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Audio Tags Example

Introduction

Audio content is usually found with tags, ie meta information about the content you can listen to like the artist name, the track title, the year of release, etc. The problem is that people are now ripping their CDs in just one file for consistency on their hard-drive and usually avoiding gap problems on live/classical/mixes albums. So now you can find many tracks in just one file, and the usual flat structure to tag content doesn't work anymore.

Let's consider the mini-album of The Micronauts "Bleep To Bleep", as found in the chapter examples. The tracks are layed out on the CD as follows :

Tracks 01 to 04 are linked together and are actually making just one "virtual" track to the listener.

One file with all tracks

In this case the file contains one continuous audio track of 44:28. Chapters are used to virtually split the content in many parts, ie the CD tracks. A basic ripping application would rip the CD tracks as follows :

Now let's see how a basic tagging of this file would work :

One file per CD track

Now let's split this one file in pieces :

Track 1 / File #1

Track 2 / File #2

etc...

One file per "meaningful" track

In this case the 4 first tracks appear in one file.

Tracks 1-2-3-4 / File #1

Tracks 5 / File #2

etc...

Album on 2 CDs

Many albums contain 2 CD in the box. Here is an example of a real-life case and how to keep the information about the physical source: Future Sound Of London "Lifeforms". In this example we'll have one file per CD track.

File #1 : CD #1 - Track #1

File #2 : CD #1 - Track #2

etc...

File #9 : CD #2 - Track #1

etc...

Album with 2 different CDs

This is almost the same as the previous example. But this time each CD in the pack is related to a different logical level: DJ Hell "Electronicbody-Housemusic". In this example we'll have one file per CD track.

File #1 : CD #1 - Track #1

File #2 : CD #1 - Track #2

etc... Now from second CD/mix :

File #19 : CD #2 - Track #1

etc...

Collection of CD sets

Sometimes an album can contain many CDs. And sometimes an album can be part of a bigger collection, like a CD series. Here is one example of such a real-life case and how it should be tagged. We'll only cover the case of 1 file per CD. Other cases could be deduced from the previous examples.

The example here is a Big Beat collection called "Big Beat Elite" by the Lacerba label. There are 3 instances in this collection : "Big Beat Elite", "Big Beat Elite Repeat" and "Big Beat Elite Complete". Each item in the collection contains 3 CDs. 2 CDs containing the tracks, and the 3rd CD containing the same tracks but mixed. We won't tag all the content here, just giving examples how some CDs or tracks would be tagged in the file.

File #1 : Big Beat Elite CD #1 containing plain tracks

File #2 : Big Beat Elite CD #2 containing plain tracks

File #3 : Big Beat Elite CD #3 containing mixed tracks

File #4 : Big Beat Elite Repeat CD #1

File #5 : Big Beat Elite Repeat CD #2

File #6 : Big Beat Elite Repeat CD #3 mixed

(you can deduce it yourself as an excercise)

File #7 : Big Beat Elite Complete CD #1

File #8 : Big Beat Elite Complete CD #2

(you can deduce it yourself as an excercise)

File #9 : Big Beat Elite Complete CD #3 mixed

(you can deduce it yourself as an excercise)