As previously posted, I have been revising my classical music tagging system, with a view to making the templates and actions freely available to other Muso users. I was not entirely happy with my efforts last December as I felt it was over-complex so have tried to improve it. This new version will be released shortly (but see comments later).
The objectives of the system are:
a) To enable a rich metadata set to be used in Muso.
b) To optimise the displays on squeezebox-type devices attached to Logitech Media Server.
c) To allow changes to be made to metadata either inside Muso or on the files themselves using Mp3tag.
d) To be compatible with files that do not take advantage of the advanced metadata.
e) To be as simple as possible, consistent with enabling a rich metadata set.
As well as being useful for classical music, I hope it also works for jazz, while not causing a problem for any simpler albums.
The core of the system is a Mp3tag "action" which is run after making any changes to the tags (whether directly or via export from Muso). One action makes all the tags into the consistent format, including interpreting custom tags from Muso, creating Performer entries for Artists and Instruments and creating all sort fields. This action will be available for download.
I have re-tagged all my library and tested it out as far as I can - it seems to work well.
Note that some initial preparation of tags is necessary - I will provide the relevant settings for ripping from CDs via dBpoweramp; also I have developed some Mp3tag actions for downloads of certain labels (so far Hyperion and Linn) to put the tags into the consistent format; otherwise some manual tag editing may be required initially.
While I have been doing this, I have also been keeping an eye on competitor products which might do the job better than the Muso/Mp3tag/LMS combination. This does seem to be a developing area and products like Roon look very interesting (particularly if they develop a squeezebox interface as promised) albeit expensive. However I have concluded that the Muso functionality still takes a lot of beating, even when compared with much more expensive solutions. I have therefore continued to invest some time and effort in making everything work to my liking - the only downside of the multi-product solution is that it is not so simple as an integrated product. I also note with interest the HQPlayer developments which may make for a good combination with Muso for audiophiles.
Before finalising and releasing my tagging system there are a few issues that I would like to resolve, some of which have already been referred to elsewhere on this forum. These are listed below. I would be grateful for any comments, solutions or alternative suggestions as regards any of these.
1)
Non-LMS tags. The main metadata elements used in Muso are: Title, Album, Album Artist, Artist, Composer, Genre, Track Group Header, Conductor, Performer(s)/Soloists(s). Of these, there are two elements which are not natively provided by LMS - Track Group Header and Performer(s)/Soloists(s). To get these into Muso via the LMS import requires the use of the "Custom Scan" plugin in LMS. While this plugin does provide the tags required, it seems to introduce a considerable overhead to the scanning process - this means that the time taken to add new music and see how it appears in Muso is excessive. Also, when Custom Scan is running it degrades LMS performance, so you can't even listen to music while you wait. My solution was to use the "Import from Specific Folder" option in Muso, rather than importing from LMS. However, this does not update the Artist Sort Table, which is only updated by the LMS import (or manually!). My system does supply all the right sort keys (although see separate issue below on this), but I need to run an LMS import to get them. My suggested approach on this (failing any Muso enhancement to read sort keys directly) is to turn off Custom Scan, use Import from Specific Folder to get the custom tags and Import from LMS to get the sort keys. Not ideal, but it works.
2)
Sort tags. LMS has been fixed to read sort tags for all contributors including conductors and composers. However, since Performer/Soloist is not a LMS tag, it cannot be given a LMS sort key in the same way - so, ordinarily, unless I fix the Muso sort table manually to include them (YMBJ), they will be sorted by first name. I tried to fix this by putting supporting artists into the TRACKARTIST tag with a TRACKARTISTSORT key. However, this tag is non-standard, even in LMS and is not included in the "contributor sort" fix. I did a (one-word!) patch to LMS to make it work, but this will not suit many, or even me long-term. An alternative is as follows: Put the main artist in the "Album Artist" tag and the supporting artists in the "Artist" tag; in order not to mess with Muso's Titled Artist logic, import "Album Artist" into "Artist" and import "Artist" into "Performer"; if a separate Album Artist is needed in Muso, use a custom tag (presuming such an artist will always be in another artist tag and thus get a sort key anyway). Not elegant, but it should work. A directly created sort table would of course fix this.
3)
Instruments. I like to include instruments in the metadata where possible. The way I have done this is to (a) add an Instrument custom tag for the instrument(s) used by the main artist(s) and (b) put the instrument in brackets after the name of the supporting artists. The Mp3tag action creates a Performer tag which includes the main artist(s) with their instrument(s) in brackets followed by the supporting artists. This means that there is an Instrument tag available for use in a hierarchy view but that you don't need to enter it twice to include all the artists with their instruments in the performer list. The only disadvantage with this is that the main artist appears twice in Muso - without and with their instrument. Ideally the Artist tag would include the instrument and the Performer tag could then just be for the supporting artists; however that would cause the Artist lookups, e.g. on last.fm, to fail. Ideally the lookups would ignore anything in brackets so that (instrument) or any other artist notes in brackets would not cause the lookup to fail. Comments on that or any other matters relating to instruments?
BTW, I put the main artist(s) with their instrument(s) in the Artist tag so that LMS displays this, so an enhancement here would also eliminate a custom tag import into Muso.
4)
Import actions. One objective is to reduce the import actions in Muso to genuine custom tags only. The current import actions is shown in the screen below:
I could remove the Artist import if there were a fix to (3) above. The three heading imports are there because using the @ tags does not seem to work (bug?). The Title import may not now be necessary given the fix in Muso to avoid duplication when exporting. As regards Period, the Muso Period lookup is in theory preferable to manually tagging them, but it only picks up works by composers in their role a Titled Artist. If this were changed to pick up works by composers in any role, that would be best. That would only leave one custom import - Instrument. Now if that were included as a standard Muso field, that would be really great (and possibly provide a better route to solving issue (3)). The final custom tag is just used as a flag to tell Mp3tag when it is handling a Muso export - if there is a better way of doing that then possibly all custom tag import actions could be eliminated.
As I said, any thoughts on the above (particularly but not exclusively from our esteemed Muso creator) would be helpful so that I can finalise the tagging scheme and associated macros, at least for now. Happy to provide any further information/examples if required.