into one album?

I've got 5 different versions of Avatar:

Film Mix
Promo
FYC
Sessions
SonicAdventure Deluxe

Each one of them different than the other

SA Deluxe!? How Did I Miss This!?

�\_(ツ)_/�

:cry:

I Suck!

Damn, I Will Have To Try Soulseek See If I Can Get The Missing Stuff.

I've got 5 different versions of Avatar:

Film Mix
Promo
FYC
Sessions
SonicAdventure Deluxe

Each one of them different than the other

But... like... with the exception of SA's version, why not put them in one album?
Remove duplicate tracks. Keep alternate takes/mixes/whatevers.

I Like To Keep The As They Are. I Make A Compilation Sometimes (Like My Suicide Squad)
But Also More Covers! ;)

It always comes back to the artwork, doesn't it? :-P

SA Deluxe!? How Did I Miss This!?

He put it together based on my custom, which is something no one really seemed to keep. Made so many unique tracks in it, restored all the little inserts and pickups...I'm probably the only one who ever listens to them. Since there's no more JH sessions showing up anywhere, I don't have anything to really make (though I do occasionally make other things) and I'm pretty much out of that game now.

01 Main Title.wav

01 Main Title.m4a (ALAC)

I have your version, somewhere. I definitely downloaded it. It's probably on one of my two externals. Sometimes I'll download something and then I'll forget it's there if I don't add it to iTunes right away.

Regarding customs and whatnot, I think the frustration for me was three-fold:

1, one never really knows if what they've done was actually listened to, because if you do a custom you're implying that you've made something unique, but has anyone noticed? You won't know unless someone says something, a comment, a criticism, something.

2, SA ended up basing his deluxe editions on some of my customs, and I felt that, if that's what people really want, and he makes them anyway, there's no point in making something to share and I'll just keep what I make for my ears only and not bother uploading since whatever I make is just replaced in many collections.

3, As I said, JH sessions have dried up as far as I know (perhaps they haven't and I'm just never in the loop, but since I'm not in the loop I have no idea either way)

I used to have everything neatly organized+tagged, especially my own rips, but that has changed: I take whatever is thrown my way, filenames and tags are kept mostly as the original sharer/ripper has them, I don't care about mistakes in the credits, or typo, I don't waste time looking at what I'm listening to; heck, I tend to listen to the whole thing anyway, I just pick a track and let it go.

Most recent rips of mine are treated pretty much the same way: I just make sure to have the tracks "digitalized", who cares if something isn't perfect.

EDIT:
Preferred format is MP3 (I do keep a few lossless encodes, as you've noticed), my hearing worsens the older I get, besides, I usually "fit" 2-3 different releases in the space taken up by a single lossless encode.

Don't have currently a nice see-all-cover folder or musicplayer
Musicfiles are always in flac if its possible.
For the files itself, I just have tracknames and Front-Cover. No tags for composer, year, game or anything.
Cover which I use are from official artworks (+Logos) but not the Music-CD ones.
Tracknames I have always in Caps.
Why? I like it.
Maybe at someday I will make it better but not for now.

Well, in fact, player looks like this:


(yes yes, some covers are rectangular)

Huh? Oh, that's foobar-app(WIN10 here), I use the desktop-foobar just for convert and other things.

Coz I Like It That way...

Lol, I only did it for Alan Silvestri's Cosmos collection because it was getting a bit annoying seeing 4 albums with the same artwork. Anyway, nice collection and skin. I like MusicBee as well. I only use iTunes to sync my device. I kind of hate it.

---------- Post added at 12:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:42 PM ----------

Yep, I am realizing this. I am reaching the point where as long as the tags are correct and the files themselves are organized in one place and that I am able to navigate it easily, I am fine. It is too time consuming to go and edit everything beyond the tags, and a utterly useless way to spend my time living.

I am using a iPod, which is produces decent audio. I am not an audiophile so it doesn't bother me, and I'm young.

You're not thee only OCD one, I will attest! :)

1. Tracks (minus slates) set up like this, preferably:

01 Main Title.m4a (or flac).

2. I absolutely DETEST tracks that list the album/cd/folder title and/or the composer name preceding the track name.

01 Ennio Morricone - The Thing - Main Title.m4a

All that shit gets fixed the moment I get the file(s). Who needs all that?! Clearly, I do not.

3. Excessive use of periods and spelling fixes:

THIS 01 Main Title.m4a
NOT THIS 01. Main Title.m4a

THIS 05 Driving to the Bridge.m4a
NOT THIS 05 Driving To The Bridge.m4a

4. Tracks (with complete slates) unnumbered:

RIG 1M01 Deep Sea Drilling.m4a
RIG 1M02 Main Title.m4a

5. Tracks (with incomplete slates) numbered:

01 1m01 Main Titles.m4a
02 Pizza Delivery.m4a
03 1m05 Round Two.m4a

6. Slates round-up to the front:

THIS 1M01 Main Title.flac
NOT THIS Main Title (1M01).flac

7. Slates get M / Slates get m, by choice:

Capitalized M for slates with preceding title abbreviation:
KA 1M01
RIG 2M05
GS 1M02rev

Lower-case m for slates without preceding title abbreviation:
1m05
2m01

8. Preferred use of "0" in slate numbers (personal pref though):

THIS 1M01
NOT THIS 1m1

9. Preferred codec:

M4A
FLAC
MP3 (when no other version exists)

Will still take/consider

WAV
AIFF
SDII

Do not care for:

APE
OGG

9. Preferred codec:

M4A

Note for M4A, it's a container that can house different codecs: ALAC, AAC.

ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) is the lossless format. Outdated and no longer developed. I only use it for legacy support for other people.
AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) is the lossy format. Which is still updated via Apple and most commonly deployed with iTunes.
Nero is defunct in terms of AAC development, but it can still do some ancient tricks. But I still wouldn't use it.
QAAC is a tool that uses Apple's distribution of their AAC library encoder via iTunes/Quicktime. This is my preferred encoder tool for AAC. Largely CLI-based, so batch scripts are the way to go (or Foobar2000).

FLAC is still under development, but it's reaching a state where compression is optimal and no further compression can be achieved.
Total efficiency. My preferred lossless format. It can accurately store 17-23 bit depths and keep a compressed filesize whereas ALAC would inflate to a filesize expected of full/native 24-bit where the file might 17-bit average.
Most updates now consist of bugfixes and optimization in the code. The optimizations are mainly for software developers who want to use FLAC in their programs/bundles. Easier to migrate, easier to compile, etc. Getting modern, as it were.
Version 1.3.1 is probably the best one to use. Version 1.3.2 doesn't offer much improvement or benefit. Version 1.2.1 is outdated and should be upgraded.
If your software won't update, it's probably abandonded by the developers and the whole thing should be replaced, considering there might be more issues.
Just because something happens, doesn't mean it happened correctly.
Take Audacity, for example, it has quite a few issues that are often mistinterpreted as "it happened so there's no problem".
Similar cases where non-English people rip subtitles from a bluray to convert to text-based SRT format with OCR methods and say "there were no problems" when there was actually a lot of grammatical problems inherent with OCR.

---------- Post added at 10:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:50 AM ----------



Do not care for:

APE

Dead format. :laugh: Completely dead.
I don't think it's received an update since 2011. And that's probably being too generous. Maybe 2009?

Was APE ever really popular?
Maybe it's a bit before my time (I didn't get into this sort of music until early 2011).

Was APE ever really popular?

Yes, it was.
It actually had better compression over FLAC.
Except, you can't skip anywhere on the timeline. Bigger compression with APE meant slower seektimes (decoding).
That is, until FLAC updated and surpassed APE.

APE was also able to contain an embedded cue sheet.
Handy for single images to read in Foobar2000. No real need for a separate .cue file.

WAVpack is better now.
I'd just as soon use WAVpack isntead of APE.
Same features, more updated. Still in development, iirc.

My whole collection is MP3, since iTunes doesn't support flac and I don't really hear any difference in sound quality, probably because I always use earphones. (I use iTunes because I have a iPhone and a Mac and I am constantly updating my music collection, so it would be a bother to have many different music players).

Also, I am very OCD about filenames and artwork and album titles.
The one good thing about iTunes is that it neatly organizes the music automatically into album and artist folders and changes file names from "1 - Main Title.mp3" to "01 Main Title.mp3"

I usually keep my artwork 600x600 or 500x500 because large quality images take space on the music file and I want to cram in as music as possible onto my phone (it only has a measly 11GB worth of space and my music collection takes up over 50GB, so I have to be selective).
Also, it's important that all artwork is entirely square – I can't stand rectangular DVD covers that some anime enclosure soundtracks have as their artwork – I always crop them or create alternate artwork for them.

Also, since I'm currently learning Japanese and most of my music is anime and Japanese soundtracks, I label everything in English or Romaji with the original Kanji song/artist name in parentheses, example:
Joe Hisaishi (久石譲)
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (空から降ってきた少女)
Natsu wo Miteita (夏を見ていた)

I guess it's kind of weird, but it really helps me learn more Kanji. I also translate a lot of tracklists myself to English.

My favourite track names are Naruto Shippuden tracks, because the titles consist of 1 to 2 Kanji so the Romaji and English names for them are really short, so I've labeled them like this:
孤独 Kodoku (Loneliness)
彩霞 Saika (Colourful Mist)
五月雨 Samidare (Early Summer Rain)

I can't include the Kanji, Romaji and English name for every single track I have, because sometimes the names are really long and it would look stupid, example:
Summer of Farewells ~From Up on Poppy Hill~ (Sayonara no Natsu ~Kokuriko-zaka kara~) [さよならの夏~コクリコ坂から~]
So I usually just keep the English and Kanji name.

Sorry for explaining things badly. Does anyone else have Anime/Japanese music and keep the Kanji titles? Or label them the same way I do?

Interesting! Thank you all for your feedback. I was just wondering. I honestly would expect no less from audiophiles, but some of you are just avid listeners. We all have our gimmicks, or preferences, whatever you want to call it.

I prefer FLAC : lossless format, but compressed...

I like FLAC, too. But prefer 24bit :)